The Glory of English Prose: Letters to My GrandsonColeridge, Stephen
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The Glory of English Prose: Letters to My Grandson
Coleridge, Stephen
Coleridge, Stephen, 1854-1936; English language -- Great Britain -- Style; English prose literature -- History and criticism
"A second man I honour, and still more highly: him who is seen
toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but
the bread of life. Is not he too in his duty; endeavouring towards
inward harmony; revealing this, by act or by word, through all his
outward endeavours, be they high or low? Highest of all, when his
outward and his inward endeavour are one: when we can name him
artist; not earthly craftsman only, but inspired thinker, who with
heaven-made implement conquers heaven for us! If the poor and
humble toil that we have food, must not the high and glorious toil
for him in return, that he have light, have guidance, freedom,
immortality? These two, in all their degrees, I honour; all else
is chaff and dust, which let the wind blow whither it listeth.
"Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities
united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man's
wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest. Sublimer in this
world know I nothing than a peasant saint, could such now anywhere
be met with. Such a one will take thee back to Nazareth itself;
thou wilt see the splendour of heaven spring forth from the
humblest depths of earth, like a light shining in great darkness."
_Sartor Resartus_ has long taken its place among the greatest prose
works of the nineteenth century, and it is a strange commentary on this
mandate to us all to "produce, produce!" to find that for eleven years
Carlyle could find no publisher who would give it in book form to the
world!
It is a solemn reflection to think that there may be many books of
eloquence and splendour that have never seen the light of publicity.
Publishers concern themselves less with what is finely written than with
what will best sell; and in their defence it may be acceded that some of
the masterpieces of literature have at their first appearance before the
world fallen dead from the press.
The first edition of FitzGerald's _Omar Khayyám_, issued at one
shilling, was totally unrecognised, and copies of it might have been
bought for twopence in the trays and boxes of trash on the pavement
outside old bookshops!
But if once a work is published, time will with almost irresistible force
place it ultimately in the station it deserves in the literature of the
world.
Instant acceptance not seldom preludes final rejection. In the middle of
the last century Martin Tupper's _Proverbial Philosophy_ garnished
every drawing-room table; and now, where is it?
Your loving old
G.P.
_P.S._--Do not look for the passage on Marie Antoinette in the _French
Revolution_, for you will not find it there, but in the "Essay of the
Diamond Necklace."
24
MY DEAR ANTONY,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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