They are still talking. They have long ago
left off thinking. They talk about the loyalty of workmen to their
employers, and God knows what rubbish; and the first small certainty about
the reverend gentleman whose sentence I have quoted is that his brain
stopped working as a clock stops, years and years ago.
Second, consider the quality of the religious literature! These people
are always telling us that the English translated Bible is sufficient
training for anyone in noble and appropriate diction; and so it is. Why,
then, are they not trained? They are always telling us that Bunyan, the
rude Midland tinker, is as much worth reading as Chaucer or Spenser; and
so he is. Why, then, have they not read him? I cannot believe that
anyone who had seen, even in a nightmare of the nursery, Apollyon
straddling over the whole breadth of the way could really write like that
about a cigarette. By the help of God, they wanted this cigarette
business stopped. Therefore, with angels and archangels and the whole
company of Heaven, with St. Michael, smiter of Satan and Captain of the
Chivalry of God, with all the ardour of the seraphs and the flaming
patience of the saints, we will have this cigarette business stopped.
Where has all the tradition of the great religious literatures gone to
that a man should come on such a bathos with such a bump?
Thirdly, of course, there is the lack of imaginative proportion, which
rises into a sort of towering blasphemy.
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