ABSTINENCE AND ART.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 18090, 15 May 1922, Page 5

ABSTINENCE AND ART.

Sir, —It must be a terrible shock to teetotallers to learn from Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (vide Friday's Herald) the depth of intellectual imbecility to which they have brought themselves. " Imperfectly equipped for high literature," ' cut off from understanding all that is good to understand in Swift or crther writers, and with Shakespeare become " a closed book " to them; what a dismal lot. is theirs, what a barren soil are they cultivating ! Speaking for myself, as a total abstainer of more than 10 years' standing, I suppose I am called upon to boycott that sonnet in which Milton seems to approve of " light and choice wine," so light as not to impair cur enjoyment- of the "lute well touched " and Tuscan air. But, alas! must I go further and renounce L'Allegro, I because I find the " spicy nut-brown ale v " j immortalised in its lines? Must I supj press my enjoyment of the Falstaffian fun |in Shakespeare? And must I really part j j company with Dickens, Charles Lamb, and . a host of humanist and humorous writers i ! who have handled too lightly the drinking | ! customs of their day ? But I do venture j I to conjecture that Milton would have been j | surprised to fix his immortal words in the j i " Areopagitica," tortured into a defence of : lieht wines and nut-brown ale; as if the! ] total abstinence cause was the nurse of ; j a virtue " that never sallies out and sees ! ; her adversary, but slinks out of the race !" j Is it possible that such nonsense can be | i talked from a university chair? And though i j it may be readily admitted that both the j " creation and the full enjoyment" of j hirrh literature demands " total manhood," j yet the " Paradise Lost " -was created j not in the days when the po«t had a kindly j word for the " feast of reason and the flow ; of soul," but when his model supper was j : a glass of water and a pipe! Sir Arthur j ; Quiller-Cou,ch pronounces a " teetotal man- j > hood to be obviously a modification of | total manhood;" but suppose we try how | i this proposition looks when inverted thus: j j the indulgence in alcholic beverages " ob- 1 viously " produces a "modification" of ; that " total manhood " that is the qtfest of every wise man! J- Oiles. Mount Eden. J i— ' i