The Glory of English Prose Part 2

Those men never became hysterical or lost their perfect self-control.

The deeper the emotion of the writer the more manifest became the n.o.ble mastery of himself.

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 n.o.ble language that is truly magnifical--to use the old Bible word.

"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 G.o.d while he is young, that the fear of G.o.d may grow up in him.

Then will G.o.d be a Husband unto you and a Father unto him; a Husband and a Father which can never be taken from you.

"I cannot write much. G.o.d knows how hardly I stole this time when all sleep; and it is time to separate my thoughts from the world.

"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.

"The Everlasting, Infinite, Powerful and Inscrutable G.o.d, that Almighty G.o.d 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 G.o.d hold you both in His Arms.

"Written with the dying hand of, sometime thy husband, but now alas! overthrown, yours that was, but now not my own.

"WALTER RALEGH."

Sir Walter Ralegh, long before he came to his untimely end, had written in his great _History of the World_ a wonderful pa.s.sage 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:--

"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.

"They neglect the advice of G.o.d, 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 G.o.d, with all the Words of His Law, promises and threats, doth not infuse.

"Death which hateth and destroyeth man is believed; G.o.d 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-pa.s.sed happiness.

"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 gla.s.s before the eyes of the most beautiful and makes them see therein their deformity and rottenness, and they acknowledge it.

"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."

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.

Your loving old G.P.

4

MY DEAR ANTONY,

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.

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!

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.

In the twenty-fourth year of the great Henry, the Act denying and forbidding any jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome in England was pa.s.sed.

This Act, depriving the Pope of all power in England, marked a turning-point in history.

It is headed with these words:--

THE PRE-EMINENCE, POWER, AND AUTHORITY OF THE KING OF ENGLAND.

1532.

"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 G.o.d a natural and humble obedience; he being also inst.i.tute and furnished by the goodness and sufferance of Almighty G.o.d 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 t.i.thes, 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."

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"!

But people indifferent to the dictates of mercy are not likely to have much reverence for words, however august.

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.

They were great people who could draw up their statutes in splendid pa.s.sages of sustained n.o.bility.

Let us, Antony, salute them across the centuries.

Your loving old G.P.

5

MY DEAR ANTONY,

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."

He was born in Devon, two years after Ralegh, in 1554.

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, _The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity_.

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:--

"Her seat is the bosom of G.o.d, 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."

And in the same first part will be found a pa.s.sage on the Deity which portrays faithfully for us the humble wisdom of both the man and his age:--

"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."

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 _Hamlet_ we have this sudden pa.s.sage:--

"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.

"What a piece of work is man! How n.o.ble 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 G.o.d! the beauty of the world! the paragon of animals! And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust?"