SIR,—Miss Edith Sitwell's gentle rebuke to your reviewer in a
recent issue does prompt the reflection that devotion to God, if not of a weak and parasitic literary growth, is and should be expressed in the language of one's own time. Hence the many attempts at a translation of the Scriptures into modern English.
Dr. Donne and Lancelot Andrewes thought God hest addressed in the best language of their period, not in that of earlier ages. Their worship thus gained piquancy and flavour. Miss Sitwell, presumably, does not go through daily life with a seventeenth-century vocabu- lary. Would not the cook find it odd ? Thus when a Miss Sitwell suddenly in the twentieth century (without quotation marks or footnote or apology) speaks in her own person like a seventeenth-century divine, she must not com- plain if her reviewer politely points out the oddity.—Yours faithfully, GEORGE MOOR
Hehden Hey, Hardcastle Craggs, Yorkshire
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