The Glory of English Prose Part 3

And the most beautiful letter in the world is that written by Antonio to Ba.s.sanio in _The Merchant of Venice_. When it is remembered that it was out of his friends.h.i.+p for Ba.s.sanio that Antonio entered into his bond with Shylock, the supreme exquisiteness of the few words from friend to friend render this letter unsurpa.s.sable:--

"Sweet Ba.s.sanio, my s.h.i.+ps 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."

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!"

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 surpa.s.sed the n.o.ble utterances of all his wonderful contemporaries.

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.

Your loving old G.P.

6

MY DEAR ANTONY,

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.

Much n.o.ble prose delivered from the bench down the centuries has been lost for ever, for the judges of England have often been gentlemen of taste, scholars.h.i.+p, and eloquence. I have found one very splendid pa.s.sage that has somehow survived the wrecks of nearly four hundred years.

Lord Chief Justice Crewe, who became Chief Justice of England in 1624, delivered in the case of the Earl of Oxford the following n.o.ble tribute to the great house of De Vere:--

"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 n.o.ble 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 t.i.tle. I find in all this time but two attainders of this n.o.ble family, and those in stormy and tempestuous time, when the government was unsettled, and the kingdom in compet.i.tion. 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 n.o.bleness, but his affection stands to the continuance of so n.o.ble 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, _finis rerum_,--and end of names and dignities, and whatsoever is _terrene_; 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 G.o.d."

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.

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 n.o.ble 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.

Nothing is more ridiculous and cheap than to sneer at honourable descent from famous ancestors; it divertingly ill.u.s.trates the fable of the sour grapes.

Your loving old G.P.

7

MY DEAR ANTONY,

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 const.i.tute the "grand style" in prose; and this quite naturally without effort, and without the slightest touch of affectation.

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.

It is difficult to select any pa.s.sage 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 _Urn Burial_, in spite of its elaboration, reaches a grave and solemn splendour.

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 n.o.ble elevation as English prose.

Here I quote one paragraph of it, characteristic of the whole:--

"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 repet.i.tions. 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 pa.s.sed selves, make acc.u.mulation 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."

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 cla.s.sic in its form. His _Samson Agonistes_ is perhaps the finest example of a play written in English after the manner of the Greek dramas.

Milton wrote _The Areopagitica_ 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.

The Areopagitae were judges at Athens in its more flouris.h.i.+ng time, who sat on Mars Hill and made decrees and pa.s.sed sentences which were delivered in public and commanded universal respect.

I will quote one of the finest pa.s.sages in this great and splendid utterance:--

"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.

"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, G.o.d's image; but he who destroys a good book kills reason itself; kills the Image of G.o.d 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.

"'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.

"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 ma.s.sacre, 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."

This is a fine defence of the inviolability of a good and proper book.

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.

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 encompa.s.s groceries.

Your loving old G.P.

8

MY DEAR ANTONY,

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.

From the grave and august periods of Milton to the sweet beauty of Jeremy Taylor is as the pa.s.sing from out the austere halls of Justice to lovely fields full of flowers.

Your and my great kinsman, Coleridge, p.r.o.nounced Jeremy Taylor to be the most eloquent of all divines; and Coleridge was a great critic.

Indeed, there seems to dwell permanently in Jeremy Taylor's mind a compelling sweetness and serenity.