TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18088, 12 May 1922, Page 6

TOTAL ABSTINENCE.

) ; * " Q " AND THE WESLEYANS. 5 SIX TEETOTAL POETS. [raoic otrs own cohhespokdeut. ] LONDON, March 24. Will the W«sleyan president name six great poets and six critics who have been total abstainers ? Sir A. Quiller-Couch (" Q ") challenged ■ on tha subject of total abstinence and its effect on literature, by the president of the Wesleyans, has not only answered the challenge, but has, in hia turn, thrown down the gauntlet as above. The challenge to " Q '* was:—" Am I, because I am a teetotaller, cut an from understanding all that is goed to understand in Swift or in other writers ? Is Shakespeare a closed book to me because I am a total abstainer " Yes," answers Sir Arthur"-Quiller-Ceuch. "I do hold that a total abstainer, and mora particuhirly a lifelong abstainer, is, in the nature of things, imperfectly equipped tor high literature, because high literature, both in| its creation and its full enjoyment, dsmands total' manhood, of which a tecVi,';al manhood 13 obviously a modificatior- I speak only of literature because that, and not omniscience, is the one worldly business in which I can pretend to any competence; but I might widen my position to a national one and ask what 1 ind of civilisation our one positively teetotal nation in Europe—tha Turk—has written in literature and in Armenian. "My position is that man is in this world to jsnjoy all that this world can give, so that he use it temperately; that temptation to excess inheres in every pleasure, and that a man' 3 business is to understand this and regulate bis life j accordingly. On this point I invite tha president's attention to two passages from the great Puritan Milton. The" first is the conclusion of his sonnet to Mr. Lawrence : I What aeat repaet shall feast us. Ugh*, and i choice. ; Of att:c taste, that wine, ones we may rise 1 lo hear tka lute well touched, or artfnl \ vcaoo Warble launortal notes mid Tuscan sir; He who, 011 these delights can judca and spare. To interpose them oft is not unwiao. " Spare to interpose them oft "—that, of course, means refrain from indulging too often. The second is from ' Areopagitica': " 'I cannot praise a fugitive and cloist* ered virtue unexereis'd and unbreath'd, that never sallies out and sees her adversary; bdt slinks out of the race, whisni that immortal garland is to be run for, not without dust and heat.' " In short, the man who never sallies out and understands his adversary, though :t be drink, caunot win the .carland." Sir Arthur concluded: "Will tho president, as a minister of religion, explain why, in his opinion: Christ gladdened the feast by turning water into wine; why the Son of Man cams eating and drinking, and thereby incurred the condemnation of tho uncou' guid as a ' wine-bibber'; why, at the last supper, did He take the cup and command us all to drink wine in memory of Him ?" j j ! j j | i