The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Prussia’s invasion of Silesia in 1740 plunged Europe into turmoil, and a French invasion of England became a very real threat.
The War of the Austrian Succession began as part of the seemingly endless German quest to gobble up the continent’s smaller states. It would not have involved Britain had King George II not been also Elector of Hanover, and if France had not seen it as an opportunity to expand her empire at Britain’s expense.
William Cowper feels he has learnt more on one short walk than in many hours of study.
In Book VI of his groundbreaking poem ‘The Task’, William Cowper (‘cooper’) takes a lunchtime walk on a winter’s day. As he listens to the soft sounds of Nature, he reflects that for the thinking man time spent in the countryside is never wasted.
Prince Agib hears the tale of a boy confined to an underground chamber for forty days, and dismisses it as superstition.
Prince Agib has toppled a vast brass statue of a horseman upon the Black Mountain, a labour for which he has been rewarded with the ship he needs to find his way home. Stopping off on a remote island, he sees a boy being led into an underground chamber, and when the coast is clear, Agib follows him in, eager to hear his story.
Scotsman Samuel Greig so impressed his superiors at the Admiralty in London that he was sent as an adviser to the Russian Imperial Navy.
In 1698, Tsar Peter the Great visited England and gained such a healthy respect for the Royal Navy that in 1717 he brought Thomas Gordon, later Admiral Gordon, to St Petersburg. In 1763, when Empress Catherine wanted to accelerate the Imperial Navy’s growth, she too turned to London, and they sent her Samuel Greig.
A guide loses his way on the edge of the merciless Egyptian desert, but Abba John is too kind-hearted to tell him.
Abba John Colobus (?339-?405), sometimes called John the Dwarf, was a monk and abbot of a monstery in Scetis in western Egypt, on the edge of the desert. Remembered today mostly for an act of remarkable obedience, in this short tale he teaches another important virtue: tact.
William Sleeman passes on an anecdote from one of the Persian classics, to show that truth should not be used for evil ends.
In a lengthy chapter entitled ‘Veracity’, William Sleeman discussed attitudes to truth and lies among the people of India. As an illustration, he retold this story from the ‘Gulistan’ or ‘Rose Garden’ of the Persian poet Saadi Shirazi (?1210-?1292).