"
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
passages of sustained nobility.
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_.
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