P. 289. Shakespeare.—Also in a later scene of the same play:—'Thou hast most traitorously corrupted the youth of the realm in erecting a grammar-school; and whereas, before, our forefathers had no other books but the score and the tally, thou hast caused printing to be used; and, contrary to the king, his crown, and dignity, thou hast built a paper-mill. It will be proved to thy face that thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb, and such abominable words as no Christian ear can endure to hear.'
P. 292. Wesley.—'Next morning he was still better: ... he desired to be drawn into the library, and placed by the central window, that he might look down upon the Tweed. Here he expressed a wish that I should read to him, and when I asked from what book, he said—"Need you ask? There is but one."'—J. G. Lockhart. Life of Sir Walter Scott.
'It is our duty to live among books, especially to live by ONE BOOK, and a very old one.'—John Henry Newman in Tracts for the Times.
P. 296. De Vere.—Addison speaks of Horace and Pindar as showing, when confronted with the Psalms, 'an absurdity and confusion of style,' and 'a comparative poverty of imagination'.
Coleridge has left on record his opinion that, 'after reading Isaiah or St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, Homer and Virgil are disgustingly tame to me, and Milton himself scarcely tolerable.'
Milton's own words may be recalled: 'There are no songs comparable to the songs of Sion; no orations equal to those of the Prophets.'
P. 296. Swift.—Compare Cowper in Hope:—
In her own light arrayed,
See mercy's grand apocalypse displayed!
The sacred book no longer suffers wrong,
Bound in the fetters of an unknown tongue;
But speaks with plainness, art could never mend,
What simplest minds can soonest comprehend.
Macaulay described the Bible as 'a book which, if everything else in our language should perish, would alone suffice to show the whole extent of its beauty and power'.