Have You Read This?

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 565, 18 January 1929, Page 14

Have You Read This?

Sir Arthur Q mil ei-Couch, Professor of English Literature at Cambridge, tecently chose for "The Daily Mail” a series of short passages, the “purple patches’ * oi English prose. It vs hoped that the series, reprinted here, will pleasantly refresh the memories oi some and stir the fresh interest of others. DEATH THE LEVELLER JOHN DONNE. —“LXXX Sermons: Sermon XV'.” John Donne (1573-1631), the son of a Catholic family, entered the Church of England, and, in middle age, look Orders. He became chaplain to James I. and a notable preacher, besides being tie author of several volumes of devotional and philosophical verse. lie was the founder of what Dry den called the metaphysical school of poetry. His sermons exercised, al a critical time, a profound influence on the development of English prose style.

IT COMES EQUALLY to us all, and makes us all equal when it comes. The ashes of an Oak in the Chimney are no Epitaph of that Oak to tell me how high or how large that was; it tells me not what flocks it sheltered while it stood, nor what men it hurt when it fell. The dust of great persons graves is speechless too. it says nothing, it distinguishes nothing: as soon the dust of a wretch whom thou wouldest not, as of a Prince thou couldest not look upon, will trouble thine eyes, if the wind blow it thither; and when a whirlwind hath blown the dust of the Churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again, and to pronounce, This is the Patrician, this is the noble flower, and this the yeomanlv, this the Plebeian bran. So is the death of Jesabel (Jesabel was a Queen) expressed; They shall not 6ay, this is Jesabel; not only not wonder that it is, nor pity that it should be, but they shall not say, they shall not know, This is Jesabel.