truth, he must hesitate what answer to make.

The actual words were not taken down at the time; they were finely
eloquent, and gained effect from the clear, deliberate utterance; but
the nearest approach to them was recorded in a letter of J.R. Green,
the future historian, written immediately after the meeting:--

I asserted--and I repeat--that a man has no reason to be
ashamed of having an ape for his grandfather. If there were
an ancestor whom I should feel shame in recalling, it
would rather be a _man_--a man of restless and versatile
intellect--who, not content with (an equivocal[1]) success in
his own sphere of activity, plunges into scientific questions
with which he has no real acquaintance, only to obscure them
by an aimless rhetoric, and distract the attention of his
hearers from the real point at issue by eloquent digressions
and skilled appeals to religious prejudice.

[Footnote 1: Referring to this letter afterwards, my father felt
certain that he had never used the word "equivocal." In this he was
borne out by Prof. Victor Carus and Prof. Farrar, who were present.]

The effect was electrical. When he first rose to speak he had been
coldly received--no more than a cheer of encouragement from his
immediate friends. As he made his points the applause grew. When he
finished one half of the audience burst into a storm of cheers; the
other was thunderstruck by the sacrilegious recoil of the Bishop's
weapon upon his own head: a lady fainted, and had to be carried out.
As soon as calm was restored Hooker leapt to his feet, though he hated
public speaking yet more than his friend, and drove home the main