Stoical people do not know the wealth of chaste language stored up
within the covers of "The Hymnary." A rare musician-poet is needed
to resolve its pulpy flavour and discipline to the polemics of common
life; whilst one, a connoisseur, would readily congratulate the
sanguine, sensible, and all-seeing management, as regards to authors
of words, indices of composers, indices of metres, metronome marks,
which heralds and places it, in respect of completeness, ahead of all
contemporaneous editions.
J. ATWOOD.SLATER,
_Medallist & Premium Holder of the Royal Academy of Arts, London._
4, Hill Side, Cotham Hill, Bristol,
_Epiphany, 1903._
_LITERATURE._
_To the Editor of_ THE BIRMINGHAM GAZETTE.
_March_, 1903.
Sir,--Touched by a virtuous sense that a noble writer has passed from
the central and celestial sphere of his vocation, and discharging the
offices of respect voluntarily admitted as a literary admirer, with
sympathy in a bruised state of liquefaction, I maintain that the
season for uttering a few words is clearly at hand, and should be
turned to the advantage of retrospect.
Being bred of a generation which has read, with a spirit attuned
to the pleasant influences of an Academic and a Saracenic art, the
writings of John Henry Shorthouse, and ever discovering them to
contain philosophic importance and pyschologic expression decidedly
above the astuteness and ability of average writers; and having
usually in them remarked wisdom, council and knowledge reminiscent
of the inspired logicial writers and divines of the law-given
Testaments; in point of enquiry, I am summarily induced to champion
the belief that the psychologic, emphatic style adopted by the writer,
with the success in high quarters attendant the disposal of his
works, has not, convincingness being the indicator, been reached, nor
surpassed.
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