The Glory of English Prose

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Title: The Glory of English Prose
Letters to My Grandson
Author: Stephen Coleridge
Release Date: October 18, 2004 [EBook #13785]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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The Glory of English Prose
Letters to my Grandson
[Illustration: STEPHEN COLERIDGE?FROM THE PORTRAIT BY BERNARD PARTRIDGE IN THE POSSESSION?OF THE MESS OF THE SOUTH WALES CIRCUIT]
The Glory of English Prose?Letters to My Grandson
By?The Hon. Stephen Coleridge
"The chief glory of every people arises from its authors"?Dr. Johnson
G.P. Putnam's Sons?New York and London?The Knickerbocker Press?1922
1922?by?Stephen Coleridge?Made in the United States of America
PREFACE
If you have read, gentle reader, the earlier series of _Letters to my Grandson on the World about Him_, you are to understand that in the interval between those letters and these, Antony has grown to be a boy in the sixth form of his public school.
It has not been any longer necessary therefore to study an extreme simplicity of diction in these letters.
My desire has been to lead him into the most glorious company in the world, in the hope that, having early made friends with the noblest of human aristocracy, he will never afterwards admit to his affection and intimacy anything mean or vulgar.
Many young people who, like Antony, are not at all averse from the study of English writers, stand aghast at the vastness of the what seems so gigantic an enterprise.
In these letters I have acted as pilot for a first voyage through what is to a boy an uncharted sea, after which I hope and believe he will have learned happily to steer for himself among the islands of the blest.
S.C.
THE FORD,?CHOBHAM.
CONTENTS
1. ON GOOD AND BAD STYLE IN PROSE
2. ON THE GLORY OF THE BIBLE
3. SIR WALTER RALEIGH
4. ACT OF PARLIAMENT, 1532
5. THE JUDICIOUS HOOKER AND SHAKESPEARE
6. LORD CHIEF JUSTICE CREWE
7. SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND MILTON
8. JEREMY TAYLOR
9. EVELYN'S DIARY
10. JOHN BUNYAN
11. DR. JOHNSON
12. EDMUND BURKE
13. GIBBON
14. HENRY GRATTAN AND MACAULAY
15. LORD ERSKINE
16. ROBERT HALL
17. LORD PLUNKET
18. ROBERT SOUTHEY
19. WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
20. LORD BROUGHAM
21. SIR WILLIAM NAPIER
22. RICHARD SHEIL
23. THOMAS CARLYLE
24. HENRY NELSON COLERIDGE
25. CARDINAL NEWMAN
26. LORD MACAULAY AGAIN
27. PRESIDENT LINCOLN
28. JOHN RUSKIN
29. JAMES ANTHONY FROUDE
30. MATTHEW ARNOLD
31. SIR WILLIAM BUTLER
32. LORD MORLEY
33. HILAIRE BELLOC
34. KING GEORGE THE FIFTH
35. CONCLUSION
LETTERS TO MY GRANDSON
1
MY DEAR ANTONY,
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