The Glory of English Prose | Page 9

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 massacre, 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 encompass
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 passing from out the austere halls of Justice to
lovely fields full of flowers.
Your and my great kinsman, Coleridge, pronounced 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.
His parables, though sometimes perhaps almost of set purpose fanciful,
are always full of beauty.
How can anyone withhold sympathy and affection from the writer of
such a passage as this:--
"But as, when the sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he
first opens a little eye of heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness,
and gives light to a cock, and calls up the lark to matins, and by and by
gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the eastern hills, thrusting
out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Moses
when he was forced to wear a veil because himself had seen the face of
God; and still, while a man tells the story, the sun gets up higher, till he
shows a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day,
under a cloud often, and sometimes weeping great and little showers,
and sets quickly, so is a man's reason and his life."
Again:--
"No man can tell but he that loves his children, how many delicious
accents make a man's heart dance in the pretty conversation of those
dear pledges; their childishness, their stammering, their little angers,
their innocence, their imperfections, their necessities, are so many little
emanations of joy and comfort to him that delights in their persons and
society; but he that loves not his wife and children, feeds a lioness at
home, and broods a nest of sorrows; and blessing itself cannot make
him happy; so that all the commandments of God enjoining a man to
'love his wife' are nothing but so many necessities and capacities of joy.
'She that is loved, is safe; and he that loves, is joyful,' Love is a union
of all things excellent; it contains in it proportion and satisfaction, and
rest and confidence."
Again:--

"So have I seen a lark rising from his bed of grass, and soaring upwards,
singing as he rises, and hopes to get to heaven, and climb above the
clouds; but the poor bird was beaten back with the loud sighings of an
eastern wind, and his motion made irregular and inconstant, descending
more at every breath of the tempest, than it could recover by the
liberation and frequent weighing of his wings; till the little creature was
forced to sit down and pant, and stay till the storm was over; and then it
made a prosperous flight, and did rise and sing, as if it had learned
music and motion from an angel, as he passed sometimes through the
air, about his ministries here below; so is the prayer of a good man."
Again:--
"I am fallen into the hands of publicans and sequestrators, and they
have taken all from