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MY DEAR ANTONY,

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