The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Baldur was the toast of Valhalla, but Loki was determined to take him down.
In Think and Speak (1929), NL Clay challenged his pupils to stage a mock trial of Loki for the death of Baldur, Odin’s second son. Snorro Sturluson in The Younger Eddas, dating from 1223-23, doesn’t leave much room for doubt, unless we imagine that our Court is not privy to Loki’s shape-shifting wiles. These were the events, as Har explained them to Gangler.
In this ‘Cautionary Tale’, we hear what happened when naughty Jim gave his nurse the slip.
Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children first appeared in 1907, and this story of Jim, his nurse and Ponto the lion was the first in the collection. The moral is that those who are plotting the overthrow of some tyrant, real or imagined, should be careful what they wish for.
The politicians of Georgian England went to surprising lengths to shield domestic businesses from overseas competition.
A feature of the eighteenth century was the Government’s ongoing, desperate and self-defeating attempt to support English industry by slapping taxes, tariffs and regulations on overseas competitors. Here, historian William Lecky looks at a few of the more egregious examples, from banning foreigners’ products to denying them technology.
Thomas Carlyle felt that English criticism of Goethe revealed more about his critics than his poems.
Thomas Carlyle was one of the first English critics to appreciate the worth of German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). His fellow critics were much less kind, and Carlyle leapt to Goethe’s defence. A writer may be faulted only if he fails to give adequate expression to his own ideas, he said. We cannot fault him for failing to express ours.
As Lord Marmion lies dying on Flodden Field, there is no one near to tend him but the woman he has wronged.
It is 1513, and Lord Marmion has been mortally wounded on the battlefield of Flodden. As he lies there, his lifeblood ebbing away, a woman kneels beside him. Clare feels no love for him, and the ungoverned passion he feels for her has spread death and dishonour all around. Yet her heart is not as hard as his.
We should not force ourselves and ‘our values’ onto the writers of the past.
In Sesame and Lilies, John Ruskin warned us not to try to manipulate the great writers of the past into agreeing with us or our times. And if we have so little respect for them as to want to try, we would be better off not entering the ‘court of the past’ at all.