For each word below, suggest words that rhyme with it. See if you can think of at least the number indicated.

1 Water. (4)

2 Double. (4)

3 Love. (4)

Suggested Rhymes (A-Z)

The Object of a Liberal Education

By Thomas Henry Huxley

I recently added this post, The Object of a Liberal Education.

This is an extract from an address by Thomas Huxley, the eminent Victorian biologist, to the South London Working Men’s College in 1868. This was the year that the College was founded by philanthropist William Rossiter, and Huxley was speaking to the students in his capacity as the College’s first Principal. Naturally, he chose to lay before them his vision of education, and as the college leant towards the Arts, of a liberal education in particular.

Many goals have been set for education over the years. Huxley’s was unusual. He argued that life would be much smoother if people knew what Mother Nature, whose pitiless ways Huxley had come to respect in his collaboration with Charles Darwin, had in store for them. The task of teachers was to help young people realise that the secret of a happy life was to work with Nature, and not against her.

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Come, Holy Ghost, All-Quick’ning Fire

By Charles Wesley

I have added a new hymn to the collection, Come, Holy Ghost, All-Quick’ning Fire by Charles Wesley.

Hymns and indeed prayers to the Holy Spirit are not particularly common, but Charles Wesley composed several hymns to or about the Spirit. This hymn focuses on the idea (taken from St Paul’s letters) of the Holy Spirit as God’s royal seal on the Christian’s soul, a stamped image marking the believer out as redeemed by and for God. The idea comes from St Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians:

Now he which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us, is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our hearts.

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Quad

From Polywords

I have added a new Polyword to the collection.

Make as many words as you can using only the nine letters you are given below. Your words should all be four letters or more in length, and they should all contain the letter highlighted in the centre of the grid. You may not use the same letter twice. There is one nine-letter word to find.

Laughter in the House

By Sir Philip Sidney

I recently added this post, Laughter in the House.

Sir Philip Sidney is remembered today chiefly for his selfless gesture as he lay wounded on the field of the Battle of Zutphen in 1586: see ‘Thy Necessity is Yet Greater than Mine’. But Sidney was not only a soldier and gentleman. He was a deep thinker, who wrote what is arguably the first serious work of literary criticism in the English language, An Apologie for Poetrie (ca. 1582). This was a reply to Stephen Gosson’s The School of Abuse (1579), which had been prompted by an outbreak of plague and the feeling that in such times writing plays was at best frivolous, at worst socially harmful. Gosson dedicated his tract to Sidney, an unsolicited honour that placed him in a delicate position. Ever the gentleman, Sir Philip did not name Gosson in his reply, but nevertheless came to the defence of Elizabethan drama.

That is not to say Sidney was uncritical. One of the chief targets for his mild-mannered disapproval was Elizabethan comedy. The comedians of his day took the line that anyone who got a good laugh out of a play must be the better for the experience, but Sidney made an extremely important distinction between laughter and delight, noting that laughter is often produced by very unworthy things.

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Heracles and Omphale

By E. M. Berens

I recently added this post, Heracles and Omphale.

E. M. Berens was an American writer who published several books on Greek and Roman mythology, intended for casual readers and particularly for children. In his preface, he declares “that no pains have been spared in order that without passing over details the omission of which would have marred the completeness of the work, not a single passage should be found which could possibly offend the most scrupulous delicacy”. For many of the Greek myths, this is a challenging goal to set, and the story of Heracles and Omphale, the delectable Queen of Lydia, must have given Berens some pause. Happily, he judged the scrupulosity of American boys and girls to be sufficiently resilient to deal with the mental image of Omphale wearing a lionskin and Heracles in a dress.

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