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.
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.
It blends the classic purity of Greek and the stately severity of Latin
with the sanguine passions and noble emotions of our race.
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.
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.
Those men never became hysterical or lost their perfect self-control.
The deeper the emotion of the writer the more manifest became the
noble 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 noble 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
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.
"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.
"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 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.
"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 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:--
"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 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.
"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.
"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.
"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.
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