MY DEAR ANTONY,

You will have seen from the extracts I have already quoted to you of
the writers of the Elizabethan age that the style of all of them
possesses something large and resonant, something that may be said
to constitute the "grand style" in prose; and this quite naturally without
effort, and without the slightest touch of affectation.

A great writer who came immediately after the Elizabethans--namely,
Sir Thomas Browne, who lived from 1605 to 1682--displays the
development in his style of something less simple and more precious
than ruled in the former generation.

It is difficult to select any passage from his works where all is so good.
He was curious and exact in his choice of words and commanded a wide
vocabulary. There is deliberate ingenuity in the framing of his
sentences, which arrests attention and markedly distinguishes his style.
His _Urn Burial_, in spite of its elaboration, reaches a grave and solemn
splendour.

The fifth chapter, which begins by speaking of the dead who have
"quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests,"
rises to a very noble elevation as English prose.

Here I quote one paragraph of it, characteristic of the whole:--

"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares
with memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly