Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen ElizabethKingsley, Charles
History
Westward Ho! Or, The Voyages and Adventures of Sir Amyas Leigh, Knight, of Burrough, in the County of Devon, in the Reign of Her Most Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth
Kingsley, Charles
Great Britain -- History -- Elizabeth, 1558-1603 -- Fiction
But, indeed, there is a double anachronism in Sir Piercie; for he does
not even belong to the days of Sidney, but to those worse times which
began in the latter years of Elizabeth, and after breaking her mighty
heart, had full license to bear their crop of fools' heads in the
profligate days of James. Of them, perhaps, hereafter. And in the
meanwhile, let those who have not read “Euphues” believe that, if they
could train a son after the fashion of his Ephoebus, to the great
saving of their own money and his virtue, all fathers, even in these
money-making days, would rise up and call them blessed. Let us
rather open our eyes, and see in these old Elizabeth gallants our own
ancestors, showing forth with the luxuriant wildness of youth all the
virtues which still go to the making of a true Englishman. Let us not
only see in their commercial and military daring, in their political
astuteness, in their deep reverence for law, and in their solemn sense
of the great calling of the English nation, the antitypes or rather
the examples of our own: but let us confess that their chivalry is only
another garb of that beautiful tenderness and mercy which is now, as
it was then, the twin sister of English valor; and even in their
extravagant fondness for Continental manners and literature, let us
recognize that old Anglo-Norman teachableness and wide-heartedness,
which has enabled us to profit by the wisdom and civilization of all
ages and of all lands, without prejudice to our own distinctive national
character.
And so I go to my story, which, if any one dislikes, he has but to turn
the leaf till he finds pasturage which suits him better.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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