As
long as modern England remains what we know it, and follows the lines of
change which we see it following, the Book will necessarily decline more
and more, and we must make up our minds to it.
Of other evil tendencies of our time, one can say of some that they are
obviously mending, of others that such and such an applicable remedy
would mend them. Our public architecture is certainly getting better; so
is our painting. Our gross and increasing contempt of self-government
(to take quite another sphere) is curable by one or two simple reforms
in procedure, registration, the expenses of election, and voting at the
polls, which would restore the House of Commons to life, and give it
power to express English will. But a regard for, a cultivation of, above
all a sinking of wealth upon, English Letters is past praying for. We
must wait until the tide changes; we can do nothing, and the waiting
will be long.
Jose Maria de Heredia
The French have a phrase "la beaute du verbe" by which they would
express a something in the sound and in the arrangement of words which
supplements whatever mere thought those words were intended to express.
It is evident that no definition of this beauty can be given, but it is
also evident that without it letters would not exist. How it arises we
cannot explain, yet the process is familiar to us in everything we do
when we are attempting to fulfil an impulse towards whatever is good.
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