the world.

All the truly great writers of English speak with simplicity from
their hearts, they all evince a spirit of unaffected reverence, they
all teach us to look up and not down, and by the nobility of their
works which have penetrated into every home where letters are
cultivated, they have done an incalculable service in forming and
sustaining the high character of our race.

Clever flippant writers may do a trifling service here and there by
ridiculing the pompous and deflating the prigs, but there is no
permanence in such work, unless--which is seldom the case--it is totally
devoid of personal vanity.

Very little such service is rendered when it emanates from a writer who
announces himself as equal if not superior to Shakespeare, and
embellishes his lucubrations with parodies of the creeds.

"A Gentleman with a Duster," has in his "Glass of Fashion" shown us
that the Society depicted in the books of Colonel Repington and Mrs.
Asquith is not the true and great Society that sustains England in its
noble station among civilised peoples, and we may be sure that neither
do these books in the faintest degree represent the true and living
literature of the times. They will pass away and be forgotten as utterly
as are the fashion plates and missing-word competitions of ten years
ago.

Therefore, Antony, be sure that the famous and living literature of
England, that has survived all the shocks of time and changes of
modern life, is the best and properest study for a man to fit him for
life, to refine his taste, to aggravate his wisdom, and consolidate
his character.

Your loving old
G.P.

[Footnote 1: King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.]

2

MY DEAR ANTONY,

I alluded, in my first letter to you about English literature, to the
necessity of your learning from the beginning the wide distinction
between what is good and what is bad style.

I do not know a better instance of a display of the difference between
what is fine style and what is not, than may be made by putting side by
side almost any sentence from the old authorised translation of the
Bible and the same sentence from _The Bible in Modern Speech_.

I will just put two quotations side by side:--

"Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not,
neither do they spin: and yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in
all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."

"Learn a lesson from the wild lilies. Wa