On the Art of Writing - Lectures delivered in the University of Cambridge 1913-1914 by Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
page 119 of 236 (50%)
page 119 of 236 (50%)
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'So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality...' 'Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be contemned.' 'The king's daughter is all glorious within: her clothing is of wrought gold.' 'Thine eyes shall see the King in his beauty: they shall behold the land that is very far off.' 'And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land.' When a nation has achieved this manner of diction, those rhythms for its dearest beliefs, a literature is surely established. Just there I find the effective miracle, making the blind to see, the lame to leap. Wyclif, Tyndale, Coverdale and others before the forty-seven had wrought. The Authorised Version, setting a seal on all, set a seal on our national style, thinking and speaking. It has cadences homely and sublime, yet so harmonises them that the voice is always one. Simple men--holy and humble men of heart like Isaak Walton or Bunyan--have their lips touched and speak to the homelier tune. Proud men, scholars,--Milton, Sir Thomas Browne--practice the rolling Latin sentence; but upon the rhythms of our Bible they, too, fall back. 'The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs.' 'Acquaint thyself with the |
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