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.
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.
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.
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.
"We have long preserved our constitution," said Dr. Johnson; "let us
make some struggles for our language."
There is no need to be priggish or fantastic in our choice of words or
phrases.
Simple old words are just as good as any that can be selected, if you
use them in their proper sense and place.
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.
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.
On the 30th of June, 1921, in the _Times_ In Memoriam column there
was an entry:--
"To the undying memory of officers, non-commissioned officers and
men of the 9th and 10th battalions of the K.O.Y.L.I.[1] who were killed
in the attack on Fricourt in the first battle of the Somme"; and below it
there were placed these splendid words:--
"Gentlemen, when the barrage lifts."
In February of 1913 news reached England of the death, after reaching
the South Pole, of four explorers, Captain Scott, their leader,
among them.
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."
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:--
"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."
All this was done, said, and written, very nobly by all concerned.
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:--
"He gave his strength to the weak, his substance to the poor, his
sympathy to the suffering, his heart to God."
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
Your loving old
G.P.
[Footnote 1: King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.]
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