"Empire"!

But people indifferent to the dictates of mercy are not likely to have
much reverence for words, however august.

Henry VIII., we may be sure, would never have allowed these solemn
words to be used by people with something to sell, or by scientific
disease-mongers.

They were great people who could draw up their statutes in splendid
passages of sustained nobility.

Let us, Antony, salute them across the centuries.

Your loving old
G.P.

5

MY DEAR ANTONY,

One of the great creators of English prose who lived at the same time
as Ralegh and Shakespeare was Richard Hooker, who is generally
known as "the Judicious Hooker."

He was born in Devon, two years after Ralegh, in 1554.

He must very early in life have made his mark as a man of learning and
piety, for when he was only thirty-one he was made Master of the
Temple. The controversies in which he there found himself involved
induced him to retire when he was only thirty-seven into the country,
for the purpose of writing his famous books, _The Laws of Ecclesiastical
Polity_.

It is the first great book on the English Church, and it is full of
magnificent prose. It was divided into eight parts; and in the first one,
before he had got far into it, he penned the exclamatory description of
law which will live as long as the language:--

"Her seat is the bosom of God, her voice the harmony of the world;
all things in heaven and earth do her homage, the very least as
feeling her care, the greatest as not exempted from her power."

And in the same first part will be found a passage on the Deity which
portrays faithfully for us the humble wisdom of both the man and his
age:--

"Dangerous it were for the feeble brain of man to wade far into
the doings of the Most High; whom although to know be life, and
joy to make mention of His name; yet our soundest knowledge is to
know that we know Him not as indeed He is, neither can know Him;
and our safest eloquence concerning Him is our silence, when we
confess without confession that His glory is inexplicable, His
greatness above our capacity to reach. He is above and we upon
earth; therefore it behoveth our words to be wary and few."

Shakespeare was born ten years later than Hooker, in 1564, and his
share in founding English prose as we know it is, of course, not
comparable with that of Hooker, for of Shakespeare's prose there
remains for us but little.