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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:42:55 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-15 04:42:55 -0700 |
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diff --git a/13785-h/13785-h.htm b/13785-h/13785-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1a34cc7 --- /dev/null +++ b/13785-h/13785-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5046 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta name="generator" content="HTML Tidy, see www.w3.org"> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content= +"text/html; charset=UTF-8"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Glory Of English Prose, +by The Hon. Stephen Coleridge.</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + } + HR { width: 33%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + + font :1.05em serif + } + + .smallcaps { font-variant: small-caps } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .note {margin-left: 2em; margin-right: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em; font-size: smaller;} /* footnote */ + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: 1em; padding-left: 1em; font-size: smaller; float: right; clear: right;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span {display: block; margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + .poem .caesura {vertical-align: -200%;} + + .caption {font-size: .70em; } + + a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:red} + + + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13785 ***</div> + +<center><img src="images/image1.jpg" width="324" height="421" alt= +"Stephen Coleridge" border="0"> + +<div class="caption">STEPHEN COLERIDGE<br> +FROM THE PORTRAIT BY BERNARD PARTRIDGE IN THE POSSESSION<br> +OF THE MESS OF THE SOUTH WALES CIRCUIT</div> +</center> + +<br> +<br> +<h1>The Glory of English Prose</h1> + +<h2>Letters to my Grandson</h2> + +<h3>By</h3> + +<h2>The Hon. Stephen Coleridge</h2> + +<center> +<div class="caption">"The chief glory of every people arises from +its authors" <i>Dr. Johnson</i></div> +</center> + +<h4>G.P. Putnam's Sons<br> +New York and London<br> +The Knickerbocker Press 1922</h4> + +<br> +<br> + + +<h4>1922<br> +by<br> +Stephen Coleridge<br> +Made in the United States of America</h4> + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name='PREFACE'></a> +<h2>PREFACE</h2> + +<br> + + +<p>If you have read, gentle reader, the earlier series of +<i>Letters to my Grandson on the World about Him</i>, you are to +understand that in the interval between those letters and these, +Antony has grown to be a boy in the sixth form of his public +school.</p> + +<p>It has not been any longer necessary therefore to study an +extreme simplicity of diction in these letters.</p> + +<p>My desire has been to lead him into the most glorious company in +the world, in the hope that, having early made friends with the +noblest of human aristocracy, he will never afterwards admit to his +affection and intimacy anything mean or vulgar.</p> + +<p>Many young people who, like Antony, are not at all averse from +the study of English writers, stand aghast at the vastness of the +what seems so gigantic an enterprise.</p> + +<p>In these letters I have acted as pilot for a first voyage +through what is to a boy an uncharted sea, after which I hope and +believe he will have learned happily to steer for himself among the +islands of the blest.</p> + +<p>S.C.</p> + +<p>THE FORD, CHOBHAM.</p> + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<br> + + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<br> +<div class="smallcaps"> +<a href="#letter1">1. On Good And Bad Style In Prose</a><br> +<a href="#letter2">2. On The Glory Of The Bible</a><br> +<a href="#letter3">3. Sir Walter Raleigh</a><br> +<a href="#letter4">4. Act Of Parliament, 1532</a><br> +<a href="#letter5">5. The Judicious Hooker And Shakespeare</a><br> +<a href="#letter6">6. Lord Chief Justice Crewe</a><br> +<a href="#letter7">7. Sir Thomas Browne And Milton</a><br> +<a href="#letter8">8. Jeremy Taylor</a><br> +<a href="#letter9">9. Evelyn's Diary</a><br> +<a href="#letter10">10. John Bunyan</a><br> +<a href="#letter11">11. Dr. Johnson</a><br> +<a href="#letter12">12. Edmund Burke</a><br> +<a href="#letter13">13. Gibbon</a><br> +<a href="#letter14">14. Henry Grattan And Macaulay</a><br> +<a href="#letter15">15. Lord Erskine</a><br> +<a href="#letter16">16. Robert Hall</a><br> +<a href="#letter17">17. Lord Plunket</a><br> +<a href="#letter18">18. Robert Southey</a><br> +<a href="#letter19">19. Walter Savage Landor</a><br> +<a href="#letter20">20. Lord Brougham</a><br> +<a href="#letter21">21. Sir William Napier</a><br> +<a href="#letter22">22. Richard Sheil</a><br> +<a href="#letter23">23. Thomas Carlyle</a><br> +<a href="#letter24">24. Henry Nelson Coleridge</a><br> +<a href="#letter25">25. Cardinal Newman</a><br> +<a href="#letter26">26. Lord Macaulay Again</a><br> +<a href="#letter27">27. President Lincoln</a><br> +<a href="#letter28">28. John Ruskin</a><br> +<a href="#letter29">29. James Anthony Froude</a><br> +<a href="#letter30">30. Matthew Arnold</a><br> +<a href="#letter31">31. Sir William Butler</a><br> +<a href="#letter32">32. Lord Morley</a><br> +<a href="#letter33">33. Hilaire Belloc</a><br> +<a href="#letter34">34. King George The Fifth</a><br> +<a href="#letter35">35. Conclusion</a><br> +</div> + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<h2>LETTERS TO MY GRANDSON</h2> + +<br> + <a name="letter1"></a> +<h2>1</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>The letters which I wrote "On the world about you" having shown +you that throughout all the universe, from the blazing orbs in +infinite space to the tiny muscles of an insect's wing, perfect +design is everywhere manifest, I hope and trust that you will never +believe that so magnificent a process and order can be without a +Mind of which it is the visible expression.</p> + +<p>The chief object of those letters was to endorse your natural +feeling of reverence for the Great First Cause of all things, with +the testimony of your reason; and to save you from ever allowing +knowledge of how the sap rises in its stalk to lessen your wonder +at and admiration of the loveliness of a flower.</p> + +<p>I am now going to write to you about the literature of England +and show you, if I can, the immense gulf that divides distinguished +writing and speech from vulgar writing and speech.</p> + +<p>There is nothing so vulgar as an ignorant use of your own +language. Every Englishman should show that he respects and honours +the glorious language of his country, and will not willingly +degrade it with his own pen or tongue.</p> + +<p>"We have long preserved our constitution," said Dr. Johnson; +"let us make some struggles for our language."</p> + +<p>There is no need to be priggish or fantastic in our choice of +words or phrases.</p> + +<p>Simple old words are just as good as any that can be selected, +if you use them in their proper sense and place.</p> + +<p>By reading good prose constantly your ear will come to know the +harmony of language, and you will find that your taste will +unerringly tell you what is good and what is bad in style, without +your being able to explain even to yourself the precise quality +that distinguishes the good from the bad.</p> + +<p>Any Englishman with a love of his country and a reverence for +its language can say things in a few words that will find their way +straight into our hearts, Antony, and make us all better men. I +will tell you a few of such simple sayings that are better than any +more laboured writings.</p> + +<p>On the 30th of June, 1921, in the <i>Times</i> In Memoriam +column there was an entry:—</p> + +<p>"To the undying memory of officers, non-commissioned officers +and men of the 9th and 10th battalions of the K.O.Y.L.I.<a name= +'FNanchor_1_1'></a><a href='#Footnote_1_1'><sup>[1]</sup></a> who +were killed in the attack on Fricourt in the first battle of the +Somme"; and below it there were placed these splendid +words:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts."</p> +</div> + +<p>In February of 1913 news reached England of the death, after +reaching the South Pole, of four explorers, Captain Scott, their +leader, among them.</p> + +<p>Shortly before the end, Captain Oates, a man of fortune who +joined the expedition from pure love of adventure, knowing that his +helplessness with frozen feet was retarding the desperate march of +the others towards their ship, rose up and stumbled out of the tent +into a raging blizzard, saying, "I dare say I shall be away some +time."</p> + +<p>This was greatly said. His body was never found; but the rescue +party who afterwards discovered the tent with the others dead in +it, put up a cairn in the desolate waste of snow with this +inscription:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Hereabouts died a very gallant gentleman, Captain L.E.G. Gates, +Inniskilling Dragoons, who, on their return from the Pole in March, +1912, willingly walked to his death in a blizzard to try and save +his comrades beset with hardship."</p> +</div> + +<p>All this was done, said, and written, very nobly by all +concerned.</p> + +<p>In St. Paul's Cathedral there lies a recumbent effigy of General +Gordon, who gave his life for the honour of England at Khartoum, +and upon it are engraven these words:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"He gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, +his sympathy to the suffering, his heart to God."</p> +</div> + +<p>Even the concentrated terseness of Latin cannot surpass these +examples of the power of the simplest and shortest English +sentences to penetrate to the heart.</p> + +<p>English can be used, by those who master it as an organ of +expression, to convey deep emotion under perfect control, than +which nothing is more moving, nothing better calculated to refine +the mind, nothing more certain to elevate the character.</p> + +<p>Whenever a man has something fine to communicate to his +fellow-men he has but to use English without affectation, honestly +and simply, and he is in possession of the most splendid vehicle of +human thought in the world.</p> + +<p>All the truly great writers of English speak with simplicity +from their hearts, they all evince a spirit of unaffected +reverence, they all teach us to look up and not down, and by the +nobility of their works which have penetrated into every home where +letters are cultivated, they have done an incalculable service in +forming and sustaining the high character of our race.</p> + +<p>Clever flippant writers may do a trifling service here and there +by ridiculing the pompous and deflating the prigs, but there is no +permanence in such work, unless—which is seldom the +case—it is totally devoid of personal vanity.</p> + +<p>Very little such service is rendered when it emanates from a +writer who announces himself as equal if not superior to +Shakespeare, and embellishes his lucubrations with parodies of the +creeds.</p> + +<p>"A Gentleman with a Duster," has in his "Glass of Fashion" shown +us that the Society depicted in the books of Colonel Repington and +Mrs. Asquith is not the true and great Society that sustains +England in its noble station among civilised peoples, and we may be +sure that neither do these books in the faintest degree represent +the true and living literature of the times. They will pass away +and be forgotten as utterly as are the fashion plates and +missing-word competitions of ten years ago.</p> + +<p>Therefore, Antony, be sure that the famous and living literature +of England, that has survived all the shocks of time and changes of +modern life, is the best and properest study for a man to fit him +for life, to refine his taste, to aggravate his wisdom, and +consolidate his character.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_1'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_1'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.</p> +</div> + +<br> +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter2"></a> + +<h2>2</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I alluded, in my first letter to you about English literature, +to the necessity of your learning from the beginning the wide +distinction between what is good and what is bad style.</p> + +<p>I do not know a better instance of a display of the difference +between what is fine style and what is not, than may be made by +putting side by side almost any sentence from the old authorised +translation of the Bible and the same sentence from <i>The Bible in +Modern Speech</i>.</p> + +<p>I will just put two quotations side by side:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, +neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in +all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."</p> + +<p>"Learn a lesson from the wild lilies. Watch their growth. They +neither toil nor spin, and yet I tell you that not even Solomon in +all his magnificence could array himself like one of these."</p> +</div> + +<p>Here you can feel the perfect harmony and balance of the old +version and the miserable commonplaceness of the effort of these +misguided modern men.</p> + +<p>Again:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand."</p> +</div> + +<p>This is mauled into:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Repent, he said, for the kingdom of the heavens is now close at +hand."</p> +</div> + +<p>These examples are perfectly suited to illustrate the immense +difference that separates what is noble and fine in style and what +is poor and third rate.</p> + +<p>If you recite the old version aloud you cannot escape the +harmony and balance of the sentences, and nothing dignified or +distinguished can be made of the wretched paraphrases of the two +desecrators of the splendid old text.</p> + +<p>And, Antony, I would have you know that I, who have spent a long +life in precious libraries, loving fine literature with all my +heart, have long ago reverenced the old version of the Bible as the +granite corner-stone upon which has been built all the noblest +English in the world. No narrative in literature has yet surpassed +in majesty, simplicity, and passion the story of Joseph and his +brethren, beginning at the thirty-seventh and ending with the +forty-fifth chapter of Genesis. There is surely nothing more moving +and lovely in all the books in the British Museum than the picture +of Joseph when he sees his little brother among his +brethren:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"And he lifted up his eyes, and saw his brother Benjamin, his +mother's son, and said, Is this your younger brother, of whom ye +spake to me? And he said, God be gracious unto thee, my son.</p> + +<p>"And Joseph made haste; for his bowels did yearn upon his +brother: and he sought where to weep; and he entered into his +chamber, and wept there."</p> +</div> + +<p>The whole of the forty-fifth chapter is touching and beautiful +beyond all criticism, transcending all art. To read it is to +believe every word of it to be true, and to recognise the sublimity +of such a relation.</p> + +<p>No narrative of the great Greek writers reaches the heart so +directly and poignantly as does this astonishing story. It moves +swiftly and surely along from incident to incident till Joseph's +loving soul can contain itself no more:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Then Joseph could not refrain himself before all of them that +stood by him; and he cried, Cause every man to go out from me.</p> + +<p>"And there stood no man with him, while Joseph made himself +known unto his brethren.</p> + +<p>"And he wept aloud: and the Egyptians and the house of Pharaoh +heard.</p> + +<p>"And Joseph said unto his brethren, I am Joseph; doth my father +yet live? And he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck, and wept; +and Benjamin wept upon his neck. Moreover he kissed all his +brethren and wept upon them.</p> + +<p>"And after that his brethren talked with him."</p> +</div> + +<p>And this wonderful chapter ends thus:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"And they went up out of Egypt, and came unto the land of Canaan +unto Jacob their father, and told him, saying, Joseph is yet alive, +and is governor over all the land of Egypt.</p> + +<p>"And Jacob's heart fainted, for he believed them not.</p> + +<p>"And they told him all the words of Joseph, which he had said +unto them: and when he saw the wagons which Joseph had sent to +carry him, the spirit of Jacob their father revived:</p> + +<p>"And Israel said, It is enough; Joseph my son is yet alive: I +will go and see him before I die."</p> +</div> + +<p>If you read the story of Joseph through from start to finish, +you will see that it is a perfect narrative of the life of a man +without fault, who suffered much but without resentment, was great +of heart in evil days, and, when Fortune placed him in a position +of glory and greatness, showed a stainless magnanimity and a +brotherly love that nothing could abate. It is the first and most +perfect story in literature of the nobility of man's soul, and as +such it must remain a treasured and priceless possession to the +world's end.</p> + +<p>In the short Book of Ruth there lies embalmed in the finest +English a very tender love story, set in all the sweet surroundings +of the ripening corn, the gathered harvest, and the humble +gleaners. Nothing can be more delightful than the direction of +Boaz, the great land-owner, to his men, after he had espied Ruth in +her beauty gleaning in his fields:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"And when she was risen up to glean, Boaz commanded his young +men, saying, Let her glean even among the sheaves, and reproach her +not:</p> + +<p>"And let fall also some of the handfuls on purpose for her, and +leave them, that she may glean them, and rebuke her not."</p> +</div> + +<p>This little gem in the books of the Bible inspired Hood to write +one of his most perfect lyrics:—</p> + +<div class="poem"><span style='margin-left: 1em;'>"She stood breast +high amid the corn</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Clasped by the golden light of +morn,</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Like the sweetheart of the +sun,</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Who many a glowing kiss had +won.</span><br> + + +<hr style='width: 35%;'> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Thus she stood amid the +stocks,</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Praising God with sweetest +looks.</span><br> + <span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Sure, I said, Heaven did not +mean</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Where I reap thou should'st but +glean;</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Lay thy sheaf adown and +come,</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Share my harvest and my +home."</span><br> +</div> + +<p>That the Bible was translated into English at the time when the +language was spoken and written in its most noble form, by men +whose style has never been surpassed in strength combined with +simplicity, has been a priceless blessing to the English-speaking +race. The land of its birth, once flowing with milk and honey, has +been for long centuries a place of barren rocks and arid deserts: +Persians and Greeks and Romans and Turks have successively swept +over it; the descendants of those who at different times produced +its different books are scattered to the ends of the earth; but the +English translation has for long years been the head corner-stone +in homes innumerable as the sands of the sea in number.</p> + +<p>No upheavals of the earth, no fire, pestilence, famine, or +slaughter, can ever now blot it out from the ken of men.</p> + +<p>When all else is lost we may be sure that the old English +version of the Bible will survive. "Heaven and earth shall pass +away, but my words shall not pass away."</p> + +<p>Do not think it enough therefore, Antony, to hear it read badly +and without intelligence or emotion, in little detached snippets, +in church once a week.</p> + +<p>Read it for yourself, and learn to rejoice in the perfect +balance, harmony, and strength of its noble style.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter3"></a> + +<h2>3</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I could write you many letters like my last one about the Bible, +and perhaps some day I will go back to that wonderful Book and +write you some more letters about it; but now I will go on and tell +you about some of the great writers of English prose that came +after the translation of the Bible.</p> + +<p>Those translators were the great founders of the English +language, which is probably on the whole the most glorious organ of +human expression that the world has yet known.</p> + +<p>It blends the classic purity of Greek and the stately severity +of Latin with the sanguine passions and noble emotions of our +race.</p> + +<p>A whole life devoted to its study will not make you or me +perfectly familiar with all the splendid passages that have been +spoken and written in it. But I shall show in my letters, at least +some of the glorious utterances scattered around me here in my +library, so that you may recognise, as you ought, the pomp and +majesty of the speech of England.</p> + +<p>One of the great qualities that was always present in the +writings of Englishmen from the time of Elizabeth down to the +beginning of the nineteenth century was its restraint.</p> + +<p>Those men never became hysterical or lost their perfect +self-control.</p> + +<p>The deeper the emotion of the writer the more manifest became +the noble mastery of himself.</p> + +<p>When Sir Walter Ralegh, that glorious son of Devon, from which +county you and I, Antony, are proud to have sprung, lay in the +Tower of London awaiting his cowardly and shameful execution the +next day at the hands of that miserable James I., writing to his +beloved wife, with a piece of coal, because they even denied him +pen and ink, face to face with death, he yet observed a calm and +noble language that is truly magnifical—to use the old Bible +word.</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"For the rest," he wrote, "when you have travailed and wearied +your thoughts on all sorts of worldly cogitations, you shall sit +down by sorrow in the end. Teach your son also to serve and fear +God while he is young, that the fear of God may grow up in him. +Then will God be a Husband unto you and a Father unto him; a +Husband and a Father which can never be taken from you.</p> + +<p>"I cannot write much. God knows how hardly I stole this time +when all sleep; and it is time to separate my thoughts from the +world.</p> + +<p>"Beg my dead body, which living was denied you; and either lay +it at Sherburne, if the land continue, or in Exeter Church by my +father and mother. I can write no more. Time and Death call me +away.</p> + +<p>"The Everlasting, Infinite, Powerful and Inscrutable God, that +Almighty God that is goodness itself, mercy itself, the true life +and light, keep you and yours, and have mercy on me and teach me to +forgive my persecutors and false accusers, and send us to meet in +His Glorious Kingdom. My true wife, farewell. Bless my poor boy, +pray for me. My true God hold you both in His Arms.</p> + +<p>"Written with the dying hand of, sometime thy husband, but now +alas! overthrown, yours that was, but now not my own.</p> + +<p>"WALTER RALEGH."</p> +</div> + +<p>Sir Walter Ralegh, long before he came to his untimely end, had +written in his great <i>History of the World</i> a wonderful +passage about death; it is justly celebrated, and is familiar to +all men of letters throughout the world, so I will quote a portion +of it for you:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The Kings and Princes of the world have always laid before them +the actions, but not the ends, of those great ones which preceded +them. They are always transported with the glory of the one, but +they never mind the misery of the other, till they find the +experience in themselves.</p> + +<p>"They neglect the advice of God, while they enjoy life, or the +hope of it; but they follow the counsel of Death upon the first +approach. It is he that puts into man all the wisdom of the world, +without speaking a word; which God, with all the Words of His Law, +promises and threats, doth not infuse.</p> + +<p>"Death which hateth and destroyeth man is believed; God which +hath made him and loves him is always deferred. It is, therefore, +Death alone that can suddenly make man to know himself. He tells +the proud and insolent that they are but abjects, and humbles them +at the instant; makes them cry, complain and repent; yea, even to +hate their fore-passed happiness.</p> + +<p>"He takes account of the rich, and proves him a beggar; a naked +beggar which hath interest in nothing but in the gravel that fills +his mouth. He holds a glass before the eyes of the most beautiful +and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they +acknowledge it.</p> + +<p>"O eloquent, just and mighty Death! whom none could advise, thou +hast persuaded; what none have dared thou hast done; and whom all +the world have flattered, thou only hast cast out of the world and +despised; thou hast drawn together all the far-stretched greatness, +all the pride, cruelty and ambition of man, and covered it all over +with these two narrow words—HIC JACET."</p> +</div> + +<p>Sir Walter Ralegh was born only a few miles down below Ottery +St. Mary, in the same beautiful valley from which you and I, +Antony, and the poet have come. The peal of bells in the old church +tower at Otterton was given by him to the parish; and when "the lin +lan lone of evening-bells" floats across between the hills that +guard the river Otter, it should fall upon our ears as an echo of +the melody that strikes upon our hearts in Ralegh's words.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter4"></a> + +<h2>4</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>In looking through some very old Acts of Parliament not long ago +I was rather surprised to find that in those old times our +forefathers drew up their statutes in very stately English.</p> + +<p>In our own times Acts of Parliament frequently violate the +simplest rules of grammar, and are sometimes so unintelligible as +to need the labours of learned judges to find out what they +mean!</p> + +<p>But it seems that in the great days of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth +Acts of Parliament were often written in resounding periods of +solemn splendour of which the meaning is perfectly clear.</p> + +<p>In the twenty-fourth year of the great Henry, the Act denying +and forbidding any jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome in England was +passed.</p> + +<p>This Act, depriving the Pope of all power in England, marked a +turning-point in history.</p> + +<p>It is headed with these words:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>THE PRE-EMINENCE, POWER, AND AUTHORITY OF THE KING OF ENGLAND. +1532.</p> + +<p>"Where by divers sundry old authentic histories and chronicles +it is manifestly declared and expressed that this realm of England +is an Empire, and so hath been accepted in the world, governed by +one supreme head and King having the dignity and royal estate of +the imperial crown of the same, unto whom a body politic compact of +all sorts and degrees of people, divided in terms and by names of +spiritualty and temporalty being bounden and owen to bear next to +God a natural and humble obedience; he being also institute and +furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty God with +plenary whole and entire power pre-eminence authority prerogative +and jurisdiction to render and yield justice and final +determination to all manner of folk residents or subjects within +this his realm, in all causes matters debates contentions happening +to occur insurge or begin within the limits thereof without +restraint or provocation to any foreign princes or potentates of +the world ... all causes testamentary, causes of matrimony and +divorces, rights of tithes, oblations and obventions ... shall be +from hence-forth heard examined licenced clearly finally and +definitely adjudged and determined within the King's jurisdiction +and authority and not elsewhere."</p> +</div> + +<p>The words "Empire" and "Imperial" are in the present day +degraded from their ancient high estate by an appropriation of them +to advertise soap or cigarettes or what not; and we even are +confronted with the "Imperial" Cancer Research Fund, the money of +which has been employed in artificially inflicting cancer on +hundreds of thousands of living animals—a performance utterly +repugnant to a great many of the inhabitants in the "Empire"!</p> + +<p>But people indifferent to the dictates of mercy are not likely +to have much reverence for words, however august.</p> + +<p>Henry VIII., we may be sure, would never have allowed these +solemn words to be used by people with something to sell, or by +scientific disease-mongers.</p> + +<p>They were great people who could draw up their statutes in +splendid passages of sustained nobility.</p> + +<p>Let us, Antony, salute them across the centuries.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter5"></a> + +<h2>5</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>One of the great creators of English prose who lived at the same +time as Ralegh and Shakespeare was Richard Hooker, who is generally +known as "the Judicious Hooker."</p> + +<p>He was born in Devon, two years after Ralegh, in 1554.</p> + +<p>He must very early in life have made his mark as a man of +learning and piety, for when he was only thirty-one he was made +Master of the Temple. The controversies in which he there found +himself involved induced him to retire when he was only +thirty-seven into the country, for the purpose of writing his +famous books, <i>The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity</i>.</p> + +<p>It is the first great book on the English Church, and it is full +of magnificent prose. It was divided into eight parts; and in the +first one, before he had got far into it, he penned the exclamatory +description of law which will live as long as the +language:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the +world; all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least +as feeling her care, the greatest as not exempted from her power. +"</p> +</div> + +<p>And in the same first part will be found a passage on the Deity +which portrays faithfully for us the humble wisdom of both the man +and his age:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into +the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and joy +to make mention of His name; yet our soundest knowledge is to know +that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him; and our +safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we confess +without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His greatness +above our capacity to reach. He is above and we upon earth; +therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few."</p> +</div> + +<p>Shakespeare was born ten years later than Hooker, in 1564, and +his share in founding English prose as we know it is, of course, +not comparable with that of Hooker, for of Shakespeare's prose +there remains for us but little. Whenever he rose to eloquence he +clothed himself in verse as with an inevitable attribute, but on +the rare occasions when he condescended to step down from the great +line to "the other harmony of prose" he is as splendid as in all +else. In <i>Hamlet</i> we have this sudden passage:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I have of late, (but wherefore I know not), lost all my mirth, +foregone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily +with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me +a sterile promontory; this most excellent canopy the air, look you, +this brave o'erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with +golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to me, than a foul and +pestilent congregation of vapours.</p> + +<p>"What a piece of work is man! How noble in reason! how infinite +in faculty! in form and moving, how express and admirable! in +action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the +beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is +this quintessence of dust? "</p> +</div> + +<p>And the most beautiful letter in the world is that written by +Antonio to Bassanio in <i>The Merchant of Venice</i>. When it is +remembered that it was out of his friendship for Bassanio that +Antonio entered into his bond with Shylock, the supreme +exquisiteness of the few words from friend to friend render this +letter unsurpassable:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Sweet Bassanio, my ships have all miscarried, my creditors grow +cruel, my estate is very low, my bond to the Jew is forfeit, and +since, in paying it, it is impossible I should live, all debts are +cleared between you and me if I might see you at my death; +notwithstanding, use your pleasure; if your love do not persuade +you to come, let not my letter."</p> +</div> + +<p>Well did Shakespeare know that such a letter must make an +instant appeal to the sweet heart of Portia: "O love!" she cries, +"despatch all business, and be gone!"</p> + +<p>All great poets are masters of a splendid prose, and had +Shakespeare written some notable work of prose we may be sure it +would even have surpassed the noble utterances of all his wonderful +contemporaries.</p> + +<p>It has been said that no language in the world has yet ever +lasted in its integrity for over a thousand years. Perhaps printing +may confer a greater stability on present languages; but whenever +English is displaced, the sun of the most glorious of all days will +have set.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter6"></a> + +<h2>6</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I do not think that men of letters often search through the old +law reports for specimens of fine prose, but I believe that here +and there, in that generally barren field, a nugget of pure gold +may be discovered by an industrious student.</p> + +<p>Much noble prose delivered from the bench down the centuries has +been lost for ever, for the judges of England have often been +gentlemen of taste, scholarship, and eloquence. I have found one +very splendid passage that has somehow survived the wrecks of +nearly four hundred years.</p> + +<p>Lord Chief Justice Crewe, who became Chief Justice of England in +1624, delivered in the case of the Earl of Oxford the following +noble tribute to the great house of De Vere:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I heard a great peer of this realm, and learned, say, when he +lived, there was no king in Christendom had such a subject as +Oxford. He came in with the Conqueror, Earl of Guienne; shortly +after the Conquest made Great Chamberlain, above 400 years ago, by +Henry I., the Conqueror's son; confirmed by Henry II. This great +honour—this high and noble dignity—hath continued ever +since, in the remarkable surname De Vere, by so many ages, +descents, and generations, as no other kingdom can produce such a +peer in one and the selfsame name and title. I find in all this +time but two attainders of this noble family, and those in stormy +and tempestuous time, when the government was unsettled, and the +kingdom in competition. I have laboured to make a covenant with +myself, that affection may not press upon judgment, for I suppose +that there is no man that hath any apprehension of gentry or +nobleness, but his affection stands to the continuance of so noble +a name and fame, and would take hold of a twig or twine-thread to +uphold it. And yet Time hath his revolutions: there must be an end +to all temporal things, <i>finis rerum</i>,—and end of names +and dignities, and whatsoever is <i>terrene</i>; and why not of De +Vere? For where is De Bohun?—where is Mowbray?—where is +Mortimer? Nay, what is more and most of all, where is Plantagenet? +They are entombed in the urns and sepulchres of mortality. And yet, +let the name and dignity of De Vere stand so long as it pleases +God."</p> +</div> + +<p>And alas! we can now ask, Where is De Vere? This great Earldom +of Oxford was created in 1142, and has disappeared long ago in the +limbo of peerages said to be in abeyance.</p> + +<p>In these days, Antony, when peerages are bought by men +successful in trade and sold by men successful in intrigue, such +elevations in rank have ceased to be regarded as the necessary +concomitants of "great honour" and "high and noble dignity"; so +that it has long been more reputable in the House of Lords to be a +descendant than an ancestor. But among the older great families +there still remains a pride that has descended unsullied through +many generations, which serves as a fine deterrent from evil deeds, +and a constant incentive to honour—and in England the history +of great names can never be totally ignored, even though the +country may be ruled by persons who do not know who were their own +grandfathers.</p> + +<p>Nothing is more ridiculous and cheap than to sneer at honourable +descent from famous ancestors; it divertingly illustrates the fable +of the sour grapes.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter7"></a> + +<h2>7</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>You will have seen from the extracts I have already quoted to +you of the writers of the Elizabethan age that the style of all of +them possesses something large and resonant, something that may be +said to constitute the "grand style" in prose; and this quite +naturally without effort, and without the slightest touch of +affectation.</p> + +<p>A great writer who came immediately after the +Elizabethans—namely, Sir Thomas Browne, who lived from 1605 +to 1682—displays the development in his style of something +less simple and more precious than ruled in the former +generation.</p> + +<p>It is difficult to select any passage from his works where all +is so good. He was curious and exact in his choice of words and +commanded a wide vocabulary. There is deliberate ingenuity in the +framing of his sentences, which arrests attention and markedly +distinguishes his style. His <i>Urn Burial</i>, in spite of its +elaboration, reaches a grave and solemn splendour.</p> + +<p>The fifth chapter, which begins by speaking of the dead who have +"quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests," +rises to a very noble elevation as English prose.</p> + +<p>Here I quote one paragraph of it, characteristic of the +whole:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion +shares with memory a great part even of our living beings; we +slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest strokes of +affliction leave but short smart upon us. Sense endureth no +extremities, and sorrows destroy us or themselves. To weep into +stones are fables. Afflictions induce callosities; miseries are +slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no +unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetful +of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature, whereby we digest +the mixture of our few and evil days, and, our delivered senses not +relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows are not kept raw +by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity contented +their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their +souls,—a good way to continue their memories, while having +the advantage of plural successions they could not but act +something remarkable in such variety of beings, and, enjoying the +fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their +last durations. Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable +night of nothing, were content to recede into the common being, and +make one particle of the public soul of all things, which was no +more than to return into their unknown and divine original again. +Egyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in +sweet consistencies, to attend the return of their souls. But all +was vanity, feeding the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, +which Cambyses or Time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is +become merchandise. Mizraim cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for +balsams."</p> +</div> + +<p>Milton was a contemporary of Sir Thomas Browne, and, like all +great poets, was a master of resounding prose. All that he wrote, +both in verse and prose, is severely classic in its form. His +<i>Samson Agonistes</i> is perhaps the finest example of a play +written in English after the manner of the Greek dramas.</p> + +<p>Milton wrote <i>The Areopagitica</i> in defence of the liberty +of publishers and printers of books. And it stands for all time as +the first and greatest argument against interference with the +freedom of the press.</p> + +<p>The Areopagitæ were judges at Athens in its more +flourishing time, who sat on Mars Hill and made decrees and passed +sentences which were delivered in public and commanded universal +respect.</p> + +<p>I will quote one of the finest passages in this great and +splendid utterance:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I deny not but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church +and Commonwealth to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves +as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do +sharpest justice on them as malefactors: for books are not +absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to +be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do +preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that +living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as +vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragons' teeth; and being +sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.</p> + +<p>"And yet on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good +almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a +reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book +kills reason itself; kills the Image of God as it were in the eye. +Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the +precious life-blood of a master-spirit; embalmed and treasured up +on purpose to a life beyond life.</p> + +<p>"'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there +is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the +loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare +the worse.</p> + +<p>"We should be wary, therefore, what persecutions we raise +against the living labours of public men; how we spill that +seasoned life of man preserved and stored up in books; since we see +a kind of homicide may be thus committed, sometimes a martyrdom, +and, if it extend to the whole impression, a kind of massacre, +whereof the execution ends not in the slaying of an elemental life, +but strikes at that ethereal and fifth essence, the breath of +reason itself; slays an immortality rather than a life."</p> +</div> + +<p>This is a fine defence of the inviolability of a good and proper +book.</p> + +<p>A bad book will generally die of itself, but there is something +horribly malignant about a wicked book, as it must always be worse +than a wicked man, for a man can repent, but a book cannot.</p> + +<p>It is the men of letters who keep alive the books of the great +from generation to generation, and they are never likely to +preserve a wicked book from oblivion. Ultimately such go to light +fires and encompass groceries.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter8"></a> + +<h2>8</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Milton, of whom I wrote in my last letter, was five years older +than Jeremy Taylor, of whom I am going to write to-day. The +latter's writings differ very much from Milton's, although they +were contemporaries for the whole of the former's life.</p> + +<p>From the grave and august periods of Milton to the sweet beauty +of Jeremy Taylor is as the passing from out the austere halls of +Justice to lovely fields full of flowers.</p> + +<p>Your and my great kinsman, Coleridge, pronounced Jeremy Taylor +to be the most eloquent of all divines; and Coleridge was a great +critic.</p> + +<p>Indeed, there seems to dwell permanently in Jeremy Taylor's mind +a compelling sweetness and serenity.</p> + +<p>His parables, though sometimes perhaps almost of set purpose +fanciful, are always full of beauty.</p> + +<p>How can anyone withhold sympathy and affection from the writer +of such a passage as this:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"But as, when the sun approaches towards the gates of the +morning, he first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the +spirits of darkness, and gives light to a cock, and calls up the +lark to matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and +peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like +those which decked the brows of Moses when he was forced to wear a +veil because himself had seen the face of God; and still, while a +man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he shows a fair +face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a +cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers, and +sets quickly, so is a man's reason and his life."</p> +</div> + +<p>Again:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many +delicious accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty +conversation of those dear pledges; their childishness, their +stammering, their little angers, their innocence, their +imperfections, their necessities, are so many little emanations of +joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and society; +but he that loves not his wife and children, feeds a lioness at +home, and broods a nest of sorrows; and blessing itself cannot make +him happy; so that all the commandments of God enjoining a man to +'love his wife' are nothing but so many necessities and capacities +of joy. 'She that is loved, is safe; and he that loves, is joyful,' +Love is a union of all things excellent; it contains in it +proportion and satisfaction, and rest and confidence."</p> +</div> + +<p>Again:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"So have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring +upwards, singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb +above the clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud +sighings of an eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and +inconstant, descending more at every breath of the tempest, than it +could recover by the liberation and frequent weighing of his wings; +till the little creature was forced to sit down and pant, and stay +till the storm was over; and then it made a prosperous flight, and +did rise and sing, as if it had learned music and motion from an +angel, as he passed sometimes through the air, about his ministries +here below; so is the prayer of a good man."</p> +</div> + +<p>Again:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and +they have taken all from me; what now? Let me look about me. They +have left me the sun and moon, fire and water, a loving wife, and +many friends to pity me, and some to relieve me, and I can still +discourse; and unless I list, they have not taken away my merry +countenance and my cheerful spirit, and a good conscience; they +still have left me the Providence of God, and all the promises of +the Gospel, and my religion, and my hopes of heaven, and my charity +to them too; and still I sleep and digest, I eat and drink, I read +and meditate; I can walk in my neighbor's pleasant fields, and see +the varieties of natural beauties, and delight in all that in which +God delights, that is, in virtue and wisdom, in the whole creation, +and in God Himself."</p> +</div> + +<p>Here, Antony, is true wisdom. True, indeed, is it that no one +can take away from you your merry countenance, your cheerful +spirit, and your good conscience unless you choose; keep all three, +Antony, throughout your life, and you will be happy yourself and +make everyone about you happy, and that is to make a little heaven +of your earthly home.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter9"></a> + +<h2>9</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Some day, no doubt, you will read some of the celebrated diaries +that have come down to us. The best known of such books is +<i>Pepys's Diary</i> which was written in a kind of shorthand, and +so lay undeciphered from his death in 1703 for more than a century. +One of its merits is its absolute self-revelation; for Pepys +exposes to us his character without a shadow of reserve in all its +vanity; and the other is the faithful picture it gives us of the +time of the Restoration.</p> + +<p>But, though less popular, <i>Evelyn's Diary</i> is, I think, in +many ways superior to that of Pepys.<a name='FNanchor_1_2'></a><a +href='#Footnote_1_2'><sup>[1]</sup></a></p> + +<p>There is a quiet, unostentatious dignity about Evelyn which is +altogether absent in the garrulous Pepys, and, indeed I find +something very beautiful and touching in the grief Evelyn pours +forth upon the death of his little son of five years +old:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The day before he died," writes Evelyn, "he call'd to me and in +a more serious manner than usual, told me that for all I loved him +so dearly I should give my house, land, and all my fine things, to +his Brother Jack, he should have none of them; and next morning +when he found himself ill, and that I persuaded him to keepe his +hands in bed, he demanded whether he might pray to God with his +hands un-joyn'd; and a little after, whilst in great agonie, +whether he should not offend God by using His holy name so often +calling for ease. What shall I say of his frequent pathetical +ejaculations utter'd of himselfe: Sweete Jesus save me, deliver me, +pardon my sinns, let Thine angels receive me!</p> + +<p>"So early knowledge, so much piety and perfection! But thus God +having dress'd up a Saint for himselfe, would not longer permit him +with us, unworthy of ye future fruites of this incomparable +hopefull blossome. Such a child I never saw: for such a child I +blesse God in whose bosome he is! May I and mine become as this +little child, who now follows the child Jesus that Lamb of God in a +white robe whithersoever he goes; even so, Lord Jesus, <i>fiat +voluntas tua!</i> Thou gavest him to us, Thou hast taken him from +us, blessed be ye name of ye Lord! That I had anything acceptable +to Thee was from Thy grace alone, since from me he had nothing but +sin, but that Thou hast pardon'd! Blessed be my God for ever, Amen! +I caused his body to be coffin'd in lead, and reposited on the 30th +at 8 o'clock that night in the church at Deptford, accompanied with +divers of my relations and neighbours among whom I distributed +rings with this motto: <i>Dominus abstulit</i>; intending, God +willing, to have him transported with my owne body to be interr'd +in our dormitory in Wotton Church, in my dear native county of +Surrey, and to lay my bones and mingle my dust with my fathers, if +God be gracious to me and make me fit for Him as this blessed child +was. The Lord Jesus sanctify this and all my other afflictions, +Amen! Here ends the joy of my life, and for which I go even +mourning to my grave."</p> +</div> + +<p>This great love and reverence for little children is peculiarly +in accord with Christianity, for we should remember that it was the +WISE men, who, when they had journeyed far across the world to +salute the King of kings, laid their offerings down at the feet of +a little child.</p> + +<p>Is there not something to reverence in faith and resignation +such as are here expressed by Evelyn? Were not these men of old +with their unshakable faith and simple piety better and happier +than those who in these days know so much more and believe so much +less?</p> + +<p>We, no doubt, have the knowledge, but perhaps they had the +wisdom.</p> + +<p>I think, Antony, that in the history of England we shall have +difficulty in finding any of our greatest men whose hearts and +minds were not filled with a reverence for God and a faith in +something beyond the blind forces which are all that Science has to +offer mankind as a guide of life.</p> + +<p>All who have acted most nobly from the days of Ralegh and Sir +Thomas More, down to the days of Gordon of Khartoum, and down again +to our own days when the youth of England upheld the invincible +valour, self-sacrifice, and glory of their race in the greatest of +all wars,—all have been filled with the love of God and have +found therein a perfect serenity in the face of death, and that +peace which passeth all understanding.</p> + +<p>The character of our race rests indubitably upon that faith, and +he who lifts his voice, or directs his pen, to tear it down, had +better never have been born.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_2'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_2'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>Another diary that you should read by and by is that of Henry +Grabb Robinson.</p> +</div> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter10"></a> + +<h2>10</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>In these letters I am never going to quote to you anything that +does not seem to me to rise to a level of merit well above ordinary +proper prose. There are many writers whose general correctness and +excellence is not to be questioned or denied whom I shall not +select in these letters for your particular admiration.</p> + +<p>By and by, when your own love of literature impels you to +excursions in all directions, you may perhaps come to differ from +my judgment, for everyone's taste must vary a little from that of +others.</p> + +<p>English prose in its excellence follows the proportions +manifested by the contours of the elevation of the world's +land.</p> + +<p>Vast tracts lie very near the sea-level, of such are the +interminable outpourings of newspapers and novels and school books. +And, as each ascent from the sea-level is reached, less and less +land attains to it, and when the snow-line is approached only a +very small proportion indeed of the land aspires so high.</p> + +<p>So among writers, those who climb to the snow-line are a slender +band compared to all the inhabitants of the lower slopes and +plains.</p> + +<p>In these letters I do not intend to mistake a pedlar for a +mountaineer, nor a hearthstone for a granite peak. Time slowly +buries deep in oblivion the writings of the industrious and the +dull.</p> + +<p>Born fifteen years later than Jeremy Taylor, of whom I wrote in +a former letter, John Bunyan in 1660, being a Baptist, suffered the +persecution then the lot of all dissenters, and was cast into +Bedford gaol, where he lay for conscience' sake for twelve years. +"As I walked through the wilderness of this world," said he, "I +lighted on a certain place where was a den, and laid me down in +that place to sleep; and as I slept I dreamed a dream"; and the +dream which he dreamed has passed into all lands, and has been +translated into all languages, and has taken its place with the +Bible and with the <i>Imitation of Christ</i> as a guide of +life.</p> + +<p>The force of simplicity finds here its most complete expression; +the story wells from the man's heart, whence come all great +things:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Then said the Interpreter to Christian, 'Hast thou considered +all these things?'</p> + +<p>"<i>Christian.</i> 'Yes, and they put me in hope and fear.'</p> + +<p>"<i>Interpreter.</i> 'Well, keep all things so in thy mind that +they may be as a goad in thy sides, to prick thee forward in the +way thou must go.'</p> + +<p>"Then Christian began to gird up his loins, and to address +himself to his journey.</p> + +<p>"Then said the Interpreter, 'The Comforter be always with thee, +good Christian, to guide thee in the way that leads to the +city.'</p> + +<p>"So Christian went on his way.</p> + +<p>"Now I saw in my dream that the highway up which Christian had +to go was fenced on either side with a wall, and that wall was +called Salvation. Up this way, therefore, did burdened Christian +run, but not without great difficulty, because of the load on his +back. He ran thus till he came at a place somewhat ascending, and +upon that place stood a cross, and a little below in the bottom a +sepulchre.</p> + +<p>"So I saw in my dream that just as Christian came up with the +cross, his burden loosed from off his shoulders, and fell from off +his back, and began to tumble, and so continued to do till it came +to the mouth of the sepulchre, where it fell in, and I saw it no +more.</p> + +<p>"Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry +heart, 'He hath given me rest by His sorrow, and life by His +death.'</p> + +<p>"Then he stood awhile to look and wonder, for it was very +surprising to him that the sight of the cross should thus ease him +of his burden.</p> + +<p>"He looked, therefore, and looked again, even till the springs +that were in his head sent the waters down his cheeks."</p> +</div> + +<p>Bunyan died in 1688, and Dr. Johnson was born in 1709. Many +years, therefore, elapsed between the time when they each displayed +their greatest powers.</p> + +<p>The interval was occupied by many reputable worldly-wise +writers, but I do not myself find, between these two masters of +English prose, anyone who wrote passages of such great lustre that +I can quote them for your admiration.</p> + +<p>You will have noticed, Antony, that all the writers whom I have +quoted, and who reached the true nobility of speech necessary to +command our tribute of unstinted praise, have been men of manifest +piety and reverence.</p> + +<p>And you will find it difficult to discover really great and +eloquent prose from the pen of any man whose heart is not filled +with a simple faith in the goodness of God.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter11"></a> + +<h2>11</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I have come now to Dr. Johnson, and it is almost a test of a +true man of letters that he should love him.</p> + +<p>He was rugged and prejudiced, but magnanimous; impatient with +the presumptuous, tender to modest ignorance, proudly independent +of the patronage of the great, and was often doing deeds of noble +self-sacrifice by stealth.</p> + +<p>Through long years of hard, unremitting toil for his daily bread +he lived bravely and sturdily, with no extraneous help but his +stout oak stick—an unconquerable man.</p> + +<p>His prose rises on occasion to a measured and stately grandeur +above the reach of any of his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>It was not often that he unveiled to the public gaze the +beatings of his own noble heart, or invited the world to +contemplate the depression and suffering amid which his unending +labours were accomplished.</p> + +<p>The concluding page of the preface to the first edition of the +great <i>Dictionary</i> is, therefore, the more precious and +moving. I know not why this majestic utterance came to be deleted +in later editions; certainly it sanctifies, and as it were crowns +with a crown of sorrow, the greatest work of his life; and with +reverent sympathy and unstinted admiration I reproduce it +here:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot ultimately +be defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to +degeneration: we have long preserved our constitution, let us make +some struggles for our language.</p> + +<p>"In hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature +forbids to be immortal, I have devoted this book, the labour of +years, to the honour of my country, that we may no longer yield the +palm of philology to the nations of the continent. The chief glory +of every people arises from its authors; whether I shall add +anything by my own writings to the reputation of English +literature, must be left to time: much of my life has been lost +under the pressure of disease; much has been trifled away; and much +has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing +over me; but I shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if +by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to +the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; +if my labours afford light to the repositories of science, and add +celebrity to Bacon, to Hooker, to Milton, and to Boyle.</p> + +<p>"When I am animated by this wish, I look with pleasure on my +book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with the +spirit of a man that has endeavoured well. That it will immediately +become popular I have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders +and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity +was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and +harden ignorance in contempt; but useful diligence will at last +prevail, and there never can be wanting some, who distinguish +desert, who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue can +ever be perfect, since while it is hastening to publication, some +words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot +be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life +would not be sufficient; that he whose design includes whatever +language can express must often speak of what he does not +understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to +the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which +Scaliger compares to the labours of the anvil and the mine; that +what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not +always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise +vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual +eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer +shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need for that +which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will +come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow.</p> + +<p>"In this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let +it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no +book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world +is little solicitous to know whence proceeded the faults of that +which it condemns, yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it that +the <i>English Dictionary</i> was written with little assistance of +the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the +soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic +bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and +in sorrow; and it may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to +observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, I have +only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto +completed. If the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed +and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of +successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated +knowledge and co-operating diligence of the Italian academicians +did not secure them from the censure of Beni; if the embodied +critics of France, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, +were obliged to change its economy, and give their second editions +another form, I may surely be contented without the praise of +perfection which, if I could obtain, in this gloom of solitude what +would it avail me?</p> + +<p>"I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to +please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are +empty sounds; I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, +having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise."</p> +</div> + +<p>This seems to me to be the noblest passage that Johnson ever +wrote.</p> + +<p>Almost all the most magnificent utterances of man are tinged +with sadness. In this they possess a quality that is almost +inseparable from grandeur wherever displayed. No man of sensibility +and taste feels it possible to make jokes himself, or to tolerate +them from others when in the presence of the Falls of Niagara, or a +tempest at sea, or when he views from a peak in the Andes—as +I have done—the sun descent into the Pacific. The greatest +pictures painted by man touch the heart rather than elate it; and +genius finds its highest expression not in comedy, but in +tragedy.</p> + +<p>And this need cause us no surprise when we consider how much of +the great work in letters and in art is directly due to the writer +possessing in full measure the gift of sympathy.</p> + +<p>People with this gift, even if they are without the faculty of +expression, are beloved by those about them, which must bring them +happiness.</p> + +<p>Till he was over fifty Dr. Johnson's life was a weary struggle +with poverty. He wrote <i>Rasselas</i> under the pressure of an +urgent need of money to send to his dying mother. His wife died +some few years earlier. I have always thought that the sad +reflections he put into the mouth of an old philosopher towards the +end of the story were indeed the true expressions of his own tired +heart:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Praise," said the sage with a sigh, "is to an old man an empty +sound. I have neither mother to be delighted with the reputation of +her son, nor wife to partake the honours of her husband.</p> + +<p>"I have outlived my friends and my rivals. Nothing is now of +much importance; for I cannot extend my interest beyond myself. +Youth is delighted with applause, because it is considered as the +earnest of some future good, and because the prospect of life is +far extended; but to me, who am now declining to decrepitude, there +is little to be feared from the malevolence of men, and yet less to +be hoped from their affection or esteem. Something they may take +away, but they can give me nothing. Riches would now be useless, +and high employment would be pain. My retrospect of life recalls to +my view many opportunities of good neglected, much time squandered +upon trifles, and more lost in idleness and vacancy. I leave many +great designs unattempted, and many great attempts unfinished.</p> + +<p>"My mind is burdened with no heavy crime, and therefore I +compose myself to tranquillity; endeavour to abstract my thoughts +from hopes and cares, which, though reason knows them to be vain, +still try to keep their old possession of the heart; expect, with +serene humility, that hour which nature cannot long delay; and hope +to possess, in a better state, that happiness which here I could +not find, and that virtue which here I have not attained."</p> +</div> + +<p>From the results of <i>Rasselas</i> he sent his mother money, +but she had expired before it reached her.</p> + +<p>Down to the time of Dr. Johnson it was the custom for writers of +books and poems to seek and enjoy the patronage of some great +nobleman, to whom they generally dedicated their works.</p> + +<p>And in pursuance of that custom Dr. Johnson, when he first +issued the plan or prospectus of his great <i>Dictionary</i> in +1747, addressed it to Lord Chesterfield, who was regarded as the +most brilliant and cultivated nobleman of his time. Lord +Chesterfield, however, took no notice of the matter till the +<i>Dictionary</i> was on the point of coming out in 1755, and then +wrote some flippant remarks about it in a publication called <i>The +World</i>.</p> + +<p>At this Dr. Johnson wrote a letter to the condescending peer, +which became celebrated throughout England and practically put an +end to writers seeking the patronage of the great.</p> + +<p>This wonderful letter concludes thus:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited in your +outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time I +have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is +useless to complain, and have brought it, at last, to the verge of +publication, without one act of assistance, one word of +encouragement, or one smile of favour. Such treatment I did not +expect, for I never had a patron before.</p> + +<p>"The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, and +found him a native of the rocks.</p> + +<p>"Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man +struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, +encumbers him with help? The notice which you have been pleased to +take of my labours, had it been early, had been kind, but it has +been delayed till I am indifferent and cannot enjoy it; till I am +solitary, and cannot impart it; till I am known, and do not want +it. I hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess +obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling +that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron which +Providence has enabled me to do for myself.</p> + +<p>"Having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to +any favourer of learning, I shall not be disappointed though I +should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for I have been +wakened from that dream of hope, in which I once boasted myself +with so much exultation, my lord,—your lordship's most +humble, most obedient servant. SAM. JOHNSON."</p> +</div> + +<p>Boswell's life of Dr. Johnson when you come to read it, as you +will be sure to do by and by, has left a living picture of this +great and good man for all future generations to enjoy, extenuating +nothing to his quaintness, directness, and proneness to +contradiction for its own sake, yet unveiling everywhere the deep +piety and fine magnanimity of his character. He suffered much, but +never complained, and certainly must be numbered among the great +men of letters who have found true consolation and support in every +circumstance of life in an earnest and fervent faith.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter12"></a> + +<h2>12</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Edmund Burke was born in 1730, and therefore was twenty-one +years younger than Dr. Johnson, and he survived him thirteen years. +He was a great prose writer, and although some of his speeches in +Parliament that have come down to us possess every quality of solid +argument and lofty eloquence, there must have been something +lacking in his delivery and voice, for he so frequently failed to +rivet the attention of the House, and so often addressed a steadily +dwindling audience, that the wits christened him "the dinner +bell."</p> + +<p>All men of letters, however, acknowledge Burke as a true master +of a very great style.</p> + +<p>We see in him the first signs of a breaking away from the +universal restraint of the older writers, and of the surging up of +expressed emotion.</p> + +<p>His splendid tribute to Marie Antoinette and his panegyric of +the lost age of chivalry are familiar to all students of English +prose.</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"It is now (1791) sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the +Queen of France, then the Dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely +never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more +delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and +cheering the elevated sphere she just began to move in glittering +like the morning star, full of life, and splendour, and joy. Oh! +what a revolution! and what a heart must I have, to contemplate +without emotion that elevation and that fall! Little did I dream +when she added titles of veneration to those of enthusiastic, +distant, respectful love, that she should ever be obliged to carry +the sharp antidote against disgrace concealed in that bosom; little +did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fallen +upon her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honour +and of cavaliers. I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped +from their scabbards to avenge even a look that threatened her with +insult. But the age of chivalry has gone. That of sophisters, +economists, and calculators has succeeded; and the glory of Europe +is extinguished for ever.</p> + +<p>"Never, never more, shall we behold that generous loyalty to sex +and rank, that proud submission, that dignified obedience, that +subordination of the heart, which kept alive, even in servitude +itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom. The unbought grace of +life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment +and heroic enterprise is gone!</p> + +<p>"It is gone, that sensibility of principle, that chastity of +honour, which felt a stain like a wound; which inspired courage +while it mitigated ferocity; which ennobled whatever it touched, +and under which vice itself lost half its evil, by losing all its +grossness."</p> +</div> + +<p>This is a splendid and world-famous passage well worth +committing to memory.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter13"></a> + +<h2>13</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Edward Gibbon, who wrote the <i>Decline and Fall of the Roman +Empire</i>, belonged to the later half of the eighteenth century, +and was a contemporary of Dr. Johnson and Burke. He finished his +great history three years after Dr. Johnson's death. It is a +monumental work, and will live as long as the English language. It +is one of the books which every cultivated gentleman should read. +The style is stately and sonorous, and the industry and erudition +involved in its production must have been immense.</p> + +<p>Although it never sinks below a noble elevation of style, it +nevertheless displays no uplifting flights of eloquence or +declamation, and to me, and probably to you, Antony, the most +moving passages in Gibbon's writings are those that describe with +unaffected emotion the moment of the first resolve to compose the +great history and the night when he wrote the last line of it. On +page 129 of his memoirs<a name='FNanchor_1_3'></a><a href= +'#Footnote_1_3'><sup>[1]</sup></a> he wrote:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"It was at Rome on the 15th of October, 1764, as I sat musing +amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the bare-footed fryars were +singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing +the decline and fall of the city first started to my mind."</p> +</div> + +<p>Thus did he resolve to devote himself to the tremendous task, +and at Lausanne twenty-three years later it was at last fulfilled. +He recorded the event in a few pregnant sentences that are +strangely memorable:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"It was on the day, or rather night, of the 27th of June, 1787, +between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines +of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down +my pen I took several turns in a berceau, or covered walk of +acacias, which commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and +the mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the +silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all +nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy +on the recovery of my freedom, and perhaps, the establishment of my +fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was +spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting +leave of an old and agreeable companion, and that, whatsoever might +be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be +short and precarious."</p> +</div> + +<p>In June, 1888, just one hundred and one years after that pen had +been finally laid aside, I searched in Lausanne for the +summer-house and covered walk, and could find no very authentic +record of its site. I brought home a flower from the garden where +it seemed probable the summer-house had once existed, behind the +modern hotel built there in the intervening time, and laid it +between the leaves of my Gibbon.</p> + +<p>The pressed flower was still there when I last took the book +down from my shelves.</p> + +<p>I hope my successors will preserve the little token of my +reverence.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_3'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_3'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>First edition, 1794.</p> +</div> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter14"></a> + +<h2>14</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Some of the most eloquent orators in the world have been +Irishmen, and among them Henry Grattan was supreme.</p> + +<p>The Irish Parliament in the later half of the eighteenth century +frequently sat spell-bound under the magic of his voice.</p> + +<p>In 1782, at the age of thirty-two, he achieved by his amazing +eloquence a great National Revolution in Ireland. But eighteen +years later all that he had fought for and achieved was lost in the +Act of Union. In these days I suppose few will be found to defend +the means whereby that Act was passed; but the public assertions +that the people of Ireland were in favour of it wrung from Grattan +the following cry of indignation and wrath:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"To affirm that the judgment of a nation is erroneous may +mortify, but to affirm that her judgment <i>against</i> is +<i>for</i>; to assert that she has said <i>ay</i> when she has +pronounced <i>no</i>; to affect to refer a great question to the +people; finding the sense of the people, like that of the +parliament, against the question, to force the question; to affirm +the sense of the people to be <i>for</i> the question; to affirm +that the question is persisted in, because the sense of the people +is for it; to make the falsification of the country's sentiments +the foundation of her ruin, and the ground of the Union; to affirm +that her parliament, constitution, liberty, honour, property, are +taken away by her own authority,—there is, in such artifice, +an effrontery, a hardihood, an insensibility, that can best be +answered by sensations of astonishment and disgust, excited on this +occasion by the British minister, whether he speaks in gross and +total ignorance of the truth, or in shameless and supreme contempt +for it.</p> + +<p>"The constitution may be <i>for a time</i> so lost; the +character of the country cannot be so lost. The ministers of the +Crown will, or may, perhaps, at length find that it is not so easy +to put down for ever an ancient and respectable nation, by +abilities, however great, and by power and by corruption, however +irresistible; liberty may repair her golden beams, and with +redoubled heat animate the country; the cry of loyalty will not +long continue against the principles of liberty; loyalty is a +noble, a judicious, and a capacious principle; but in these +countries loyalty, distinct from liberty, is corruption, not +loyalty.</p> + +<p>"The cry of the connexion will not, in the end, avail against +the principles of liberty. Connexion is a wise and a profound +policy; but connexion without an Irish Parliament is connexion +without its own principle, without analogy of condition; without +the pride of honour that should attend it; is innovation, is peril, +is subjugation—not connexion.</p> + +<p>"The cry of the connexion will not, in the end, avail against +the principle of liberty.</p> + +<p>"Identification is a solid and imperial maxim, necessary for the +preservation of freedom, necessary for that of empire; but, without +union of hearts—with a separate government, and without a +separate parliament, identification is extinction, is dishonour, is +conquest—not identification.</p> + +<p>"Yet I do not give up the country—I see her in a swoon, +but she is not dead—though in her tomb she lies helpless and +motionless, still there is on her lips a spirit of life, and on her +cheeks a glow of beauty—</p> +</div> + +<div class="poem"><span style='margin-left: 3em;'>"Thou art not +conquered; beauty's ensign yet</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 3em;'>Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy +cheeks,</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 3em;'>And death's pale flag is not +advanced there."</span><br> +</div> + +<br> + + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"While a plank of the vessel sticks together, I will not leave +her. Let the courtier present his flimsy sail, and carry the light +bark of his faith, with every new breath of wind—I will +remain anchored here—with fidelity to the fortunes of my +country, faithful to her freedom, faithful to her fall."</p> +</div> + +<p>Of another character, but not less admirable than his eloquence +in the Senate, was Grattan's achievement with the pen. His +description of the great Lord Chatham lives as one of the most +noble panegyrics—it not the most noble—in the world. No +writer, before or since, has offered anyone such splendid homage as +this—that he never sunk "to the vulgar level of the +great."</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The Secretary stood alone. Modern degeneracy had not reached +him. Original and unaccommodating, the features of his character +had the hardihood of antiquity, his august mind overawed majesty, +and one of his sovereigns thought royalty so impaired in his +presence that he conspired to remove him, in order to be relieved +from his superiority. No state chicanery, no narrow systems of +vicious politics, no idle contest for ministerial victories sunk +him to the vulgar level of the great; but, overbearing, persuasive, +and impracticable, his object was England,—his ambition was +fame; without dividing, he destroyed party; without corrupting, he +made a venal age unanimous; France sunk beneath him; with one hand +he smote the House of Bourbon, and wielded in the other the +democracy of England. The sight of his mind was infinite, and his +schemes were to affect, not England, not the present age only, but +Europe and posterity. Wonderful were the means by which these +schemes were accomplished, always seasonable, always adequate, the +suggestions of an understanding animated by ardour, and enlightened +by prophecy.</p> + +<p>"The ordinary feelings which make life amiable and +indolent—those sensations which soften, and allure, and +vulgarise—were unknown to him; no domestic difficulties, no +domestic weakness reached him; but, aloof from the sordid +occurrences of life, and unsullied by its intercourse, he came +occasionally into our system to counsel and decide.</p> + +<p>"A character so exalted, so strenuous, so various, so +authoritative, astonished a corrupt age, and the Treasury trembled +at the name of Pitt through all her classes of venality. Corruption +imagined, indeed, that she had found defects in this statesman, and +talked much of the inconsistency of his glory, and much of the ruin +of his victories—but the history of his country, and the +calamities of the enemy, answered and refuted her.</p> + +<p>"Nor were his political abilities his only talents; his +eloquence was an era in the senate, peculiar and spontaneous, +familiarly expressing gigantic sentiments and instinctive +wisdom—not like the torrent of Demosthenes, or the splendid +conflagration of Tully; it resembled sometimes the thunder, and +sometimes the music of the spheres. Like Murray, he did not conduct +the understanding through the painful subtilty of argumentation; +nor was he, like Townshend, for ever on the rack of exertion, but +rather lightened upon the subject, and reached the point by the +flashings of his mind, which, like those of his eye, were felt, but +could not be followed.</p> + +<p>"Yet he was not always correct or polished; on the contrary, he +was sometimes ungrammatical, negligent, and unenforcing, for he +concealed his art, and was superior to the knack of oratory. Upon +many occasions he abated the vigour of his eloquence, but even +then, like the spinning of a cannon ball, he was still alive with +fatal, unapproachable activity.</p> + +<p>"Upon the whole, there was in this man something that could +create, subvert, or reform; an understanding, a spirit, and an +eloquence to summon mankind to society, or to break the bonds of +slavery asunder, and rule the wildness of free minds with unbounded +authority; something that could establish or overwhelm empire, and +strike a blow in the world that should resound through its +history."</p> +</div> + +<p>Grattan died in 1820, and twenty years later, in 1844, another +great English writer, Lord Macaulay, wrote a world-famous passage +upon the great Lord Chatham in the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i>:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Chatham sleeps near the northern door of the church, in a spot +which has ever since been appropriated to statesmen, as the other +end of the same transept has long been to poets. Mansfield rests +there, and the second William Pitt, and Fox, and Grattan, and +Canning, and Wilberforce. In no other cemetery do so many great +citizens lie within so narrow a space. High over those venerable +graves towers the stately monument of Chatham, and, from above, his +effigy, graven by a cunning hand, seems still, with eagle face and +outstretched arm, to bid England be of good cheer, and to hurl +defiance at her foes.</p> + +<p>"The generation which reared that memorial of him has +disappeared. The time has come when the rash and indiscriminate +judgments which his contemporaries passed on his character may be +calmly revised by history. And history, while, for the warning of +vehement, high, and daring natures, she notes his many errors, will +yet deliberately pronounce that, among the eminent men whose bones +lie near his, scarcely one has left a more stainless and none a +more splendid name."</p> +</div> + +<p>It is a great race, Antony, that can produce a man of such a +character as Chatham, and also writers who can dedicate to him such +superb tributes as these.</p> + +<p>Macaulay's prose has been much criticised as being too near to +easy journalism to be classed among the great classic passages of +English; but this much must be recognised to his great +credit—he never wrote an obscure sentence or an ambiguous +phrase, and his works may be searched in vain for a foreign idiom +or even a foreign word. He possessed an infallible memory, absolute +perspicuity, and a scholarly taste. He detested oppression wherever +enforced, and never exercised his great powers in the defence of +mean politics or unworthy practices.</p> + +<p>Such a writer to-day would blow a wholesome wind across the +tainted pools of political intrigue.</p> + +<p>We can salute him, Antony, as a fine, manly, clean writer, who +was an honour to letters.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter15"></a> + +<h2>15</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Born in the same year as was Grattan, namely, in 1750, Lord +Erskine adorned the profession of the Bar with an eloquence that +never exhibited the slight tendency to be ponderous which sometimes +was displayed by his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>Grace and refinement shine out in every one of his great +speeches.</p> + +<p>He was a young scion of the great house of Buchan, being the +third son of the tenth Earl. After being in the Navy for four years +he left it for the Army, and six years later he went to Trinity +College, Cambridge, and took his degree; thence he came to the Bar +in 1778, and at once displayed the most conspicuous ability as an +advocate.</p> + +<p>He appeared for Horne Tooke in a six-day trial for high treason, +which ended in an acquittal.</p> + +<p>In 1806 he became Lord Chancellor and a peer.</p> + +<p>I quote an indignant warning to the aristocracy of England which +flamed forth in one of his great speeches:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Let the aristocracy of England, which trembles so much for +itself, take heed to its own security; let the nobles of England, +if they mean to preserve that pre-eminence which, in some shape or +other, must exist in every social community, take care to support +it by aiming at that which is creative, and alone creative, of real +superiority. Instead of matching themselves to supply wealth, to be +again idly squandered in debauching excesses, or to round the +quarters of a family shield; instead of continuing their names and +honours in cold and alienated embraces, amidst the enervating +rounds of shallow dissipation, let them live as their fathers of +old lived before them; let them marry as affection and prudence +lead the way, and, in the ardours of mutual love, and in the +simplicities of rural life, let them lay the foundation of a +vigorous race of men, firm in their bodies, and moral from early +habits; and, instead of wasting their fortunes and their strength +in the tasteless circles of debauchery, let them light up their +magnificent and hospital halls to the gentry and peasantry of the +country, extending the consolations of wealth and influence to the +poor. Let them but do this,—and instead of those dangerous +and distracted divisions between the different ranks of life, and +those jealousies of the multitude so often blindly painted as big +with destruction, we should see our country as one large and +harmonious family, which can never be accomplished amidst vice and +corruption, by wars and treaties, by informations, <i>ex +officio</i> for libels, or by any of the tricks and artifices of +the State."</p> +</div> + +<p>Mr. Erskine was entitled, as the son of the tenth Earl of +Buchan, to speak such words of warning and exhortation to the +aristocracy of England to which he belonged, and the lapse of a +century and a quarter has not rendered the exhortation vain, though +it may be hoped that the condemnatory clauses of the speech would +not at the present time be so well justified as when they were +delivered.</p> + +<p>Great names carry great obligations, and, for the most part, +those who bear them to-day recognise those great obligations and +endeavour without ostentation to fulfil them.</p> + +<p>The silly fribbles who posture before the photographic cameras +for penny newspapers do not represent the real aristocracy of +England.</p> + +<p>We must not, Antony, mistake a cockatoo for an eagle.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter16"></a> + +<h2>16</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I shall not expect you in your reading often to penetrate into +the innumerable dusty octavos that contain sermons. The stoutest +heart may fail, without blame, before the flat-footed pedestrianism +of these platitudinous volumes. But there does occasionally arise +above the dull horizon a star whose brilliance is the more +conspicuous for the surrounding gloom.</p> + +<p>In 1796, Coleridge, in a letter<a name='FNanchor_1_4'></a><a +href='#Footnote_1_4'><sup>[1]</sup></a> to a Mr. Flower, who was a +publisher at Cambridge, wrote:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I hope Robert Hall is well. Why is he idle? I mean towards the +public. We want such men to rescue this <i>enlightened age</i> from +general irreligion."</p> +</div> + +<p>I suppose Robert Hall is a name known to but few in these days, +but at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the +nineteenth centuries his fame was great and deserved.</p> + +<p>As a divine, dowered with the gift of inspired eloquence, +Coleridge estimated his powers as second only to those of Jeremy +Taylor. When Napoleon was at the supreme height of his conquests, +and England alone of European countries still stood erect, +uninvaded and undismayed, a company of soldiers attended Robert +Hall's place of worship on the eve of their departure to Spain. The +occasion was memorable and moving, and the preacher's splendid +periods deserve to be preserved from oblivion:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"By a series of criminal enterprises, by the successes of guilty +ambition, the liberties of Europe have been gradually extinguished; +the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and the free towns of +Germany, has completed that catastrophe; and we are the only people +in the Eastern Hemisphere who are in possession of equal laws and a +free constitution. Freedom, driven from every spot on the +Continent, has sought an asylum in a country which she always chose +for her favorite abode; but she is pursued even here, and +threatened with destruction. The inundations of lawless power, +after covering the whole earth, threaten to follow us here, and we +are most exactly, most critically placed in the only aperture where +it can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopylæ of the +universe.</p> + +<p>"As far as the interests of freedom are concerned, the most +important by far of sublunary interests, you, my countrymen, stand +in the capacity of the federal representatives of the human race; +for with you it is to determine (under God) in what condition the +latest posterity shall be born; their fortunes are entrusted to +your care, and on your conduct at this moment depends the colour +and complexion of their destiny. If liberty, after being +extinguished on the Continent, is suffered to expire here, whence +is it ever to emerge in the midst of that thick night that will +invest it?</p> + +<p>"It remains with you, then, to decide whether that freedom, at +whose voice the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep of ages to +run a career of virtuous emulation in everything great and good; +the freedom which dispelled the mists of superstition and invited +the nations to behold their God; whose magic touch kindled the rays +of genius, the enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of eloquence; +the freedom which poured into our lap opulence and arts, and +embellished life with innumerable institutions and improvements +till it became a theatre of wonders; it is for you to decide +whether this freedom shall yet survive, or be covered with a +funeral pall, and wrapt in eternal gloom.</p> + +<p>"It is not necessary to await your determination. In the +solicitude you feel to approve yourselves worthy of such a trust, +every thought of what is afflicting in warfare, every apprehension +of danger, must vanish, and you are impatient to mingle in the +battle of the civilised world.</p> + +<p>"Go then, ye defenders of your country, accompanied with every +auspicious omen; advance with alacrity into the field, where God +Himself musters the hosts of war. Religion is too much interested +in your success not to lend you her aid; she will shed over this +enterprise her selectest influences. While you are engaged in the +field many will repair to the closet, many to the sanctuary; the +faithful of every name will employ that prayer which has power with +God; the feeble hands which are unequal to any other weapon will +grasp the sword of the Spirit; from myriads of humble, contrite +hearts, the voice of intercession, supplication, and weeping, will +mingle in its ascent to heaven with the shouts of battle and the +shock of arms.</p> + +<p>"While you have everything to fear from the success of the +enemy, you have every means of preventing that success, so that it +is next to impossible for victory not to crown your exertions. The +extent of your resources, under God, is equal to the justice of +your cause.</p> + +<p>"But should Providence determine otherwise; should you fall in +this struggle, should the nation fall, you will have the +satisfaction (the purest allotted to man) of having performed your +part; your names will be enrolled with the most illustrious dead, +while posterity to the end of time, as often as they revolve the +events of this period (and they will incessantly revolve them) will +turn to you a reverential eye while they mourn over the freedom +which is entombed in your sepulchre.</p> + +<p>"I cannot but imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and +patriots, of every age and country, are bending from their elevated +seats to witness this contest, as if they were incapable, till it +be brought to a favourable issue, of enjoying their eternal +repose.</p> + +<p>"Enjoy that repose, illustrious immortals! Your mantle fell when +you ascended, and thousands inflamed with your spirit, and +impatient to tread in your steps, are ready 'to swear by Him that +sitteth upon the throne and liveth for ever and ever,' they will +protect freedom in her last asylums, and never desert that cause +which you sustained by your labours and cemented with your +blood.</p> + +<p>"And Thou, Sole Ruler among the children of men, to whom the +shields of the earth belong, 'gird on Thy sword, Thou most Mighty'; +go forth with our hosts in the day of battle! Impart, in addition +to their hereditary valour, that confidence of success which +springs from Thy Presence!</p> + +<p>"Pour into their hearts the spirit of departed heroes! Inspire +them with Thine own, and, while led by Thine Hand and fighting +under Thy banners, open Thou their eyes to behold in every valley +and in every plain, what the prophet beheld by the same +illuminations—chariots of fire, and horses of fire!</p> + +<p>"Then shall the strong man be as tow, and the maker of it as a +spark; and they shall both burn together, and none shall quench +them."</p> +</div> + +<p>We, who have just emerged, shattered indeed and reeling, from +another and yet more awful combat for freedom, can the better +extend our sympathy to those forefathers of ours situated in like +case, and can imagine with what beating hearts they must have +listened to so magnificent a call to arms as this; commingling +prayer, exhortation, and benediction.</p> + +<p>Napoleon, after all, waged his wars with us according to the +laws of nations, the rules of civilised peoples, and the dictates +of decent humanity. But never since Christianity has been +established has one man committed so dread and awful an +accumulation of public iniquities as stand for ever against the +base and cowardly name of William Hohenzollern, Emperor in Germany. +He spat upon the ancient chivalries of battle; he prostituted the +decent amenities of diplomacy; he polluted with infamy and murder +the splendid comradeship of the sea.</p> + +<p>When the captain of one of his submarines placed upon his deck +the captured crew of an unarmed merchant vessel which he had sunk, +destroyed their boats, took from them their life-belts, carried +them miles away from any floating wreckage, and then projected them +into the sea to drown, this unspeakable monarch approved the awful +deed and decorated the ruffian for his infamous cruelty.</p> + +<p>When gallant Fryatt, fulfilling every duty a captain owes to his +unarmed crew and helpless passengers, turned the bows of his +peaceful packet-boat upon the submarine which was being used to +murder them all in cold blood, he fell into this Kaiser's hands, +and the coward wreaked his vengeance upon nobility that was beyond +his comprehension and valour that rendered him insignificant.</p> + +<p>Of these horrible acts the proofs stand unchallenged, and for +such deeds as these the world has cast him out: thrown him down +from one of the greatest thrones in history; and left him in the +place to which, white with terror, he ignominiously fled, stripped +of all his power and splendour, his crowns, his crosses, and his +diadems.</p> + +<p>Idle is it for this man and his apologists to plead any +extenuation or excuse.</p> + +<p>It was his custom in the plenitude of his power to declare +himself answerable for his actions only to God and himself. Then +let the judgment of God be upon him. When we recall the awful and +unnumbered horrors with which he covered Europe, I doubt whether +all history can furnish a parallel to him.</p> + +<p>By his authority helpless Belgium was invaded, treaties +treacherously broken, and her people slaughtered. By his authority +her priests were murdered in cold blood and her nuns violated by +his vile soldiery. By his authority poison gases were first +projected with low cunning upon brave and honourable adversaries. +By his authority hospital ships at sea were sent to the bottom.</p> + +<p>But time and the might of free nations have, after fearful +sufferings, dissipated his invincible armies, and they have +shrivelled before the wrath of mankind. The whole world rose up in +its offended majesty and tore from him that shining armour of which +it was his custom to boast; and, with the brand of Cain upon him, +he now lies obscurely in Holland, bereft of all the trappings of +his sinister power.</p> + +<p>There were times in the past when justice would have avenged +such awful crimes as lie at this man's door with the torture of his +living body and the desecration of his lifeless remains, but his +conquerors disdained to debase themselves by imitating his own +abominations; and they left him to afford a spectacle to posterity +as the supreme example of human ignominy!</p> + +<p>When you are old, Antony, and this greatest of all wars has +become part of England's history, you will be proud and happy to +remember that your own father, at the first call for volunteers, +laid down the pencil and scale of his peaceful profession, went out +to fight for his country in the trenches in France, was wounded +almost to death, and was saved only by the skill and devotion of +one of the greatest surgeons of the day.<a name= +'FNanchor_2_5'></a><a href='#Footnote_2_5'><sup>[2]</sup></a> All +the best blood of England, Scotland, and Ireland went marching +together to defend the freedom of the world, and upon their hearts +were engraven the glorious words:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war +and my fingers to fight."</p> +</div> + +<p>May such a call never come to our beloved country again! But if +it does, Antony, I know where you will be found without need of +exhortations from me.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_4'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_4'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>Now in my library.—S.C.</p> +</div> + +<a name='Footnote_2_5'></a><a href='#FNanchor_2_5'>[2]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>Sir Arbuthnot Lane.</p> +</div> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter17"></a> + +<h2>17</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Grattan, of whom I have already written, had in the first Lord +Plunket a successor and a compatriot very little his inferior in +the gift of oratory.</p> + +<p>He was born in 1764, and was therefore some fourteen years +younger than Grattan, whom he survived by thirty-four years.</p> + +<p>Like Grattan, he displayed a burning patriotism and, like him, +fiercely opposed the Act of Union.</p> + +<p>Few orators have displayed greater powers of clear reason and +convincing logic than Plunket. It may be admitted that he seldom +rose to great heights of eloquence, but tradition credits his +delivery with a quality of dignity amounting almost to majesty. The +gift of oratory consists in how things are said as much as in what +things are said, and the voice, gesture, and manner of Plunket were +commanding and magnificent.</p> + +<p>When Attorney-General in Ireland, in 1823, in a speech +prosecuting the leaders of the riot known as "the Bottle Riot," +Plunket uttered the following fine tribute to the character of +William the Third:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Perhaps, my lords, there is not to be found in the annals of +history a character more truly great than that of William the +Third. Perhaps no person has ever appeared on the theatre of the +world who has conferred more essential or more lasting benefits on +mankind; on these countries, certainly none. When I look at the +abstract merits of his character, I contemplate him with admiration +and reverence. Lord of a petty principality—destitute of all +resources but those with which nature had endowed +him—regarded with jealousy and envy by those whose battles he +fought; thwarted in all his counsels; embarrassed in all his +movements; deserted in his most critical enterprises—he +continued to mould all those discordant materials, to govern all +these warring interests, and merely by the force of his genius, the +ascendancy of his integrity, and the immovable firmness and +constancy of his nature, to combine them into an indissoluble +alliance against the schemes of despotism and universal domination +of the most powerful monarch in Europe, seconded by the ablest +generals, at the head of the bravest and best disciplined armies in +the world, and wielding, without check or control, the unlimited +resources of his empire. He was not a consummate general; military +men will point out his errors; in that respect Fortune did not +favour him, save by throwing the lustre of adversity over all his +virtues. He sustained defeat after defeat, but always rose +<i>adversa rerum immersabilis unda</i>. Looking merely at his +shining qualities and achievements, I admire him as I do a Scipio, +a Regulus, a Fabius; a model of tranquil courage, undeviating +probity, and armed with a resoluteness and constancy in the cause +of truth and freedom, which rendered him superior to the accidents +that control the fate of ordinary men.</p> + +<p>"But this is not all—I feel that to him, under God, I am, +at this moment, indebted for the enjoyment of the rights which I +possess as a subject of these free countries; to him I owe the +blessings of civil and religious liberty, and I venerate his memory +with a fervour of devotion suited to his illustrious qualities and +to his godlike acts."</p> +</div> + +<p>This is not so magnificent a panegyric as that of Grattan in his +written tribute to Chatham, but, enhanced by the gesture and voice +of the great orator, it was reputed to have left a deep impression +upon all who heard it.</p> + +<p>But few speeches, however eloquent, survive, while the printed +work of the writer may long endure; but to the orator is given what +the writer never experiences—the fierce enjoyment, amounting +almost to rapture, of holding an audience entranced under the spell +of the spoken cadences; and English, Antony, has a splendour all +its own when uttered by a master of its august music.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter18"></a> + +<h2>18</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>To-day I will write about Robert Southey, and, as he and +Coleridge married sisters, you may claim a distant relationship +with him. His personal character was beautiful and unselfish, and +his dwelling at Keswick was the home that for years sheltered +Coleridge's children.</p> + +<p>With hardly an exception the poets of England have had an easy +and royal mastery of prose; and in the case of Robert Southey there +are some, and they are not the worst critics, who anticipate that +his prose will long outlast his poetry in the Temple of Fame.</p> + +<p>We may suppose that to a man whose whole private life was +stainlessly dedicated to a noble rectitude of conduct, and whose +every act was sternly subjected to the judgment of an unbending +conscience, some circumstances of the private life of Nelson must +have been distasteful and open to censure; but no such reservations +dimmed the splendour of Southey's tribute to the public hero who +gave his life in the act of establishing, beyond reach of dispute +or cavil, the throne of England as Queen of the Sea.</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The death of Nelson was felt in England as something more than +a public calamity; men started at the intelligence, and turned +pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a dear friend. An object +of our admiration and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, was +suddenly taken from us, and it seemed as if we had never, till +then, known how deeply we loved and reverenced him.</p> + +<p>"What the country had lost in its great naval hero—the +greatest of our own, and of all former times, was scarcely taken +into the account of grief. So perfectly, indeed, had he performed +his part, that the maritime war, after the battle of Trafalgar, was +considered at an end; the fleets of the enemy were not merely +defeated, but destroyed; new navies must be built, and a new race +of seamen reared for them, before the possibility of their invading +our shores could again be contemplated.</p> + +<p>"It was not, therefore, from any selfish reflection upon the +magnitude of our loss that we mourned for him; the general sorrow +was of a higher character. The people of England grieved that +funeral ceremonies, public monuments and posthumous rewards, were +all which they could now bestow upon him whom the king, the +legislature, and the nation, would alike have delighted to honour; +whom every tongue would have blessed; whose presence in every +village through which he might have passed would have wakened the +church bells, have given schoolboys a holiday, have drawn children +from their sports to gaze upon him, and 'old men from the chimney +corner' to look upon Nelson ere they died.</p> + +<p>"The victory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, with the usual +forms of rejoicing, but they were without joy; for such already was +the glory of the British Navy through Nelson's surpassing genius, +that it scarcely seemed to receive any addition from the most +signal victory that ever was achieved upon the sea; and the +destruction of this mighty fleet, by which all the maritime schemes +of France were totally frustrated, hardly appeared to add to our +security or strength, for while Nelson was living to watch the +combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt ourselves as secure as +now, when they were no longer in existence.</p> + +<p>"There was reason to suppose from the appearances upon opening +the body, that in the course of nature he might have attained, like +his father, to a good old age. Yet he cannot be said to have fallen +prematurely whose work was done; nor ought he to be lamented, who +died so full of honours, and at the height of human fame. The most +triumphant death is that of a martyr; the most awful, that of the +martyred patriot; the most splendid, that of the hero in the hour +of victory; and if the chariot and the horses of fire had been +vouchsafed for Nelson's translation, he could scarcely have +departed in a brighter blaze of glory.</p> + +<p>"He has left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, but a +name and an example which are at this hour inspiring hundreds of +the youth of England; a name which is our pride, and an example +which will continue to be our shield and our strength."</p> +</div> + +<p>Nelson left England the Queen of the Sea, and the great war with +Germany has failed to displace her from that splendid throne. For +the plain fact of history remains that, after the battle of +Jutland, the German High Seas Fleet never ventured out of port +again till the end of the war; and when it did emerge from its +ignominious security, it sailed to captivity at Scapa Flow, there +ultimately to repose on the bottom of the sea.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter19"></a> + +<h2>19</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>There are four very celebrated lines written by Walter Savage +Landor which you may have heard quoted; they were written towards +the close of his life, and are certainly distinguished and +memorable:—</p> + +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>"I strove with none, for none was +worth my strife;</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 2em;'>Nature I loved, and next to Nature +Art;</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>I warmed both hands before the fire +of life;</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 2em;'>It sinks, and I am ready to +depart."</span><br> + + +<p>It does not detract from the merit of the lines that as a fact +Landor was of a fiery disposition, and strove a great deal with +many adversaries, often of his own creation, throughout his long +life<a name='FNanchor_1_6'></a><a href= +'#Footnote_1_6'><sup>[1]</sup></a>; and although he was of a fierce +and combative nature he displayed in his writings a classical +restraint and tender beauty hardly achieved by his +contemporaries.</p> + +<p>In the form of an imaginary conversation between Æsop and +Rhodope, Landor makes the latter describe how her father, in the +famine, unbeknown to her, starved that she might have plenty, and, +when all was gone, took her to the market-place to sell her that +she might live. There is an exquisite delicacy in this dialogue +that places it among the wonders of literature:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"<i>Rhodope</i>. Never shall I forget the morning when my +father, sitting in the coolest part of the house, exchanged his +last measure of grain for a chlamys of scarlet cloth, fringed with +silver. He watched the merchant out of the door, and then looked +wistfully into the cornchest. I, who thought there was something +worth seeing, looked in also, and finding it empty, expressed my +disappointment, not thinking, however, about the corn. A faint and +transient smile came over his countenance at the sight of mine. He +unfolded the chlamys, stretched it out with both hands before me, +and then cast it over my shoulders. I looked down on the glittering +fringe and screamed with joy. He then went out; and I know not what +flowers he gathered, but he gathered many; and some he placed in my +bosom, and some in my hair. But I told him with captious pride, +first that I could arrange them better, and again that I would have +only the white. However, when he had selected all the white and I +had placed a few of them according to my fancy, I told him (rising +in my slipper) he might crown me with the remainder.</p> + +<p>"The splendour of my apparel gave me a sensation of authority. +Soon as the flowers had taken their station on my head, I expressed +a dignified satisfaction at the taste displayed by my father, just +as if I could have seen how they appeared! But he knew that there +was at least as much pleasure as pride in it, and perhaps we +divided the latter (alas! not both) pretty equally.</p> + +<p>"He now took me into the market-place, where a concourse of +people were waiting for the purchase of slaves. Merchants came and +looked at me; some commending, others disparaging; but all agreeing +that I was slender and delicate, that I could not live long, and +that I should give much trouble. Many would have bought the +chlamys, but there was something less saleable in the child and +flowers.</p> + +<p>"<i>Æsop</i>. Had thy features been coarse and thy voice +rustic, they would all have patted thy cheeks and found no fault in +thee.</p> + +<p>"<i>Rhodope</i>. As it was, every one had bought exactly such +another in time past, and been a loser by it. At these speeches, I +perceived the flowers tremble slightly on my bosom, from my +father's agitation. Although he scoffed at them, knowing my +healthiness, he was troubled internally, and said many short +prayers, not very unlike imprecations, turning his head aside. +Proud was I, prouder than ever, when at last several talents were +offered for me, and by the very man who in the beginning had +undervalued me most, and prophesied the worst of me. My father +scowled at him and refused the money. I thought he was playing a +game, and began to wonder what it could be, since I had never seen +it played before. Then I fancied it might be some celebration +because plenty had returned to the city, insomuch that my father +had bartered the last of the corn he hoarded.</p> + +<p>"I grew more and more delighted at the sport. But soon there +advanced an elderly man, who said gravely, 'Thou hast stolen this +child; her vesture alone is worth a hundred drachmas. Carry her +home again to her parents, and do it directly, or Nemesis and the +Eumenides will overtake thee.' Knowing the estimation in which my +father had always been holden by his fellow-citizens, I laughed +again and pinched his ear. He, although naturally choleric, burst +forth into no resentment at these reproaches, but said calmly, 'I +think I know thee by name, O guest! Surely thou art Xanthus, the +Samian. Deliver this child from famine.'</p> + +<p>"Again I laughed aloud and heartily, and thinking it was now +part of the game, I held out both my arms, and protruded my whole +body toward the stranger. He would not receive me from my father's +neck, but he asked me with benignity and solicitude if I was +hungry; at which I laughed again, and more than ever; for it was +early in the morning, soon after the first meal, and my father had +nourished me most carefully and plentifully in all the days of the +famine. But Xanthus, waiting for no answer, took out of a sack, +which one of his slaves carried at his side, a cake of wheaten +bread and a piece of honeycomb, and gave them to me. I held the +honeycomb to my father's mouth, thinking it the most of a dainty. +He dashed it to the ground, but seizing the bread he began to +devour it ferociously. This also I thought was in the play, and I +clapped my hands at his distortions. But Xanthus looked at him like +one afraid, and smote the cake from him, crying aloud, 'Name the +price,' My father now placed me in his arms, naming a price much +below what the other had offered, saying, 'The gods are ever with +thee, O Xanthus! therefore to thee do I consign my child.'</p> + +<p>"But while Xanthus was counting out the silver my father seized +the cake again, which the slave had taken up and was about to +replace in the wallet. His hunger was exasperated by the taste, and +the delay. Suddenly there arose much tumult. Turning round in the +old woman's bosom who had received me from Xanthus, I saw my +beloved father struggling on the ground, livid and speechless. The +more violent my cries, the more rapidly they hurried me away; and +many were soon between us.</p> + +<p>"Little was I suspicious that he had suffered the pangs of +famine long before: alas! and he had suffered them for me. Do I +weep while I am telling you they ended? I could not have closed his +eyes; I was too young; but I might have received his last breath, +the only comfort of an orphan's bosom. Do you now think him +blameable, O Æsop?"</p> + +<p>"<i>Æsop</i>. It was sublime humanity; it was forbearance +and self-denial which even the immortal gods have never shown +us."</p> +</div> + +<p>The <i>Dream of Petrarca</i> is, I think, more famous but not +more beautiful than this narrative of Rhodope; it lacks the deep +human tragedy and infinite charity of the winsome child, and the +self-contained father silently perishing of hunger for her; but if +the <i>Æsop and Rhodope</i> had never been written, the +<i>Dream of Petrarca</i> would secure its author a place among the +immortals:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"... Wearied with the length of my walk over the mountains, and +finding a soft molehill, covered with grey moss, by the wayside, I +laid my head upon it and slept. I cannot tell how long it was +before a species of dream or vision came over me.</p> + +<p>"Two beautiful youths appeared beside me; each was winged; but +the wings were hanging down and seemed ill-adapted to flight. One +of them, whose voice was the softest I ever heard, looking at me +frequently, said to the other, 'He is under my guardianship for the +present; do not awaken him with that feather.' Methought, on +hearing the whisper, I saw something like the feather on an arrow; +and then the arrow itself; the whole of it, even to the point, +although he carried it in such a manner that it was difficult at +first to discover more than a palm's length of it; the rest of the +shaft (and the whole of the barb) was behind his ankles.</p> + +<p>"'This feather never awakens anyone,' replied he, rather +petulantly, 'but it brings more of confident security, and more of +cherished dreams, than you, without me, are capable of +imparting.'</p> + +<p>"'Be it so!' answered the gentler; 'none is less inclined to +quarrel or dispute than am I. Many whom you have wounded grievously +call upon me for succour; but so little am I disposed to thwart +you, it is seldom I venture to do more for them than to whisper a +few words of comfort in passing. How many reproaches on these +occasions have been cast upon me for indifference and infidelity! +Nearly as many, and nearly in the same terms as upon you.'</p> + +<p>"'Odd enough that we, O Sleep! should be thought so alike!' said +Love contemptuously. 'Yonder is he who bears a nearer resemblance +to you; the dullest have observed it.' I fancied I turned my eyes +to where he was pointing, and saw at a distance the figure he +designated. Meanwhile the contention went on uninterruptedly. Sleep +was slow in asserting his power or his benefits. Love recapitulated +them; but only that he might assert his own above them.</p> + +<p>"Suddenly he called upon me to decide, and to choose my patron. +Under the influence, first of the one, then of the other, I sprang +from repose to rapture, I alighted from rapture on repose, and knew +not which was sweetest. Love was very angry with me, and declared +he would cross me through the whole of my existence. Whatever I +might on other occasions have thought of his veracity, I now felt +too surely that he would keep his word.</p> + +<p>"At last, before the close of the altercation, the third Genius +had advanced, and stood near us. I cannot tell you how I knew him, +but I knew him to be the Genius of Death. Breathless as I was at +beholding him, I soon became familiar with his features. First they +seemed only calm; presently they grew contemplative; and lastly +beautiful; those of the Graces themselves are less regular, less +harmonious, less composed.</p> + +<p>"Love glanced at him unsteadily, with a countenance in which +there was somewhat of anxiety, somewhat of disdain; and cried, 'Go +away! go away! nothing that thou touchest, lives!' 'Say rather, +child!' replied the advancing form, and advancing grew loftier and +statelier, 'say rather that nothing of beautiful or of glorious +lives its own true life until my wing hath passed over it.'</p> + +<p>"Love pouted, and rumpled and bent down with his forefinger the +stiff short feathers on his arrow-head, but replied not. Although +he frowned worse than ever, and at me, I dreaded him less and less, +and scarcely looked towards him. The milder and calmer Genius, the +third, in proportion as I took courage to contemplate him, regarded +me with more and more complacency. He held neither flower nor arrow +as the others did, but throwing back the clusters of dark curls +that overshadowed his countenance, he presented to me his hand, +openly and benignly. I shrank on looking at him so near, and yet I +sighed to love him. He smiled, not without an expression of pity, +at perceiving my diffidence, my timidity; for I remembered how soft +was the hand of Sleep, how warm and entrancing was Love's.</p> + +<p>"By degrees I became ashamed of my ingratitude, and turning my +face away, I held out my arms, and I felt my neck within his; the +coolness of freshest morning breathed around; the heavens seemed to +open above me, while the beautiful cheek of my deliverer rested on +my head. I would now have looked for those others, but knowing my +intention by my gesture, he said consolatorily, 'Sleep is on his +way to the Earth, where many are calling him; but it is not to +these he hastens, for every call only makes him fly further off. +Sedately and gravely as he looks, he is nearly as capricious and +volatile as the more arrogant and ferocious one.'</p> + +<p>"'And Love!' said I, 'whither is he departed? If not too late, I +would propitiate and appease him.'</p> + +<p>"'He who cannot follow me; he who cannot overtake and pass me,' +said the Genius, 'is unworthy of the name, the most glorious in +earth or heaven. Look up! Love is yonder, and ready to receive +thee.'</p> + +<p>"I looked: the earth was under me: I saw only the clear blue +sky, and something brighter above it."</p> +</div> + +<p>There is something most rare and refined and precious in this +vision, told as it is with a sweet serenity. But it does not touch +the heart like the <i>Æsop and Rhodope</i>.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_6'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_6'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>Born 1775, died 1864.</p> +</div> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter20"></a> + +<h2>20</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I now come to speak of one whose fame was familiar to me as a +boy—the great Lord Brougham.—for he lived till 1868. I +remember that he was vehemently praised and blamed as a politician, +but with such matters others have dealt; in this letter, Antony, we +will concern ourselves with the glory of English prose as it poured +from Lord Brougham in two of his greatest speeches.</p> + +<p>He was an orator whose voice was uplifted throughout a long and +strenuous life in condemnation of all the brutalities and +oppression of his time, and to whose eloquence the triumphant cause +of freedom stands for ever in deep obligation.</p> + +<p>His great speech on Law Reform in the House of Commons, in 1828, +took six hours to deliver, and the concluding passage, which +mounted to a plane of lofty declamation, displayed no sign of +exhaustion, and was listened to with strained attention by an +absorbed and crowded audience:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The course is clear before us; the race is glorious to run. You +have the power of sending your name down through all times, +illustrated by deeds of higher fame, and more useful import, than +ever were done within these walls.</p> + +<p>"You saw the greatest warrior of the age—conqueror of +Italy—humbler of Germany—terror of the North—saw +him account all his matchless victories poor, compared with the +triumph you are now in a condition to win—saw him contemn the +fickleness of fortune, while, in despite of her, he could pronounce +his memorable boast, 'I shall go down to posterity with the Code in +my hand!'</p> + +<p>"You have vanquished him in the field; strive now to rival him +in the sacred arts of peace! Outstrip him as a lawgiver, whom in +arms you overcame! The lustre of the Regency will be eclipsed by +the more solid and enduring splendour of the Reign. The praise +which false courtiers feigned for our Edwards and Harrys, the +Justinians of their day, will be the just tribute of the wise and +the good to that monarch under whose sway so mighty an undertaking +shall be accomplished. Of a truth, the holders of sceptres are most +chiefly to be envied for that they bestow the power of thus +conquering, and ruling thus.</p> + +<p>"It was the boast of Augustus—it formed part of the glare +in which the perfidies of his earlier years were lost,—that +he found Rome of brick, and left it of marble; a praise not +unworthy a great prince, and to which the present reign also has +its claims. But how much nobler will be the sovereign's boast when +he shall have it to say, that he found law dear, and left it cheap; +found it a sealed book—left it a living letter; found it the +patrimony of the rich—left it the inheritance of the poor; +found it the two-edged sword of craft and oppression—left it +the staff of honesty and the shield of innocence!</p> + +<p>"To me, much reflecting on these things, it has always seemed a +worthier honour to be the instrument of making you bestir +yourselves in this high matter, than to enjoy all that office can +bestow—office, of which the patronage would be an irksome +encumbrance, the emoluments superfluous to one content with the +rest of his industrious fellow-citizens that his own hands minister +to his wants; and as for the power supposed to follow it—I +have lived near half a century, and I have learned that power and +place may be severed.</p> + +<p>"But one power I do prize; that of being the advocate of my +countrymen here, and their fellow-labourers elsewhere, in those +things which concern the best interests of mankind. That power, I +know full well, no government can give—no change take +away!"</p> +</div> + +<p>His speech on negro slavery made a deep impression upon the +country, and rose towards its termination, gradually, but with +ever-ascending periods, to a close of absolute majesty:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I regard the freedom of the negro as accomplished and sure. +Why? Because it is his right—because he has shown himself fit +for it; because a pretext, or a shadow of a pretext, can no longer +be devised for withholding that right from its possessor. I know +that all men at this day take a part in the question, and they will +no longer bear to be imposed upon, now they are well informed. My +reliance is firm and unflinching upon the great change which I have +witnessed—the education of the people, unfettered by party or +by sect—witnessed from the beginning of its progress, I may +say from the hour of its birth! Yes! It was not for a humble man +like me to assist at royal births with the illustrious Prince who +condescended to grace the pageant of this opening session, or the +great captain and statesman in whose presence I am now proud to +speak. But with that illustrious Prince, and with the father of the +Queen, I assisted at that other birth, more conspicuous still. With +them, and with the head of the House of Russell, incomparably more +illustrious in my eyes, I watched over its cradle—I marked +its growth—I rejoiced in its strength—I witnessed its +maturity; I have been spared to see it ascend the very height of +supreme power; directing the councils of state; accelerating every +great improvement; uniting itself with every good work; propping +all useful institutions; extirpating abuses in all our +institutions; passing the bounds of our European dominion, and in +the New World, as in the Old, proclaiming that freedom is the +birthright of man—that distinction of colour gives no title +to oppression—that the chains now loosened must be struck +off, and even the marks they have left effaced—proclaiming +this by the same eternal law of our nature which makes nations the +masters of their own destiny, and which in Europe has caused every +tyrant's throne to quake!</p> + +<p>"But they need feel no alarm at the progress of light who defend +a limited monarchy and support popular institutions—who place +their chiefest pride not in ruling over slaves, be they white or be +they black, not in protecting the oppressor, but in wearing a +constitutional crown, in holding the sword of justice with the hand +of mercy, in being the first citizen of a country whose air is too +pure for slavery to breathe, and on whose shores, if the captive's +foot but touch, his fetters of themselves fall off. To the +resistless progress of this great principle I look with a +confidence which nothing can shake; it makes all improvement +certain; it makes all change safe which it produces; for none can +be brought about unless it has been prepared in a cautious and +salutary spirit.</p> + +<p>"So now the fulness of time is come for at length discharging +our duty to the African captive. I have demonstrated to you that +everything is ordered—every previous step taken—all +safe, by experience shown to be safe, for the long-desired +consummation. The time has come, the trial has been made, the hour +is striking; you have no longer a pretext for hesitation, or +faltering, or delay. The slave has shown, by four years' blameless +behaviour, and devotion to the pursuits of peaceful industry, that +he is as fit for his freedom as any English peasant, ay, or any +lord whom I now address.</p> + +<p>"I demand his rights; I demand his liberty without stint. In the +name of justice and of law—in the name of reason—in the +name of God, who has given you no right to work injustice; I demand +that your brother be no longer trampled upon as your slave! I make +my appeal to the Commons, who represent the free people of England; +and I require at their hands the performance of that condition for +which they paid so enormous a price—that condition which all +their constituents are in breathless anxiety to see fulfilled! I +appeal to this House. Hereditary judges of the first tribunal in +the world—to you I appeal for justice. Patrons of all the +arts that humanise mankind—under your protection I place +humanity herself! To the merciful Sovereign of a free people I call +aloud for mercy to the hundreds of thousands for whom half a +million of her Christian sisters have cried aloud—I ask that +their cry may not have risen in vain. But first I turn my eye to +the throne of all justice, and devoutly humbling myself before Him +who is of purer eyes than to behold such vast iniquities, I implore +that the curse hovering over the head of the unjust and the +oppressor be averted from us—that your hearts may be turned +to mercy—and that over all the earth His will may at length +be done!"</p> +</div> + +<p>This is nobly to use noble gifts; it is difficult to think ill +of a man who can carry oratory for a glorious object to such +heights of splendour. It may seem a duty to some to darken his +character with detraction, but his inspiring words remain supreme +and unsullied and will still live when such faults as may be truly +laid to his charge are long forgotten. To fight for a great cause, +Antony, is rightly to use great powers, and this is what Lord +Brougham did with all his might.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter21"></a> + +<h2>21</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>In the great emprise of war it must often happen that the most +awful scenes of manifested human power, and the most godlike deeds +of human glory, are lost to the contemporary world, and utterly +unknown to succeeding generations, because they were witnessed by +no man with the gift of expression who could record for after time, +in adequate language, the majestic spectacle.</p> + +<p>In the great war against Germany no great writer has yet +appeared who was personally in touch as a living witness of the +countless deeds of glorious valour and acts of heroic endurance +that were everywhere displayed upon that immense far-stretched +front.</p> + +<p>But in the wars of former times, a whole battle could be +witnessed from its beginning to its end by a single commander, and +no scenes in human life could be more terrible and soul-stirring +than the awful ebb and flow of a great combat in which the victory +of armies and the fate of nations hung in the balance.</p> + +<p>The battle of Albuera in the Peninsular War might easily at this +date have long been forgotten had not the pen of Sir William Napier +been as puissant as his sword. The battle had raged for hours, and +the British were well-nigh overwhelmed; the Colonel, twenty +officers, and over four hundred men out of five hundred and seventy +had fallen in the 57th alone; not a third were left standing in the +other regiments that had been closely engaged throughout the day. +Then Cole was ordered up with his fourth division as a last hope, +and this is how Sir William Napier records their +advance:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Such a gallant line, issuing from the midst of the smoke and +rapidly separating itself from the confused and broken multitude, +startled the enemy's masses, then augmenting and pressing onwards +as to an assured victory; they wavered, hesitated, and vomiting +forth a storm of fire hastily endeavoured to enlarge their front, +while a fearful discharge of grape from all their artillery +whistled through the British ranks ... the English battalions, +struck by the iron tempest, reeled and staggered like sinking +ships; but suddenly and sternly recovering, they closed on their +terrible enemies, and then was seen with what a strength and +majesty the British soldier fights.</p> + +<p>"In vain did Soult with voice and gesture animate his Frenchmen; +in vain did the hardiest veterans, breaking from the crowded +columns, sacrifice their lives to gain time for the mass to open +out on such a fair field; in vain did the mass itself bear up, and, +fiercely striving, fire indiscriminately upon friends and foes, +while the horsemen hovering on the flank threatened to charge the +advancing line.</p> + +<p>"Nothing could stop that astonishing infantry.</p> + +<p>"No sudden burst of undisciplined valour, no nervous enthusiasm +weakened the stability of their order; their flashing eyes were +bent on the dark columns in their front; their measured tread shook +the ground; their dreadful volleys swept away the head of every +formation; their deafening shouts overpowered the dissonant cries +that broke from all parts of the tumultuous crowd as slowly, and +with a horrid carnage, it was pushed by the incessant vigour of the +attack to the farthest edge of the height. There the French +reserve, mixing with the struggling multitude, endeavoured to +restore the fight, but only augmented the irremediable disorder, +and the mighty mass, giving way like a loosened cliff, went +headlong down the steep; the rain flowed after in streams +discoloured with blood, and eighteen hundred unwounded men, the +remnant of six thousand unconquerable British soldiers, stood +triumphant on the fatal hill!</p> +</div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;'> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The laurel is nobly won when the exhausted victor reels as he +places it on his bleeding front.</p> + +<p>"All that night the rain poured down, and the river and the +hills and the woods resounded with the dismal clamour and groans of +dying men."</p> +</div> + +<p>Sir William Napier seems intimately to have known the transience +of the gratitude of nations to those who fight their battles for +them. At the end of his noble history of the Peninsular War he lets +the curtain fall upon the scene with solemn brevity in a single +sentence, thus:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The British infantry embarked at Bordeaux, some for America, +some for England: the cavalry, marching through France, took +shipping at Boulogne. Thus the war terminated, and with it all +remembrance of the Veterans' services.</p> + +<p>"Yet those Veterans had won nineteen pitched battles, and +innumerable combats; had made or sustained ten sieges and taken +four great fortresses; had twice expelled the French from Portugal, +once from Spain; had penetrated France, and killed, wounded, or +captured two hundred thousand enemies—leaving of their own +number, forty thousand dead, whose bones, whiten the plains and +mountains of the Peninsula."</p> +</div> + +<p>Science and the base malignity of our latest adversaries have +debased modern warfare, as waged by them, from its ancient dignity +and honour; and they have conducted it so as to make it difficult +to believe that from the Kaiser down to the subaltern on land and +the petty officer at sea that nation can produce a single +gentleman.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter22"></a> + +<h2>22</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>This letter, like the last one, is concerned with war. War +brings to every man not incapacitated by age or physical defects +the call of his country to fight, and if need be to die, for it. It +also exposes to view the few pusillanimous young men who are +satisfied to enjoy protection from the horrors of invasion and the +priceless boon of personal freedom, secured to them by the +self-sacrifice and valour of others, while they themselves remain +snugly at home and talk of their consciences.</p> + +<p>Patriotism such as that which in 1914 led the flower of our race +to flock in countless thousands to the standards and be enrolled +for battle in defence of</p> + +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>"This precious stone set in the +silver sea,"</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>"This blessed plot, this earth, +this realm, this England,"</span><br> + + +<p>being without doubt or cavil one of the noblest emotions of the +human heart, has often been the begetter of inspired prose. Our own +great war has not yet produced many fine utterances, and I go back +to-day to a contemporary of Sir William Napier for one of the +noblest outbursts of eloquence expressive of a burning patriotism +that has ever been poured forth.</p> + +<p>Someone in the days when Wellington was alive had alluded in the +House of Lords to the Irish as "aliens," and Richard Sheil, rising +in the House of Commons, lifted up his voice for his country in an +impassioned flight of generous eloquence.</p> + +<p>Sir Henry Hardinge, who had been at the battle of Waterloo, +happened to be seated opposite to Sheil in the House, and to him +Sheil appealed with the deepest emotion to support him in his +vindication of his country's valour. None will in these days deny +that our fellow-citizens of Ireland who went to the war displayed a +courage as firm and invincible as our own:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The Duke of Wellington is not, I am inclined to believe, a man +of excitable temperament. His mind is of a cast too martial to be +easily moved; but, notwithstanding his habitual inflexibility, I +cannot help thinking, that when he heard his countrymen (for we are +his countrymen) designated by a phrase so offensive he ought to +have recalled the many fields of fight in which we have been +contributors to his renown. Yes, the battles, sieges, fortunes, +that he has passed ought to have brought back upon him, that from +the earliest achievement in which he displayed that military genius +which has placed him foremost in the annals of modern warfare, down +to that last and surpassing combat which has made his name +imperishable, the Irish soldiers, with whom our armies are filled, +were the inseparable auxiliaries to his glory.</p> + +<p>"Whose were the athletic arms that drove their bayonets at +Vimiera through those phalanxes that never reeled in the shock of +war before? What desperate valour climbed the steeps and filled the +moats at Badajos! All! all his victories should have rushed and +crowded back upon his memory—Vimiera, Badajos, Salamanca, +Albuera, Toulouse, and last of all the greatest! (and here Sheil +pointed to Sir Henry Hardinge across the House). Tell me, for you +were there. I appeal to the gallant soldier before me, from whose +opinions I differ, but who bears, I know, a generous heart in an +intrepid breast; tell me, for you must needs remember, on that day +when the destinies of mankind were trembling in the balance, while +death fell in showers upon them, when the artillery of France, +levelled with a precision of the most deadly science, played upon +them, when her legions, incited by the voice and inspired by the +example of their mighty leader, rushed again and again to the +onset—tell me if for one instant, when to hesitate for one +instant was to be lost, the 'aliens' blenched!</p> + +<p>"And when at length the moment for the last and decisive +movement had arrived, and the valour which had so long been wisely +cheeked was at length let loose, tell me if Ireland with less +heroic valour than the natives of your own glorious isle, +precipitated herself upon the foe?</p> + +<p>"The blood of England, of Scotland, and of Ireland, flowed in +the same stream, on the same field. When the still morning dawned, +their dead lay cold and stark together; in the same deep earth +their bodies were deposited; the green corn of spring is now +breaking from their commingled dust; the dew falls from Heaven upon +their union in the grave.</p> + +<p>"Partners in every peril—in the glory shall we not be +permitted to participate, and shall we be told as a requital that +we are aliens, and estranged from the noble country for whose +salvation our life-blood was poured out?"</p> +</div> + +<p>A hundred years of strife, misunderstanding, anger, +estrangement, outrages, bloodshed, and murder separate us from this +appealing cry wrung from the beating heart of this inspired +Irishman. Is the great tragedy of England and Ireland that has +sullied their annals for seven hundred years never to be brought to +an end? Is there never to be for us a Lethe through which we may +pass to the farther shore of forgetfulness and forgiveness of the +past and reconciliation in the future?</p> + +<p>That you may live to see it, Antony, is my hope and prayer.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter23"></a> + +<h2>23</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I gave you in a former letter Burke's famous passage on the fate +of Marie Antoinette—in some ways the most splendid of his +utterances,—and I now am going to quote to you a very great +passage from Thomas Carlyle on the same tragic subject.</p> + +<p>Courageous was it of Carlyle, who must certainly have been +familiar with Burke's noble ejaculation, to challenge it with +emulation; but in the result we must admit that he amply justifies +his temerity.</p> + +<p>The tragic figure of the queen drawn to execution through the +roaring mob inspired Carlyle with what is surely his most +overwhelming product.</p> + +<p>The august shadow of the Bible is dimly apprehended as the words +ascend upwards and upwards with simple sublimity to the awful +close.</p> + +<p>Nothing he wrote in all his multitudinous volumes surpasses this +astonishing outburst:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Beautiful Highborn that wert so foully hurled low!</p> + +<p>"For, if thy being came to thee out of old Hapsburg Dynasties, +came it not also out of Heaven? <i>Sunt lachrymæ rerum, et +mentem mortalia tangunt</i>. Oh! is there a man's heart that thinks +without pity of those long months and years of slow-wasting +ignominy;—of thy birth soft-cradled, the winds of Heaven not +to visit thy face too roughly, thy foot to light on softness, thy +eye on splendour; and then of thy death, or hundred deaths, to +which the guillotine and Fouquier Tinville's judgment was but the +merciful end?</p> + +<p>"Look <i>there</i>, O man born of woman! The bloom of that fair +face is wasted, the hair is grey with care; the brightness of those +eyes is quenched, their lids hang drooping, the face is stony pale +as of one living in death.</p> + +<p>"Mean weeds which her own hand has mended attire the Queen of +the World. The death-hurdle, where thou sittest pale, motionless, +which only curses environ, has to stop—a people drunk with +vengeance will drink it again in full draught, looking at thee +there. Far as the eye reaches, a multitudinous sea of maniac heads, +the air deaf with their triumph-yell!</p> + +<p>"The living-dead must shudder with yet one more pang; her +startled blood yet again suffuses with the hue of agony that pale +face, which she hides with her hands.</p> + +<p>"There is, then, <i>no</i> heart to say, 'God pity thee'?</p> + +<p>"O think not of these: think of Him Whom thou worshippest, the +Crucified—Who also treading the winepress alone, fronted +sorrow still deeper, and triumphed over it, and made it holy, and +built of it a Sanctuary of Sorrow for thee and all the +wretched!</p> + +<p>"Thy path of thorns is nigh ended. One long last look at the +Tuileries, where thy step was once so light—where thy +children shall not dwell.</p> + +<p>"Thy head is on the block; the axe rushes—dumb lies the +world; that wild-yelling world, and all its madness, is behind +thee."</p> +</div> + +<p>There is a passage in Carlyle's tempestuous narrative of the +taking of the Bastille which has always seemed to me to give it the +last consummate touch of greatness.</p> + +<p>Suddenly he pauses in the turmoil and dust and wrath and madness +of that tremendous conflict, and his poetic vision gazes away over +peaceful France, and he exclaims:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"O evening sun of July, how, at this hour thy beams fall slant +on reapers amid peaceful woody fields; on old women spinning in +cottages; on ships far out on the silent main; on balls at the +Orangerie of Versailles, where high rouged Dames of the palace are +even now dancing with double-jacketed Hussar-officers:—and +also on this roaring Hell-porch of a Hôtel de Ville."</p> +</div> + +<p>And a few sentences further on a heart of stone must be moved by +what the archives of that grim prison-house revealed:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Old secrets come to view; and long-buried despair finds voice. +Read this portion of an old letter.</p> + +<p>"'If for my consolation Monseigneur would grant me, for the sake +of God and the Most Blessed Trinity, that I could have news of my +dear wife; were it only her name on a card, to show that she is +alive! It were the greatest consolation I could receive; and I +should for ever bless the greatness of Monseigneur.'</p> + +<p>"Poor prisoner, who namest thyself Queret-Demery, and hast no +other history,—she is dead, that dear wife of thine, and thou +art dead! Tis fifty years since thy breaking heart put this +question; to be heard now first, and long heard, in the hearts of +men. "</p> +</div> + +<p>In the reign of Louis XV. alone, there were no less than fifteen +thousand <i>lettres de cachet</i> issued, by which anyone could be +suddenly arrested, and, without trial, and, heedless of protest, +imprisoned perhaps for life in the Bastille.</p> + +<p>In the excesses of the Reign of Terror three or four thousand +persons perished. Their deaths were spectacular, and have covered +with execrations their dreadful executioners.</p> + +<p>But it is right that we should remember, Antony, the life-long +agony and the unutterable despair of the victims of that +remorselessly cruel system which the Revolution overthrew.</p> + +<p>The chapter on the "Everlasting Yea," in <i>Sartor Resartus</i>, +seems to me to come nearer to the above excerpts than anything else +in Carlyle, though at a perceptible distance:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"O thou that pinest in the imprisonment of the Actual, and +criest bitterly to the gods for a kingdom wherein to rule and +create, know this of a truth: the thing thou seekest is already +with thee, 'here or nowhere,' couldst thou only see!</p> + +<p>"But it is with man's Soul as it was with Nature: the beginning +of Creation is—Light. Till the eye have vision the whole +members are in bonds. Divine moment, when over the tempest-tossed +Soul, as once over the wild-weltering Chaos, it is spoken: 'Let +there be Light!' Even to the greatest that has felt such moment is +it not miraculous and God-announcing; even as, under simpler +figures, to the simplest and least. The mad primeval Discord is +hushed; the rudely-jumbled conflicting elements bind themselves +into separate Firmaments: deep, silent rock-foundations are built +beneath, and the skyey vault, with its everlasting Luminaries, +above; instead of a dark, wasteful Chaos, we have a blooming, +fertile, heaven-encompassed World.</p> + +<p>"I, too, could now say to myself: 'Be no longer a Chaos, but a +World, or even Worldkin. Produce! Produce! Were it but the +pitifullest infinitesimal fraction of a Product, produce it, in +God's name! 'Tis the utmost thou hast in thee; out with it then. +Up, up! Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy whole +might. Work while it is called to-day; for the night cometh wherein +no man can work.'"</p> +</div> + +<p>There is another passage in <i>Sartor Resartus</i> which I have +always held in veneration, though the field labourer is not now so +"hardly-entreated" as when Carlyle wrote of him:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Two men I honour, and no third. First the toilworn Craftsman +that with earth-made implement laboriously conquers the earth, and +makes her man's.</p> + +<p>"Venerable to me is the hard hand; crooked, coarse; wherein +notwithstanding lies a cunning virtue indefeasibly royal, as of the +sceptre of this planet. Venerable too is the rugged face, all +weather-tanned, besoiled, with its rude intelligence; for it is the +face of a man living manlike. Oh, but the more venerable for thy +rudeness, and even because we must pity as well as love thee! +Hardly-entreated brother! For us was thy back so bent, for us were +thy straight limbs and fingers so deformed; thou wert our +conscript, on whom the lot fell, and fighting our battles wert so +marred. For in thee too lay a god-created form, but it was not to +be unfolded; encrusted must it stand with the thick adhesions and +defacements of labour; and thy body, like thy soul, was not to know +freedom. Yet toil on, toil on; <i>thou</i> art in thy duty, be out +of it who may: thou toilest for the altogether indispensable, for +daily bread.</p> + +<p>"A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen +toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the +bread of life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards +inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his +outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his +outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him +artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with +heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! If the poor and +humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil +for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom, +immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else is +chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.</p> + +<p>"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities +united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's +wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this +world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere +be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself; +thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the +humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great +darkness."</p> +</div> + +<p><i>Sartor Resartus</i> has long taken its place among the +greatest prose works of the nineteenth century, and it is a strange +commentary on this mandate to us all to "produce, produce!" to find +that for eleven years Carlyle could find no publisher who would +give it in book form to the world!</p> + +<p>It is a solemn reflection to think that there may be many books +of eloquence and splendour that have never seen the light of +publicity. Publishers concern themselves less with what is finely +written than with what will best sell; and in their defence it may +be acceded that some of the masterpieces of literature have at +their first appearance before the world fallen dead from the +press.</p> + +<p>The first edition of FitzGerald's <i>Omar Khayyám</i>, +issued at one shilling, was totally unrecognised, and copies of it +might have been bought for twopence in the trays and boxes of trash +on the pavement outside old bookshops!</p> + +<p>But if once a work is published, time will with almost +irresistible force place it ultimately in the station it deserves +in the literature of the world.</p> + +<p>Instant acceptance not seldom preludes final rejection. In the +middle of the last century Martin Tupper's <i>Proverbial +Philosophy</i> garnished every drawing-room table; and now, where +is it?</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<p><i>P.S.</i>—Do not look for the passage on Marie +Antoinette in the <i>French Revolution</i>, for you will not find +it there, but in the "Essay of the Diamond Necklace."</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter24"></a> + +<h2>24</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>You and I once had a cousin, Henry Nelson Coleridge, who, had he +lived, would very certainly have left a brilliant addition to the +lustre of the name he bore. He was born in 1798, and only lived +forty-five years, dying when his powers were leading him to high +fortune in that legal profession which so many of the family have +pursued.</p> + +<p>He was a scholar of Eton; a Fellow of King's College, Cambridge; +he won the Greek and Latin Odes in 1820, and the Greek Ode again in +1821. To him, therefore, the classic spirit was inborn, and a +training that omitted the study of Latin and Greek the very +negation of education. He would have had something very trenchant +to say of what is now known as "the modern side." He wrote a very +rich and splendid prose, and it is no fond family partiality that +leads me to quote to you his eloquent and precious defence of the +classical languages:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"I am not one whose lot it has been to grow old in literary +retirement, devoted to classical studies with an exclusiveness +which might lead to an overweening estimate of these two noble +languages. Few, I will not say evil, were the days allowed to me +for such pursuits; and I was constrained, still young and an unripe +scholar to forego them for the duties of an active and laborious +profession. They are now amusements only, however delightful and +improving. For I am far from assuming to understand all their +riches, all their beauty, or all their power; yet I can profoundly +feel their immeasurable superiority in many important respects to +all we call modern; and I would fain think that there are many even +among my younger readers who can now, or will hereafter, sympathise +with the expression of my ardent admiration.</p> + +<p>"Greek—the shrine of the genius of the old world; as +universal as our race, as individual as ourselves; of infinite +flexibility, or indefatigable strength, with the complication and +the distinctness of Nature herself; to which nothing was vulgar, +from which nothing was excluded; speaking to the ear like Italian, +speaking to the mind like English; with words like pictures, with +words like the gossamer films of the summer; at once the variety +and picturesqueness of Homer; the gloom and the intensity of +Æschylus; not compressed to the closest by Thucydides, nor +fathomed to the bottom by Plato; not sounding with all its +thunders, nor lit up with all its ardours even under the Promethean +touch of Demosthenes!</p> + +<p>"And Latin—the voice of empire and of war, of law and of +the state, inferior to its half-parent and rival in the embodying +of passion and in the distinguishing of thought, but equal to it in +sustaining the measured march of history; and superior to it in the +indignant declamation of moral satire; stamped with the mark of an +imperial and despotising republic; rigid in its construction, +parsimonious in its synonyms; reluctantly yielding to the flowery +yoke of Horace, although opening glimpses of Greek-like splendour +in the occasional inspirations of Lucretius; proved indeed, to the +uttermost, by Cicero, and by him found wanting; yet majestic in its +bareness, impressive in its conciseness; the true language of +history, instinct with the spirit of nations and not with the +passions of individuals; breathing the maxims of the world, and not +the tenets of the schools; one and uniform in its air and spirit, +whether touched by the stern and haughty Sallust, by the open and +discursive Livy, by the reserved and thoughtful Tacitus.</p> + +<p>"These inestimable advantages, which no modern skill can wholly +counterpoise, are known and felt by the scholar alone. He has not +failed, in the sweet and silent studies of his youth, to drink deep +at those sacred fountains of all that is just and beautiful in +human language.</p> + +<p>"The thoughts and the words of the master-spirits of Greece and +of Rome, are inseparably blended in his memory; a sense of their +marvellous harmonies, their exquisite fitness, their consummate +polish, has sunk for ever in his heart, and thence throws out light +and fragrancy upon the gloom and the annoyance of his maturer +years. No avocations of professional labour will make him abandon +their wholesome study; in the midst of a thousand cares he will +find an hour to recur to his boyish lessons—to reperuse them +in the pleasurable consciousness of old associations, and in the +clearness of manly judgment, and to apply them to himself and to +the world with superior profit.</p> + +<p>"The more extended his sphere of learning in the literature of +modern Europe, the more deeply, though the more wisely, will he +reverence that of classical antiquity; and in declining age, when +the appetite for magazines and reviews, and the ten-times repeated +trash of the day, has failed, he will retire, as it were, within a +circle of school-fellow friends, and end his secular studies as he +began them, with his Homer, his Horace, and his Shakespeare."</p> +</div> + +<p>Ah, what an echo, Antony, every word of this beautiful passage +finds in my own heart, only saddened with the poignant regret that +the necessary business and occupation of the passing years have +dulled for me such unpolished facility, as I may once have +possessed, for perusing my Homer and my Horace!</p> + +<p>It is, indeed, rare in these days to find gentlemen as familiar +as were their forebears with Latin and Greek. You, Antony, will +probably find yourself as you grow up in like case with myself, but +there will remain for your unending instruction and delight all the +glories of English literature, to give you a taste for which these +few letters of mine are written, plucking only a single flower here +and there from the most wonderful garden in the world.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter25"></a> + +<h2>25</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Cardinal Newman, of whom I shall write to-day, was the first of +the great writers born in the nineteenth century, and he lived from +1801 to 1890. Besides being a master of English prose he was no +mean poet; but above all else he was a man of immense personal +power, which was strangely associated with a manifest saintliness +which compelled diffidence from those admitted to his intimacy.</p> + +<p>I have described him as I knew him in my <i>Memories</i>;<a +name='FNanchor_1_7'></a><a href='#Footnote_1_7'><sup>[1]</sup></a> +and now will quote to you his utterance on music and its effect +upon the heart of man, which has always seemed to me too precious +to leave buried in a sermon:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Let us take an instance, of an outward and earthly form, or +economy, under which great wonders unknown seem to be typified; I +mean musical sounds as they are exhibited most perfectly in +instrumental harmony.</p> + +<p>"There are seven notes in the scale; make them fourteen; yet +what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What Science +brings so much out of so little? out of what poor elements does +some great master in it create his new world!</p> + +<p>"Shall we say that all this exuberant inventiveness is a mere +ingenuity or trick of art, like some game or fashion of the day, +without reality, without meaning? We may do so; and then, perhaps, +we shall also account theology to be a matter of words; yet, as +there is a divinity in the theology of the Church, which those who +feel cannot communicate, so is there also in the wonderful creation +of sublimity and beauty of which I am speaking. To many men the +very names which the Science employs are utterly incomprehensible. +To speak of an idea or a subject seems to be fanciful or trifling, +to speak of the views which it opens upon us to be childish +extravagance; yet is it possible that that inexhaustible evolution +and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet +so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound, +which is gone and perishes?</p> + +<p>"Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen +emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful +impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by +what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in +itself? It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some +higher sphere, they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the +medium of created sound; they are echoes from our home; they are +the voice of angels or the magnificat of Saints, or the living laws +of Divine Governance, or the Divinic attributes; something are they +besides themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot +utter,—though mortal man, and he perhaps not otherwise +distinguished above his fellows, has the gift of eliciting +them."</p> +</div> + +<p>Of quite another order is the Cardinal's description of a +gentleman. Here there is no flight of poetical imagination, but a +manifestation of felicitous intuition and penetrating insight as +rare as it is convincing, and the generous wide vision of a man of +the world, undimmed by the faintest trace of prejudice:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Hence it is that it is almost a definition of a gentleman to +say he is one who never inflicts pain. This description is both +refined and, as far as it goes, accurate. He is mainly occupied in +merely removing the obstacles which hinder the free and +unembarrassed action of those about him; and he concurs with their +movements rather than takes the initiative himself. His benefits +may be considered as parallel to what are called comforts or +conveniences in arrangements of a personal nature: like an easy +chair or a good fire, which do their part in dispelling cold and +fatigue, though nature provides both means of rest and animal heat +without them.</p> + +<p>"The true gentleman in like manner carefully avoids whatever may +cause a jar or a jolt in the minds of those with whom he is cast; +all clashing of opinion, or collision of feeling, all restraint, or +suspicion, or gloom, or resentment; his great concern being to make +everyone at their ease and at home. He has his eyes on all his +company; he is tender towards the bashful, gentle towards the +distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he can recollect to whom +he is speaking; he guards against unseasonable allusions, or topics +which may irritate; he is seldom prominent in conversation and +never wearisome.</p> + +<p>"He makes light of favours while he does them, and seems to be +receiving when he is conferring. He never speaks of himself except +when compelled, never defends himself by a mere retort; he has no +ears for slander or gossip, is scrupulous in imputing motives to +those who interfere with him, and interprets everything for the +best. He is never mean or little in his disputes, never takes +unfair advantage, never mistakes personalities or sharp sayings for +arguments, or insinuates evil which he dare not say out. From a +long-sighted prudence he observes the maxim of the ancient sage, +that we should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he +were one day to be our friend. He has too much sense to be +affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember injuries, +and too indolent to bear malice.</p> + +<p>"He is patient, forbearing, and resigned, on philosophical +principles; he submits to pain because it is inevitable, to +bereavement because it is irreparable, and to death because it is +his destiny. If he engages in controversy of any kind his +disciplined intellect preserves him from the blundering discourtesy +of better, perhaps, but less educated minds, who, like blunt +weapons, tear and hack instead of cutting clean, who mistake the +point in argument, waste their strength in trifles, misconceive +their adversary, and leave the question more involved than they +find it. He may be right or wrong in his opinion, but he is too +clear-headed to be unjust, he is as simple as he is forcible, and +as brief as he is decisive.</p> + +<p>"Nowhere shall we find greater candour, consideration, +indulgence; he throws himself into the minds of his opponents, he +accounts for their mistakes. He knows the weakness of human reason +as well as its strength, its province, and its limits. If he be an +unbeliever he will be too profound and large-minded to ridicule +religion or to act against it; he is too wise to be a dogmatist or +fanatic in his infidelity. He respects piety and devotion; he even +supports institutions as venerable, beautiful, or useful, to which +he does not assent; he honours the ministers of religion, and it +contents him to decline its mysteries without assailing or +denouncing them. He is a friend of religious toleration, and that, +not only because his philosophy has taught him to look on all forms +of faith with an impartial eye, but also from the gentleness and +effeminacy of feeling which is the attendant on civilisation.</p> + +<p>"Not that he may not hold a religion too, in his own way, even +when he is not a Christian. In that case his religion is one of +imagination and sentiment; it is the embodiment of those ideas of +the sublime, majestic, and beautiful, without which there can be no +large philosophy. Sometimes he acknowledges the Being of God, +sometimes he invests an unknown principle or quality with the +attributes of perfection. And this deduction of his reason, or +creation of his fancy, he makes the occasion of such excellent +thoughts, and the starting-point of so varied and systematic a +teaching, that he even seems like a disciple of Christianity +itself. From the very accuracy and steadiness of his logical +powers, he is able to see what sentiments are consistent in those +who hold any religious doctrine at all, and he appears to others to +feel and to hold a whole circle of theological truths, which exist +in his mind no otherwise than as a number of deductions.</p> + +<p>"Such are the lineaments of the ethical character which the +cultivated intellect will form apart from religious principle."</p> +</div> + +<p>Surely this is a wonderful utterance from a Cardinal of the +Church of Rome, full of urbanity and the wisdom of the world.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_7'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_7'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>Pp. 52-57.</p> +</div> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter26"></a> + +<h2>26</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I have in a former letter quoted a short but noble passage from +Lord Macaulay on the great Lord Chatham.</p> + +<p>But I feel that the writer who was perhaps the greatest essayist +that England has ever produced must not in these letters be fobbed +off with so slight a notice and quotation.</p> + +<p>What has always seemed to me the supremest passage that flowed +from his wonderful pen is to be found in his paper on Warren +Hastings which appeared originally in the <i>Edinburgh +Review</i>.</p> + +<p>His description in that essay of the opening of the great +impeachment, has given all succeeding generations a vision of one +of the most majestic scenes in the whole history of man.</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"There have been spectacles more dazzling to the eye, more +gorgeous with jewellery and cloth of gold, more attractive to +grown-up children, than that which was then exhibited at +Westminster; but, perhaps, there never was a spectacle so well +calculated to strike a highly cultivated, a reflecting, an +imaginative mind. All the various kinds of interest which belong to +the near and to the distant, to the present and to the past, were +collected on one spot and in one hour. All the talents and all the +accomplishments which are developed by liberty and civilisation +were now displayed, with every advantage that could be derived both +from co-operation and from contrast. Every step in the proceedings +carried the mind either backward, through many troubled centuries, +to the days when the foundations of our constitution were laid; or +far away, over boundless seas and deserts, to dusky nations living +under strange stars, worshipping strange gods, and writing strange +characters from right to left. The High Court of Parliament was to +sit, according to forms handed down from the days of the +Plantagenets, on an Englishman accused of exercising tyranny over +the lord of the holy city of Benares, and over the ladies of the +princely house of Oude.</p> + +<p>"The place was worthy of such a trial. It was the great hall of +William Rufus, the hall which had resounded with acclamations at +the inauguration of thirty kings, the hall which had witnessed the +just sentence of Bacon and the just absolution of Somers, the hall +where the eloquence of Strafford had for a moment awed and melted a +victorious party inflamed with just resentment, the hall where +Charles had confronted the High Court of Justice with the placid +courage which has half redeemed his fame. Neither military nor +civil pomp was wanting. The avenues were lined with grenadiers. The +streets were kept clear by cavalry. The peers, robed in gold and +ermine, were marshalled by the heralds under Garter King-at-Arms. +The judges in their vestments of state attended to give advice on +points of law. Near a hundred and seventy lords, three-fourths of +the Upper House as the Upper House then was, walked in solemn order +from their usual place of assembling to the tribunal. The junior +Baron present led the way, George Eliot, Lord Heathfield, recently +ennobled for his memorable defence of Gibraltar against the fleets +and armies of France and Spain. The long procession was closed by +the Duke of Norfolk, Earl Marshal of the realm, by the great +dignitaries, and by the brothers and sons of the King. Last of all +came the Prince of Wales, conspicuous by his fine person and noble +bearing. The grey old walls were hung with scarlet. The long +galleries were crowded by an audience such as has rarely excited +the fears or the emulation of an orator. There were gathered +together, from all parts of a great, free, enlightened, and +prosperous empire, grace and female loveliness, wit and learning, +the representatives of every science and of every art. There were +seated round the Queen the fair-haired young daughters of the House +of Brunswick. There the Ambassadors of great Kings and +Commonwealths gazed with admiration on a spectacle which no other +country in the world could present. There Siddons, in the prime of +her majestic beauty, looked with emotion on a scene surpassing all +the imitations of the stage. There the historian of the Roman +Empire thought of the days when Cicero pleaded the cause of Sicily +against Verres, and when, before a senate which still retained some +show of freedom, Tacitus thundered against the oppressor of Africa. +There were seen, side by side, the greatest painter and the +greatest scholar of the age. The spectacle had allured Reynolds +from that easel which has preserved to us the thoughtful foreheads +of so many writers and statesmen, and the sweet smiles of so many +noble matrons. It had induced Parr to suspend his labours in that +dark and profound mine from which he had extracted a vast treasure +of erudition, a treasure too often buried in the earth, too often +paraded with injudicious and inelegant ostentation, but still +precious, massive, and splendid. There appeared the voluptuous +charms of her to whom the heir of the throne had in secret plighted +his faith. There too was she, the beautiful mother of a beautiful +race, the Saint Cecilia, whose delicate features, lighted up by +love and music, art has rescued from the common decay. There were +the members of that brilliant society which quoted, criticised, and +exchanged repartees, under the rich peacock hangings of Mrs. +Montague. And there the ladies whose lips, more persuasive than +those of Fox himself, had carried the Westminster election against +palace and treasury, shone round Georgiana, Duchess of +Devonshire.</p> + +<p>"The Serjeants made proclamation. Hastings advanced to the bar, +and bent his knee. The culprit was indeed not unworthy of that +great presence. He had ruled an extensive and populous country, had +made laws and treaties, had sent forth armies, had set up and +pulled down princes. And in his high place he had so borne himself, +that all had feared him, that most had loved him, and that hatred +itself could deny him no title to glory, except virtue. He looked +like a great man, and not like a bad man. A person small and +emaciated, yet deriving dignity from a carriage which, while it +indicated deference to the court, indicated also habitual +self-possession and self-respect, a high and intellectual forehead, +a brow pensive, but not gloomy, a mouth of inflexible decision, a +face pale and worn, but serene, on which was written, as legibly as +under the picture in the council-chamber at Calcutta, <i>Mens +æqua in arduis</i>; such was the aspect with which the great +Proconsul presented himself to his judges. "</p> +</div> + +<p>Such a scene can only find its appropriate enactment at the +centre of a great empire and amid a people with an august history +behind them, conscious of present magnificence and confident of +future glory.</p> + +<p>We are now far into the second century since that memorable +spectacle filled to the walls the great Hall of Westminster.</p> + +<p>What was an oligarchy permeated by a fine spirit of liberty and +adorned by the sacred principle of personal freedom, has been +superseded by a socialistic democracy under which personal freedom +suffers frequent curtailments, and liberty is severely abridged by +the mandates of trade unions, the prohibitions of urban potentates, +and the usurpations of medicine men.</p> + +<p>Under these cramping and crippling deprivations we have lost the +collective sense of greatness as a race that infused every +participator in the splendid pageant of such an event as the +Impeachment of Warren Hastings. One has but to imagine an +impeachment to-day with the dominant personages in it chosen from +the strike leaders and labour delegates of the proletariat, +assisted by promoted railway porters and ennobled grocers, to +perceive what a distance, and down what a declivity we have +travelled since those days when it was impossible for any great +public function to take place without its becoming naturally and +without conscious effort the occasion for a manifestation of the +pomp, circumstance, and splendour inseparable from the solemn acts +of a great people performed by their greatest men.</p> + +<p>But I am one, Antony, who look forward with steadfast hope and +belief to a reaction from our present vulgarity, and to a +reascension of England to a greater dignity, honour, and nobleness +both in its public and private life than is observable to-day.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter27"></a> + +<h2>27</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I have not in my letters to you travelled beyond our own islands +in search of great English prose, but I propose now to make one +divergence from this rule and quote a very great and deservedly +far-famed speech, uttered on a memorable occasion, of Abraham +Lincoln, President of the United States.</p> + +<p>At the present time, I think, the name of Lincoln lies closer to +the hearts of the American people than that of any other, not even +excepting Washington and Hamilton. The latter, though they +established American independence, remained in a personal sense +English gentlemen till their death. Lincoln was born in the +backwoods in rude poverty, received no education but what he +acquired by his own unaided efforts, and lived and died a man of +the people, the ideal type of native-born American.</p> + +<p>He rose from the lowest to the highest position in the State, +borne upwards by the simple nobility of his character, by the +stainless purity of his actions, and the splendid motive of all his +endeavours. His speeches and writings derive their power and +distinction from no tricks of oratory, felicity of diction, or +nimbleness of mind. They are the vocal results of the beatings of +his great heart.</p> + +<p>He led his people to war in the manner of a prophet of Israel; +with an awful austerity, majestic, invincible, and with hand +uplifted in sure appeal to the God of battles. On the field of +Gettysburg, where was waged the most tremendous of all combats of +the war, he came to dedicate a cemetery to the innumerable dead, +and these were his few and noble words:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Fourscore-and-seven years ago our fathers brought forth upon +this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to +the proposition that all men are created equal.</p> + +<p>"Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that +nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long +endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come +to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for +those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is +altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.</p> + +<p>"But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, +we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who +struggled here, have consecrated it far above our power to add of +detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say +here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us, the +living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which +they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather +for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us; +that from these honoured dead we take increased devotion to that +cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that +we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain; +that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom; and +that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, +shall not perish from the earth."</p> +</div> + +<p>Few are the opportunities in the history of the world when the +time, the place, the occasion, and the words spoken, have combined +so poignantly to move the hearts of men.</p> + +<p>One can imagine the vast concourse standing awestruck and +uncovered before the solemn splendour of this noble dedication, +every phrase of which will remain for generations a treasured and +sacred memory in countless thousands of homes of the great +continent in the West.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter28"></a> + +<h2>28</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>The nineteenth century witnessed the rise of an entirely new +style of English prose. The ancient and universal restraints were +swept away, the decorous stateliness of all the buried centuries +was abandoned, and there arose a band of writers, to whom De +Quincey and Ruskin were the leaders, who withdrew all veils from +their emotions, threw away all the shackles of reserve, and poured +their sobs and ecstasies upon us, in soaring periods of impassioned +prose, glittering with decorative alliterations, and adorned with +euphonious harmonies of vowel sounds.</p> + +<p>This flamboyant style seems to have synchronised with the +general decline of reserve and ceremony in English life, and with +the rise of the modern familiar intimacy that leaves no privacy +even to our thoughts. Our grandfathers would have hesitated to have +discussed at the dinner-table, even after the ladies had withdrawn, +what is now set down for free debate at ladies' clubs, and +canvassed in the correct columns of the <i>Guardian</i>.</p> + +<p>This new habit of mind and speech has affected our literature +deeply and diversely. In the hands of the really great masters such +as Carlyle, Froude, and Ruskin, the intimate revelations of the +throbbings of their hearts, and the direct and untrammelled appeal +of their inmost souls crying in the market-place, take forcible +possession of our affections, and bring them into closer touch with +each one of us than was ever possible with the older restrained +writers.</p> + +<p>But with lesser men the modern decay of restraint and the +licence of intimacy and of the emotions have led to widespread +vulgarity, and a contemptible deluge of hyperbole, and superlative, +and redundancy; and although the disappearance of reserve in modern +writing may tend to reduce all but the production of the great to a +depressing state of vulgarity, it nevertheless, in the master's +hand, has unlocked for us the doors of an Aladdin's palace! But +even if the restraint of the ancient writers has disappeared from +the prose of our own times, all great writing of necessity must now +and always possess the quality of simplicity; and even Ruskin, who +saw the world of nature about him with the eyes of a visionary, and +wrote of what he saw as one so inspired as to be already half in +Paradise, yet clothed his glorious outpourings in a raiment of +perfect simplicity.</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"This, I believe," he wrote, "is the ordinance of the firmament; +and it seems to me that in the midst of the material nearness of +these heavens, God means us to acknowledge His own immediate +Presence as visiting, judging, and blessing us. 'The earth shook, +the heavens also dropped, at the presence of God,' 'He doth set His +bow in the clouds,' and thus renews, in the sound of every drooping +swathe of rain, His promise of everlasting love. 'In them hath He +set a <i>tabernacle</i> for the sun,' whose burning ball, which, +without the firmament, would be seen but as an intolerable and +scorching circle in the blackness of vacuity, is by that firmament +surrounded with gorgeous service, and tempered by mediatorial +ministries; by the firmament of clouds the golden pavement is +spread for his chariot wheels at morning; by the firmament of +clouds the temple is built for his presence to fill with light at +noon; by the firmament of clouds the purple veil is closed at +evening round the sanctuary of his rest; by the mists of the +firmament his implacable light is divided and its separated +fierceness appeased into the soft blue that fills the depth of +distance with its bloom, and the flush with which the mountains +burn as they drink the overflowing of the dayspring. And in this +tabernacling of the unendurable sun with men, through the shadows +of the firmament, God would seem to set forth the stooping of His +own majesty to men, upon the <i>throne</i> of the firmament.</p> + +<p>"As the Creator of all the worlds, and the Inhabiter of +eternity, we cannot behold Him; but as the Judge of the earth and +the Preserver of men those heavens are indeed His dwelling-place. +'Swear not, neither by heaven, for it is God's throne; nor by +earth, for it is His footstool.'</p> + +<p>"And all those passings to and fro of fruitful showers and +grateful shade, and all those visions of silver palaces built about +the horizon, and voices of moaning winds and threatening thunders, +and glories of coloured robe and cloven ray, are but to deepen in +our hearts the acceptance and distinctness and dearness of the +simple words, 'Our Father, Which art in heaven!'"</p> +</div> + +<p>The description of the first approach to Venice before the days +of railways will always be cherished by those who admire Ruskin's +work as one of his most characteristic and memorable +utterances:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"In the olden days of travelling, now to return no more, in +which distance could not be vanquished without toil, but in which +that toil was rewarded partly by the power of that deliberate +survey of the countries through which the journey lay, and partly +by the happiness of the evening hours, when, from the top of the +last hill he had surmounted, the traveller beheld the quiet +village, where he was to rest, scattered among the meadows beside +its valley stream; or, from the long-hoped-for turn in the dusty +perspective of the causeway, see, for the first time, the towers of +some famed city, faint in the rays of sunset—hours of +peaceful and thoughtful pleasure, for which the rush of the arrival +in the railway station is perhaps not always, or to all men, an +equivalent—in those days, I say, when there was something +more to be anticipated and remembered in the first aspect of each +successive halting place than a new arrangement of glass roofing +and iron girder—there were few moments of which the +recollection was more fondly cherished by the traveller than that +which, as I endeavoured to describe in the close of the last +chapter, brought him within sight of Venice, as his gondola shot +into the open lagoon from the canal of Mestre.</p> + +<p>"Not but that the aspect of the city itself was generally the +source of some slight disappointment, for, seen in this direction, +its buildings are far less characteristic than those of the other +great towns of Italy; but this inferiority was partly disguised by +distance, and more than atoned for by the strange rising of its +walls and towers out of the midst, as it seemed, of the deep sea; +for it was impossible that the mind or the eye could at once +comprehend the shallowness of the vast sheet of water which +stretched away in leagues of rippling lustre to the north and +south, or trace the narrow line of islets bounding it to the east. +The salt breeze, the white moaning sea-birds, the masses of black +weed separating and disappearing gradually in knots of heaving +shoal under the advance of the steady tide, all proclaimed it to be +indeed the ocean on whose bosom the great city rested so calmly; +not such blue, soft, lake-like ocean as bathes the Neapolitan +promontories, or sleeps beneath the marble rocks of Genoa, but a +sea with the bleak power of northern waves, yet subdued into a +strange spacious rest, and changed from its angry pallor into a +field of burnished gold as the sun declined behind the belfry tower +of the lonely island church, fitly named 'St George of the +Sea-weed.'</p> + +<p>"As the boat drew nearer to the city, the coast which the +traveller had just left sank behind him into one long, low, +sad-coloured line, tufted irregularly with brushwood and willows; +but, at what seemed its northern extremity, the hills of Argua rose +in a dark cluster of purple pyramids, balanced on the bright mirage +of the lagoon; two or three smooth surges of inferior hill extended +themselves about their roots, and beyond these, beginning with the +craggy peaks above Vicenza, the chain of the Alps girded the whole +horizon to the north—a wall of jagged blue, here and there +showing through its clefts a wilderness of misty precipices, fading +far back into the recesses of Cadore, and itself rising and +breaking away eastward, where the sun struck opposite upon its snow +into mighty fragments of peaked light, standing up behind the +barred clouds of evening one after another, countless, the crown of +the Adrian Sea, until the eye turned back from pursuing them, to +rest upon the nearer burning of the campaniles of Murano, and on +the great city, where it magnified itself along the waves, as the +quick, silent pacing of the gondola drew nearer and nearer.</p> + +<p>"And at last when its walls were reached, and the outmost of its +untrodden streets was entered, not through towered gate or guarded +rampart, but as a deep inlet between two rocks of coral in the +Indian Sea; when first upon the traveller's sight opened the long +ranges of columned palaces—each with its black boat moored at +the portal, each with its image cast down beneath its feet upon +that green pavement which every breeze broke into new fantasies of +rich tessellation when first, at the extremity of the bright vista, +the shadowy Rialto threw its colossal curve slowly forth from +behind the palace of the Camerlemghi, that strange curve, so +delicate, so adamantine, strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a +bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was +all risen, the gondolier's cry, 'Ah! Stali!" struck sharp upon the +ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half +met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed +close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and +when at last the boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, +across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its +sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady of Salvation, +it was no marvel that the mind should be so deeply entranced by the +visionary charm of a scene so beautiful and so strange as to forget +the darker truths of its history and its being, "Well might it seem +that such a city had owed her existence rather to the rod of the +enchanter, than the fear of the fugitive; that the waters which +encircled her had been chosen for the mirror of her state, rather +than the shelter of her nakedness; and that all which in Nature was +wild or merciless—Time and Decay, as well as the waves and +tempests—had been won to adorn her instead of to destroy, and +might still spare, for ages to come, that beauty which seemed to +have fixed for its throne the sands of the hour-glass as well as of +the sea."</p> +</div> + +<p>It is now many years since I first saw Venice rising from the +sea on a September morning as I sailed towards it across the +Adriatic from Trieste; and as we glided closer and closer its +loveliness was slowly and exquisitely unveiled under the slanting +beams of the early sun.</p> + +<p>In all my wanderings over two hemispheres I remember no vision +so enchanting and unsurpassable! May you live to see it, Antony, +before the vulgarities of modern life have totally defaced its +beauty.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter29"></a> + +<h2>29</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Born in Devon at the same time—within a year—as +Ruskin, James Anthony Froude wrote prose that displays the same +sanguine and poetical characteristics. His historical writings +have, I believe, been somewhat discredited of late years owing to +the permission he is alleged to have given himself to warp his +account of events in order to buttress some prejudice or contention +of his own.</p> + +<p>But if we set him aside as an accurate authority, we can at once +restore him to our regard as a lord of visionary +language:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Beautiful is old age, beautiful as the slow-dropping, mellow +autumn of a rich, glorious summer. In the old man Nature has +fulfilled her work; she leads him with her blessings; she fills him +with the fruits of a well-spent life; and, surrounded by his +children and his children's children, she rocks him softly away to +the grave, to which he is followed with blessings. God forbid we +should not call it beautiful. It is beautiful, but not the most +beautiful.</p> + +<p>"There is another life, hard, rough, and thorny, trodden with +bleeding feet and aching brow; the life of which the cross is the +symbol; a battle which no peace follows, this side of the grave; +which the grave gapes to finish before the victory is won; +and—strange that it should be so—this is the highest +life of man.</p> + +<p>"Look back along the great names of history; there is none whose +life has been other than this. They to whom it has been given to do +the really highest work in this earth, whoever they are, Jew or +Gentile, Pagan or Christian, warriors, legislators, philosophers, +priests, poets, kings, slaves—one and all, their fate has +been the same—the same bitter cup has been given them to +drink."</p> +</div> + +<p>Another passage of deep and melancholy beauty cannot be omitted +from this volume. It records in language of haunting loveliness the +passing away of feudalism and chivalry and of a thousand years of +the pageantry of faith:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"The great trading companies were not instituted for selfish +purposes, but to ensure the consumer of manufactured articles that +what he purchased was properly made and of a reasonable price. They +determined prices, fixed wages, and arranged the rules of +apprenticeship. But in time the companies lost their healthy +vitality, and, with other relics of feudalism, were in the reign of +Elizabeth hastening away. There were no longer tradesmen to be +found in sufficient number who were possessed of the necessary +probity; and it is impossible not to connect such a phenomenon with +the deep melancholy which, in those days, settled down on Elizabeth +herself.</p> + +<p>"For indeed a change was coming upon the world, the meaning and +direction of which even is still hidden from us—a change from +era to era. The paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken +up; old things were passing away, and the faith and life of ten +centuries were dissolving like a dream. Chivalry was dying; the +abbey and the castle were soon together to crumble into ruins; and +all the forms, desires, beliefs, convictions of the old world were +passing away, never to return. A new continent had risen up beyond +the western sea. The floor of heaven, inlaid with stars, had sunk +back into an infinite abyss of immeasurable space; and the firm +earth itself, unfixed from its foundations, was seen to be but a +small atom in the awful vastness of the Universe.</p> + +<p>"In the fabric of habit which they had so laboriously built for +themselves, mankind was to remain no longer. And now it is all +gone—like an unsubstantial pageant, faded; and between us and +the old English there lies a gulf of mystery which the prose of the +historian will never adequately bridge. They cannot come to us, and +our imagination can but feebly penetrate to them. Only among the +aisles of the cathedrals, only as we gaze upon their silent figures +sleeping on their tombs, some faint conceptions float before us of +what these men were when they were alive; and perhaps in the sound +of church bells, that peculiar creation of mediæval age, +which falls upon the ear like the echo of a vanished world."</p> +</div> + +<p>The sound of church bells, being entirely the creation of man, +forms perhaps a more touching link with the past for us than the +eternal sounds of nature. Yet the everlasting wash of the waves of +the sea forms a bond between us and the unplumbed depths of time, +as they</p> + +<div class="poem"><span style='margin-left: 1em;'>"Begin and cease, +and then again begin</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>With tremulous cadence slow, and +bring,</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>The eternal note of sadness +in.</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Sophocles long ago</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Heard it on the Ægean, and it +brought</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Into his mind the turbid ebb and +flow</span><br> +<span style='margin-left: 1em;'>Of human misery."</span><br> +</div> + +<p>So wrote Matthew Arnold. Then there is the sound of wind in the +trees, and the voice of falling waters and rippling streams which +must have fallen upon the ears of our remotest fore-runners as they +do upon our own. These eternal sounds about us take no note of our +brief coming and going, and will be the same when you and I, +Antony, and all the millions that come after us in the world have +returned to dust.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter30"></a> + +<h2>30</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Though I do not myself rank Matthew Arnold among the great prose +writers of England, yet, like all true poets—and he indeed +was one of them,—he wrote excellent English prose.</p> + +<p>It is true that he turned to poetry to express his finest +emotions and thoughts, and he himself alludes to his prose writings +thus: "I am a mere solitary wanderer in search of the light, and I +talk an artless, unstudied, everyday familiar language. But, after +all, this is the language of the mass of the world."</p> + +<p>The chief note of all his teaching was urbanity. "The pursuit of +perfection," he said, "is the pursuit of sweetness and light." +"Culture hates hatred: culture has one great passion—the +passion for sweetness and light."</p> + +<p>This teaching, no doubt, leads to fields of pleasantness and +charm, and not at all to the high places of self-sacrifice, or the +austere peaks of martyrdom. Burning indignation against intolerable +things, fierce denunciation of the cruelties and abominations of +the world find no encouragement or sympathy from this serene, +detached, and therefore somewhat ineffectual, teaching.</p> + +<p>Sweetness and light would never have interfered with the slave +trade, or fiercely fought beside Plimsoll for the load-line on the +sides of ships.</p> + +<p>We did not fight the Germans under the doctrine of sweetness and +light.</p> + +<p>It was a beautiful and edifying adornment for the drawing-room +in times of Victorian self-satisfied peace, but was a tinsel armour +for the battle of life, and entirely futile as a sword for +combating wrong.</p> + +<p>I am not sure that Matthew Arnold would not have called those +who wrathfully slash about them at abominable evils, +Philistines.</p> + +<p>After all, the great men of action and the great writers of the +world have been capable of harbouring great enthusiasms and deep +indignations in their hearts; and these emotions do not emerge from +a "passion for sweetness and light."</p> + +<p>A better doctrine, Antony, is, I think, to try to push things +along cheerfully but strenuously in the right direction wherever +and whenever you can.</p> + +<p>As a writer I think Matthew Arnold's best passage is to be found +in the Preface to his <i>Essays in Criticism</i>:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Oxford. Beautiful city! So venerable, so lovely, so unravaged +by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!</p> + +<p>"There are our young barbarians, all at play!</p> + +<p>"And yet steeped in sentiment as she lies, spreading her gardens +to the moonlight, and whispering from her towers the last +enchantments of the Middle Age, who will deny that Oxford, by her +ineffable charm, keeps ever calling us to the true goal of all of +us, to the ideal, to perfection,—to beauty, in a word, which +is only truth seen from another side?—nearer perhaps than all +the science of Tübingen. Adorable dreamer, whose heart has +been so romantic! who hast given thyself so prodigally, given +thyself to sides and heroes not mine, only never to the +Philistines! home of lost causes, and forsaken beliefs, and +unpopular names, and impossible loyalties!... Apparitions of a day, +what is our puny warfare against the Philistines, compared with the +warfare which this Queen of Romance has been waging against them +for centuries, and will wage after we are gone?"</p> +</div> + +<p>As a man and a companion,<a name='FNanchor_1_8'></a><a href= +'#Footnote_1_8'><sup>[1]</sup></a> if you expected nothing but +delightful humour, brilliant discourse, and urbane outlook upon +everything, few could rival his personal charm; but he would never +really join you in a last ditch to defend the right, or actually +charge with you against the wrong, although in his poem "The Last +Word," while not participating himself in such strenuous doings, he +seems to yield a reluctant admiration to him who does so charge, +and who leaves his "body by the wall."</p> + +<p>Much has happened since Matthew Arnold poured his scorn upon the +unregenerate Philistines; but let us remember, Antony, that +thousands and thousands of these contemned neglecters of sweetness +and light stood unflinchingly and died upon the plains of France +that our country and its freedom should survive.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<a name='Footnote_1_8'></a><a href='#FNanchor_1_8'>[1]</a> +<div class='note'> +<p>See my <i>Memories</i>, pp. 46-52 and 55.</p> +</div> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter31"></a> + +<h2>31</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Like the author of the <i>Peninsular War</i>, Sir William Butler +was great both as a soldier and as a writer. His autobiography +sparkles with humour, irony, and felicitous diction; but it was in +his <i>Life of Gordon of Khartoum</i> that he rose to his full +stature as a contributor to the glory of English prose.</p> + +<p>The spell of Gordon seems to have, as it were, transfigured all +who approached him, and raised them out of themselves. One man +alone, of all those whose lives touched his, has shown that his own +pinched and narrow mediocrity was proof against the radiance of +Gordon's spirit, and has feebly attempted to belittle the soldier +saint for his own justification. But he has failed even to project +a spot upon the sun of Gordon's fame, and he is already forgotten, +while the great soldier's name will endure in the hearts of his +countrymen till England and its people fail.</p> + +<p>If Sir William Butler's final noble periods, which I here +reproduce, do not deeply move him who reads them, then must that +reader have a heart of stone:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"Thus fell in dark hour of defeat a man as unselfish as Sidney, +of courage dauntless as Wolfe, of honour stainless as Outram, of +sympathy wide-reaching as Drummond, of honesty straightforward as +Napier, of faith as steadfast as More. Doubtful indeed is it if +anywhere in the past we shall find figure of knight or soldier to +equal him, for sometimes it is the sword of death that gives to +life its real knighthood, and too often the soldier's end is +unworthy of his knightly life; but with Gordon the harmony of life +and death was complete, and the closing scenes seem to move to +their fulfilment in solemn hush, as though an unseen power watched +over the sequence of their sorrow.</p> + +<p>"Not by the blind hazard of chance was this great tragedy +consummated; not by the discord of men or from the vague opposition +of physical obstacle, by fault of route or length of delay, was +help denied to him. The picture of a wonderful life had to be made +perfect by heroic death. The moral had to be cut deep, and written +red, and hung high, so that its lesson could be seen by all men +above strife and doubt and discord. Nay, the very setting of the +final scenes has to be wrought out in such contrast of colour that +the dullest eye shall be able to read the meaning of it all. For +many a year back this soldier's life has been a protest against our +most cherished teaching. Faith is weakness, we have said. He will +show us it is strength. Reward is the right of service. Publicity +is true fame. Let us go into action with a newspaper correspondent +riding at our elbow, or sitting in the cabin of the ship, has been +our practice. He has told us that the race should be for honour, +not for 'honours,' that we should 'give away our medal,' and that +courage and humility, mercy and strength, should march hand in hand +together. For many a year we have had no room for him in our +councils. Our armies knew him not; and it was only in semi-savage +lands and in the service of remote empires he could find scope for +his genius. Now our councils will be shamed in his service, and our +armies will find no footing in our efforts to reach him. We have +said that the Providence of God was only a calculation of chances; +now for eleven months the amazing spectacle will be presented to +the world of this solitary soldier standing at bay, within thirty +days' travel of the centre of Empire, while the most powerful +kingdom on the earth—the nation whose wealth is as the sands +of the sea, whose boast is that the sun never sets upon its +dominions—is unable to reach him—saving <i>he</i> does +not want—but is unable to reach him even with one message of +regret for past forgetfulness.</p> + +<p>"No; there is something more in all this than mistake of +Executive, or strife of party, or error of Cabinet, or fault of men +can explain. The purpose of this life that has been, the lesson of +this death that must be, is vaster and deeper than these things. +The decrees of God are as fixed to-day as they were two thousand +years ago, but they can be worked to their conclusion by the +weakness of men as well as by the strength of angels.</p> + +<p>"There is a grey frontlet of rock far away in +Strathspey—once the Gordons' home—whose name in bygone +times gave a rallying-call to a kindred clan. The scattered firs +and wind-swept heather on the lone summit of Craig Ellachie once +whispered in Highland clansmen's ear the warcry, 'Stand fast! Craig +Ellachie.' Many a year has gone by since kith of Charles Gordon +last heard from Highland hilltop the signal of battle, but never in +Celtic hero's long record of honour has such answer been sent back +to Highland or to Lowland as when this great heart stopped its +beating, and lay 'steadfast unto death' in the dawn at Khartoum. +The winds that moan through the pine trees on Craig Ellachie have +far-off meanings in their voices. Perhaps on that dark January +night there came a breath from heaven to whisper to the old +Highland rock, 'He stood fast! Craig Ellachie.'</p> + +<p>"The dust of Gordon is not laid in English earth, nor does even +the ocean, which has been named Britannia's realm, hold in 'its +vast and wandering grave' the bones of her latest hero. Somewhere, +far out in the immense desert whose sands so often gave him rest in +life, or by the shores of that river which was the scene of so much +of his labour, his ashes now add their wind-swept atoms to the +mighty waste of the Soudan. But if England, still true to the long +line of her martyrs to duty, keep his memory precious in her +heart—making of him no false idol or brazen image of glory, +but holding him as he was, the mirror and measure of true +knighthood—then better than in effigy or epitaph will his +life be written, and his nameless tomb become a citadel to his +nation. "</p> +</div> + +<p>The statue of Gordon stands in noble reverie in Trafalgar +Square, at the centre of the Empire for whose honour he died.</p> + +<p>In St. Paul's Cathedral he lies in effigy, and engraven upon the +cenotaph can be seen the most splendid epitaph in the world.</p> + +<p>His true greatness has been recorded by Sir William Butler in +resounding and glorious English; and his last great act of +stainless nobility has received a deathless tribute.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +, G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter32"></a> + +<h2>32</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I have now come down, at last, to a great writer of English +prose who is still with us.</p> + +<p>Lord Morley at the present day is, I think, universally +recognised as the greatest living man of letters in the British +Empire; he has crowned a long record of distinguished literary +achievement with his <i>Life of Gladstone</i>, which has taken its +place among the noblest biographies of the world, where it is +destined to remain into the far future acclaimed as a masterpiece. +In his description of the veteran statesman launching in the House +of Commons his great project of Home Rule for Ireland, he has +surprised himself out of his own reserve, and painted the scene for +succeeding generations in colours that can never die:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"No such scene has ever been beheld in the House of Commons. +Members came down at break of day to secure their places; before +noon every seat was marked, and crowded benches were even arrayed +on the floor of the House from the Mace to the Bar. Princes, +ambassadors, great peers, high prelates, thronged the lobbies. The +fame of the orator, the boldness of his exploit, curiosity as to +the plan, poignant anxiety as to the party result, wonder whether a +wizard had at last actually arisen with a spell for casting out the +baleful spirits that had for so many ages made Ireland our torment +and our dishonour—all these things brought together such an +assemblage as no minister before had ever addressed within those +world-renowned walls.</p> + +<p>"The Parliament was new. Many of its members had fought a hard +battle for their seats, and trusted they were safe in the haven for +half a dozen good years to come. Those who were moved by +professional ambition, those whose object was social advancement, +those who thought only of upright public service, the keen party of +men, the men who aspire to office, the men with a past and the men +who looked for a future, all alike found themselves adrift on dark +and troubled waters. The secrets of the Bill had been well kept. +To-day the disquieted host were first to learn what was the great +project to which they would have to say that Aye or No on which for +them and for the State so much would hang.</p> + +<p>"Of the chief comrades or rivals of the minister's own +generation, the strong administrators, the eager and accomplished +debaters, the sagacious leaders, the only survivor now comparable +to him, in eloquence or in influence, was Mr. Bright. That +illustrious man seldom came into the House in those distracted +days; and on this memorable occasion his stern and noble head was +to be seen in dim obscurity.</p> + +<p>"Various as were the emotions in other regions of the House, in +one quarter rejoicing was unmixed. There, at least, was no doubt +and no misgiving. There, pallid and tranquil, sat the Irish leader, +whose hard insight, whose patience, energy, and spirit of command, +had achieved this astounding result, and done that which he had +vowed to his countrymen that he would assuredly be able to do. On +the benches round him genial excitement rose almost to tumult. Well +it might. For the first time since the Union the Irish case was at +last to be pressed in all its force and strength, in every aspect +of policy and of conscience by the most powerful Englishman then +alive.</p> + +<p>"More striking than the audience was the man; more striking than +the multitude of eager onlookers from the shore was the rescuer, +with deliberate valour facing the floods ready to wash him down; +the veteran Ulysses, who, after more than half a century of combat, +service, toil, thought it not too late to try a further 'work of +noble note,' In the hands of such a master of the instrument the +theme might easily have lent itself to one of those displays of +exalted passion which the House had marvelled at in more than one +of Mr. Gladstone's speeches on the Turkish question, or heard with +religious reverence in his speech on the Affirmation Bill in +1883.</p> + +<p>"What the occasion now required was that passion should burn +low, and reasoned persuasion hold up the guiding lamp. An elaborate +scheme was to be unfolded, an unfamiliar policy to be explained and +vindicated. Of that best kind of eloquence which dispenses with +declamation this was a fine and sustained example. There was a +deep, rapid, steady, onflowing volume of arguments, exposition, +exhortation. Every hard or bitter stroke was avoided. Now and again +a fervid note thrilled the ear and lifted all hearts. But political +oratory is action, not words—action, character, will, +conviction, purpose, personality. As this eager muster of men +underwent the enchantment of periods exquisite in their balance and +modulation, the compulsion of his flashing glance and animated +gesture, what stirred and commanded them was the recollection of +national service, the thought of the speaker's mastering purpose, +his unflagging resolution and strenuous will, his strength of thew +and sinew well tried in long years of resounding war, his +unquenched conviction that the just cause can never fail. Few are +the heroic moments in our parliamentary politics, but this was +one."</p> +</div> + +<p>I will not trench upon politics in these letters; but I may +hazard the belief that could those who rejected this noble effort, +by the greatest statesman of the age, to assuage the everlasting +Irish conflict, have looked into the future, few of them but would +have supported it with relief and thanksgiving.</p> + +<p>It is generally perhaps a blessing that the curtain that covers +the future is impenetrable; but in this case, had it been lifted +for us to gaze upon the appalling future, Gladstone's last effort +for the peace of his country would surely not have been permitted +to miscarry.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter33"></a> + +<h2>33</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>Two other living writers I will now commend to you, and then I +shall have done.</p> + +<p>The parents of Mr. Belloc, with a happy prevision, anticipated +by some decades the <i>entente cordiale</i>, and their brilliant +son felicitously manifests in his own person many of the admirable +qualities of both races. In England he is reported to be forcefully +French, and it may be surmised that when in France he is engagingly +British. Fortunately for our literature, it is in the language of +his mother that he has found his expression. Many are the beautiful +utterances scattered through his charming works: two of the most +picturesque deal with the greatness of France; the subject of one +is the Ancient Monarchy, and of the other the Great +Napoleon:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"So perished the French Monarchy. Its dim origins stretched out +and lost themselves in Rome; it had already learnt to speak and +recognised its own nature when the vaults of the Thermæ +echoed heavily to the slow footsteps of the Merovingian kings.</p> + +<p>"Look up the vast valley of dead men crowned, and you may see +the gigantic figure of Charlemagne, his brows level and his long +white beard tangled like an undergrowth, having in his left hand +the globe, and in his right the hilt of an unconquerable sword. +There also are the short strong horsemen of the Robertian House, +half hidden by their leather shields, and their sons before them +growing in vestment and majesty and taking on the pomp of the +Middle Ages; Louis VII., all covered with iron; Philip, the +Conqueror; Louis IX., who alone is surrounded with light: they +stand in a widening, interminable procession, this great crowd of +kings; they loose their armour, they take their ermine on, they are +accompanied by their captains and their marshals; at last, in their +attitude and in their magnificence they sum up in themselves the +pride and the achievement of the French nation.</p> + +<p>"But Time has dissipated what it could not tarnish, and the +process of a thousand years has turned these mighty figures into +unsubstantial things. You may see them in the grey end of darkness, +like a pageant, all standing still. You look again, but with the +growing light, and with the wind that rises before morning, they +have disappeared."</p> +</div> + +<hr style='width: 45%;'> +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"There is a legend among the peasants in Russia of a certain +sombre, mounted figure, unreal, only an outline and a cloud, that +passed away to Asia, to the east and to the north. They saw him +move along their snows, through the long mysterious twilights of +the northern autumn, in silence, with the head bent and the reins +in the left hand loose, following some enduring purpose, reaching +towards an ancient solitude and repose. They say it was +Napoleon.</p> + +<p>"After him there trailed for days the shadows of the soldiery, +vague mists bearing faintly the forms of companies of men. It was +as though the cannon smoke at Waterloo, borne on the light west +wind of that June day, had received the spirits of twenty years of +combat, and had drifted farther and farther during the fall of the +year over the endless plains.</p> + +<p>"But there was no voice and no order. The terrible tramp of the +Guard, and the sound that Heine loved, the dance of the French +drums, was extinguished; there was no echo of their songs, for the +army was of ghosts and was defeated. They passed in the silence +which we can never pierce, and somewhere remote from men they sleep +in bivouac round the most splendid of human swords."</p> +</div> + +<p>Time and circumstances have changed our ancient enemies into our +honoured friends, and the race that fought against us at Waterloo +has cemented its friendship towards us with its blood; and as we +look back over the century that divides us from Waterloo we can now +with Mr. Belloc salute the sombre figure of the defeated +conqueror.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter34"></a> + +<h2>34</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I will now quote to you one other master of splendid +English.</p> + +<p>Not every temporal sovereign of these realms has deserved a +throne among the kings of literature. James the First was a poet of +some merit; Charles the First wrote and spoke with a fine +distinction; Queen Victoria's letters to her subjects were models +of dignified and kindly simplicity; but to King George the Fifth by +the grace of God it has been reserved to give utterance to what I +believe to be the most noble and uplifting address ever delivered +by a king to his people.</p> + +<p>From the day of his accession King George has been confronted +with trials and troubles enough to daunt the stoutest heart, and +none of us can plumb the depth of anguish that must have been his +through the awful years of the Great War. He has been tried and +proved in the fierce fires of adversity, and has emerged ennobled +by pain, and dowered by sorrow with a gift of expression that has +placed him among the masters of the glory of English prose.</p> + +<p>On the 13th day of May 1922 he concluded a tour of the +cemeteries in France at Terlinchthun, where there stands on the +cliffs over-looking the Channel a monument to Napoleon and his +Grand Army, and around it now lie the innumerable English dead.</p> + +<p>Earlier in his pilgrimage Marshal Foch and Lord Haig had in his +presence clasped hands, and the King with a fine gesture had placed +his own right hand upon their clasped ones and said, "Amis +toujours!" We are told that, "going up to the Cross of Sacrifice, +the King looked out over the closely marshalled graves to the sea, +and back towards the woods and fields of the Canche Valley where +Montreuil stands, and seemed reluctant to leave."</p> + +<p>At last he turned, and, standing before the great Cross of +Sacrifice, he spoke from his heart words that those of us, Antony, +who love our country and the glory of its language will cherish +while we live:—</p> + +<div class="blkquot"> +<p>"For the past few days I have been on a solemn pilgrimage in +honour of a people who died for all free men.</p> + +<p>"At the close of that pilgrimage, on which I followed ways +already marked by many footsteps of love and pride and grief, I +should like to send a message to all who have lost those dear to +them in the Great War, and in this the Queen joins me to-day, +amidst these surroundings so wonderfully typical of that +single-hearted assembly of nations and of races which form our +Empire. For here, in their last quarters, lie sons of every portion +of that Empire, across, as it were, the threshold of the Mother +Island which they guarded, that Freedom might be saved in the +uttermost ends of the earth.</p> + +<p>"For this, a generation of our manhood offered itself without +question, and almost without the need of a summons. Those proofs of +virtue, which we honour here to-day, are to be found throughout the +world and its waters—since we can truly say that the whole +circuit of the earth is girdled with the graves of our dead. Beyond +the stately cemeteries of France, across Italy, through Eastern +Europe in well-nigh unbroken chain they stretch, passing over the +holy Mount of Olives itself to the furthest shores of the Indian +and Pacific Oceans—from Zeebrugge to Coronel, from Dunkirk to +the hidden wildernesses of East Africa.</p> + +<p>"But in this fair land of France, which sustained the utmost +fury of the long strife, our brothers are numbered, alas! by +hundreds of thousands.</p> + +<p>"They lie in the keeping of a tried and generous friend, a +resolute and chivalrous comrade-in-arms, who with ready and quick +sympathy has set aside for ever the soil in which they sleep, so +that we ourselves and our descendants may for all time reverently +tend and preserve their resting-places.</p> + +<p>"And here, at Terlinchthun, the shadow of his monument falling +almost across their graves, the greatest of French +soldiers—of all soldiers—stands guard over them. And +this is just, for side by side with the descendants of his +incomparable armies they defended his land in defending their +own.</p> + +<p>"Never before in history have a people thus dedicated and +maintained individual memorials to their fallen, and, in the course +of my pilgrimage, I have many times asked myself whether there can +be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to +come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the +desolation of war. And I feel that, so long as we have faith in +God's purposes, we cannot but believe that the existence of these +visible memorials will eventually serve to draw all peoples +together in sanity and self-control, even as it has already set the +relations between our Empire and our Allies on the deep-rooted +bases of a common heroism and a common agony.</p> + +<p>"Standing beneath this Cross of Sacrifice, facing the great +Stone of Remembrance, and compassed by these sternly simple +headstones, we remember, and must charge our children to remember, +that as our dead were equal in sacrifice, so are they equal in +honour, for the greatest and the least of them have proved that +sacrifice and honour are no vain things, but truths by which the +world lives.</p> + +<p>"Many of the cemeteries I have visited in the remoter and still +desolate districts of this sorely stricken land, where it has not +yet been possible to replace the wooden crosses by headstones, have +been made into beautiful gardens which are lovingly cared for by +comrades of the war.</p> + +<p>"I rejoice I was fortunate enough to see these in the spring, +when the returning pulse of the year tells of unbroken life that +goes forward in the face of apparent loss and wreckage; and I +fervently pray that, both as nations and individuals, we may so +order our lives after the ideals for which our brethren died that +we may be able to meet their gallant souls once more, humbly but +unashamed."</p> +</div> + +<p>Hard indeed must it be for any Englishman whose heart is quick +within his bosom not to feel it beat faster with thanksgiving and +pride as he reads the flawless periods of this glorious speech.</p> + +<p>As the final word of consolation, sanctification, and +benediction, closing the awful agony of the greatest of all wars, +preserve, Antony, this magnificent threnody in your memory +imperishable.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<br> + + +<hr style='width: 65%;'> +<a name="letter35"></a> + +<h2>35</h2> + +<br> + + +<div class="smallcaps">My Dear Antony,</div> + +<p>I have come now to the end of my citations for the present. My +object, Antony, has been to rouse in your heart, if I can, a love, +admiration, and reverence for the wonders to be found in the +treasure-house of English prose literature.</p> + +<p>I have only opened a little door here and there, so that you can +peep in and see the visions of splendour within.</p> + +<p>Some day perhaps, when you have explored for yourself, you may +feel surprised that in these letters I have quoted nothing from Sir +John Eliot, or Addison, or Scott, or Thackeray, or Charles Lamb, or +De Quincey, or Hazlitt, or other kings and princes of style +innumerable. Many, many writers whom I have not quoted in these +letters have adorned everything they touched, but do not seem to me +to reach the snow-line or rise into great and moving eloquence. +Charles Lamb, for example, never descends from his equable and +altogether pleasing level, far above the plain of the commonplace, +but neither does he reach up to the lofty altitudes of the lonely +peaks; and if I began to quote from him, I see no obstacle to my +quoting his entire works! And of Addison, Johnson wrote, "His page +is always luminous, but never blazes in unexpected splendour"; and +he adds, "Whoever wishes to attain an English style, familiar but +not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious, must give his days +and nights to the volumes of Addison."</p> + +<p>In selecting such passages as I have in these letters I have +necessarily followed my own taste, and taste—as I said when I +first began writing to you—is illusive. I could do no more +than cite that which makes my own heart beat faster from a +compelling sense of its nobility and beauty.</p> + +<p>When I was young, Antony, I lived long in my father's house +among his twelve thousand books, with his scholarly mind as my +companion, and his exact memory as my guide; for more than a +quarter of a century since those days I have lived in the more +modest library of my own collecting, and have long learnt how much +fine literature there is that I have never read, and now can never +read. But, Antony, you may not find, in these crowded days, even so +much time for reading, or so much repose for study as I have found, +and therefore it is that I have offered you in these letters the +preferences of my lifetime, even though it has been the lifetime of +one who makes no claim to be a literary authority.</p> + +<p>As you look back at those from whom you have sprung, you will +see that for five generations they have been men of +letters—many distinguished, and one world-famous; and though +I myself am but a puny link in the chain, yet I may perhaps afford +you the opportunity of hitching your wagon by and by to the star +that has for so long ruled the destinies of our house.</p> + +<p>Farewell, then, dear Antony; and if "the dear God who loveth us" +listens to the benedictions of the old upon their children's +children, may He guide and bless you to your life's end.</p> + +<p>Your loving old<br> +G.P.</p> + +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13785 ***</div> +</body> +</html> + diff --git a/13785-h/images/image1.jpg b/13785-h/images/image1.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..a37e8a6 --- /dev/null +++ b/13785-h/images/image1.jpg |
