The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson by Stephen Coleridge
page 15 of 149 (10%)
page 15 of 149 (10%)
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3 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 |
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