Books and reading -- Great Britain; English literature -- History and criticism
example even of Spanish cruelty; we turn loose these savage
hell-hounds against our brethren and countrymen in America, of
the same language, laws, liberties, and religion, endeared to
us by every tie that should sanctify humanity....
My lords, I am old and weak, and at present unable to say more;
but my feelings and indignation were too strong to have said
less. I could not have slept this night in my bed, nor reposed
my head on my pillow, without giving this vent to my eternal
abhorrence of such preposterous and enormous principles.
That was Chatham. For Wolfe--he, as you know, was ever reading
the classics even on campaign: as Burke again carried always a
Virgil in his pocket. _Abeunt studia in mores._ Moreover can we
separate Chatham's Roman morality from Chatham's language in the
passage I have just read? No: we cannot. No one, being evil, can
speak good things with that weight; _'for out of the abundance of
the heart the mouth speaketh.'_ We English (says Wordsworth)
We must be free or die, who speak the tongue
That Shakespeare spake....
You may criticise Chatham's style as too consciously Ciceronian.
But has ever a Parliamentary style been invented which conveys a
nobler gravity of emotion? `Buskined'?--yes: but the style of a
man. 'Mannered'?--yes, but in the grand manner. 'Conscious'?--
yes, but of what? Conscious of the dignity a great man owes to
himself, and to the assembly he addresses. He conceives that
assembly as 'the British Senate'; and, assuming, he communicates
that high conception. The Lords feel that they are listening as
Senators, since it is only thus a Senate should be addressed, as
nothing less than a Senate should be addressed thus.
Let me read you a second passage; of _written_ prose:
Laodameia died; Helen died; Leda, the beloved of Jupiter,
went before. It is better to repose in the earth betimes than
to sit up late; better, than to cling pertinaciously to what
we feel crumbling under us, and to protract an inevitable
fall. We may enjoy the present while we are insensible of
infirmity and decay: but the present, like a note in music,
is nothing but as it appertains to what is past and what is
to come. There are no fields of amaranth on this aide of the
grave; there are no voices, O Rhodope! that are not soon mute,
however tuneful; there is no name, with whatever emphasis of
passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at
last[3].
Latin--all Latin--down to its exquisite falling close! And I say
to you, Gentlemen, that passages such as these deserve what
Joubert claimed of national monuments, _Ce sont les crampons qui
unissent une generation a une autre. Conservez ce qu'ont vu vos
peres,_ 'These are the clamps that knit one generation to
another. Cherish those things on which your fathers' eyes have
looked.'
_Abeunt studia in mores._
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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