The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Arthur Clough marvels at the vision of a man who could cross the Atlantic without knowing there was a farther shore.
In August 1492, Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) of Genoa set out across the Atlantic in ships provided to him by Queen Isabella I and King Ferdinand II of Spain, reaching the Bahamas the following October. Europeans of his day had only the unproven theory of a round globe to guide them, and nearly four hundred years later Arthur Clough was still in awe of Columbus’s daring.
Whenever Charles Miner suspected an ulterior motive, he would say quietly ‘That man has an axe to grind!’
When someone has a hidden, ulterior motive for what he does, we say ‘he has an axe to grind’. The origin of this saying appears to be an essay in the Luzerne Federalist, a Pennsylvania newspaper, for September 7th, 1810. The author, Charles Miner, edited the paper with his brother Asher; later, Charles became an anti-slavery campaigner and a Congressman.
It was one of those rare occasions when a game of cricket had not been interrupted by the weather, but would the Church be so forgiving?
Charles Dickens was very much frustrated with the behaviour of religious campaigners who declared that playing games on Sunday was a sin. During one Sunday evening walk, he stumbled across a meadow where there was a cricket match in full swing, not a stone’s throw from the parish church, and he trembled to think what the ecclesiastical authorities would say if they knew about it.
Every Sunday, the Englishman is raised to heaven by the choir, and then taken to her bosom by Mother Earth.
In 1819, while on a five-year visit to England, American author Washington Irving began publishing his ‘Sketches’, which included the famous tale of Rip van Winkle. There were also a number of affectionately teasing reflections on the English. This extract from ‘Sunday in London’ picks up the Englishman as he makes his devotions in the parish church.
The Tudor mansion of Compton Wynyates is full of secrets and puzzles, some macabre, some downright peculiar.
Compton Wynyates is a country house in Warwickshire, begun in the 1480s by Edmund Compton. The house bears the marks of the Reformation, with priest-holes for persecuted Roman clergy, and of the Civil War, with hiding places for the family and Royalist soldiers. Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, James I and Charles I all stayed there.
David, fresh from another close encounter with Saul’s men, shares his advice for living a charmed life.
Psalm 34 is said to have been written as a thanksgiving by David, when he was on the run from the madness of King Saul. He took refuge with Achish (Achimelech or Abimelech) the King of Gath, and to ensure that news of him did not get about, passed himself off as a harmless lunatic. This extract comes from the elegant translation made in 1535 by Yorkshireman Myles Coverdale.