Gill's Last Essays

Extract

Of these nine essays, two are now seen for the first time, and one, the longest, is new to the present writer. Secular and Sacred in Modern Industry takes up the last twenty pages. Two full-size reproductions and three or four ‘colophons’ from his hand make the little volume more intimate and precious to his old friends and the war-economy standard of production seems to enhance rather than impair the attractiveness. The little volume contains a lot of close reasoning, many aphorisms of price, and much true intense loyalty to the Papal Encyclicals on Labour and Social Reform. We speak feelingly;, having had to defend the faith of Eric Gill against those who never retain a single word of those earth-shaking documents even if they ever heeded one. On p. 13, 1. 7, occurs a sentence with one that too many.

Who wants an antidote to the Daily Bane and other touting boobytraps for Democracy and the Proletarianisation (his word) of all things? Who wants to hear that ‘the labourer’s point of view is necessarily radically different from any other’? Who swallows all the second-hand sops of Midas without any rumination? Who but everyone who does not read Eric Gill.