John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2)Shorthouse, J. H. (Joseph Henry)
History
John Inglesant: A Romance (Volume 2 of 2)
Shorthouse, J. H. (Joseph Henry)
Great Britain -- History -- Charles I, 1625-1649 -- Fiction; Religious fiction
"I have nothing to say of the Society but what is good. It has ever been
most tender and parental to me. I shall go away with nothing but
sadness and affection in my heart; with nothing but gratitude towards
you, Father, with nothing but reverence towards this city—the Mother of
the World."
*CHAPTER XIX.*
For a long time nothing was found among the papers from which these
memoirs have been compiled relative to Mr. Inglesant’s life subsequent
to his return to England; but at last the following imperfect letter was
found, which is here given as containing all the information on the
subject which at present is known to exist.
The date, with the first part of the letter, is torn off. The first
perfect line is given. The spelling has been modernized throughout.
The superscription is as follows:—
Mr. Anthony Paschall,
Physician,
London,
from his friend,
Mr. Valentine Lee,
Chirurgeon,
Of Reading.
From a certain tone in parts of the letter it would seem that the writer
was one of those who gave cause for the accusation of scepticism brought
in those days against the medical profession generally.
* * * * * that vine, laden with grapes worked in gold and precious
stones, after the manner of Phrygian work, which, according to Josephus,
Tacitus, and other writers, adorned the Temple at Jerusalem, and was
seen of many when that Temple was destroyed; a manifest continuance of
the old Eastern worship of Bacchus, so dear to the human fraility. As
says the poet Anacreon, "Make me, good Vulcan, a deep bowl and carve on
it neither Charles’s wain, nor the sad Orion, but carve me out a vine
with its swelling grapes, and Cupid, Bacchus, and Bathillus pressing
them together." For it is a gallant philosophy, and the deepest wisdom,
which, under the shadow of talismans and austere emblems, wears the
colours of enjoyment and of life.
Methinks if the Puritans of the last age had known that the same word in
Latin means both worship and the culture of polite life, they would not
have condemned both themselves and us to so many years of shadowy gloom
and of a morose antipathy to all delight. And though they will
perchance retort upon me that the same word in the Greek meaneth both
worship and bondage, yet I shall reply that it was a service of love and
pleasure—a service in which all the beauties of earth were called upon
to aid, and in which the Deity was best pleased by the happiness of His
creatures, whose every faculty of delight had been fully husbanded and
trained. In these last happy days, since his gracious Majesty’s return,
we have seen a restoration of a cheerful gaiety, and adorning of men’s
lives, when painting and poetry, and, beyond all, music, have smoothed
the rough ways and softened the hard manners of men.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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