"
Hard indeed must it be for any Englishman whose heart is quick within
his bosom not to feel it beat faster with thanksgiving and pride as he
reads the flawless periods of this glorious speech.
As the final word of consolation, sanctification, and benediction, closing
the awful agony of the greatest of all wars, preserve, Antony, this
magnificent threnody in your memory imperishable.
Your loving old
G.P.
35
MY DEAR ANTONY,
I have come now to the end of my citations for the present. My object,
Antony, has been to rouse in your heart, if I can, a love, admiration,
and reverence for the wonders to be found in the treasure-house of
English prose literature.
I have only opened a little door here and there, so that you can peep in
and see the visions of splendour within.
Some day perhaps, when you have explored for yourself, you may feel
surprised that in these letters I have quoted nothing from Sir John Eliot,
or Addison, or Scott, or Thackeray, or Charles Lamb, or De Quincey, or
Hazlitt, or other kings and princes of style innumerable. Many, many
writers whom I have not quoted in these letters have adorned
everything they touched, but do not seem to me to reach the snow-line
or rise into great and moving eloquence. Charles Lamb, for example,
never descends from his equable and altogether pleasing level, far
above the plain of the commonplace, but neither does he reach up to
the lofty altitudes of the lonely peaks; and if I began to quote from him,
I see no obstacle to my quoting his entire works! And of Addison,
Johnson wrote, "His page is always luminous, but never blazes in
unexpected splendour"; and he adds, "Whoever wishes to attain an
English style, familiar but not coarse, and elegant but not ostentatious,
must give his days and nights to the volumes of Addison.
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