Introduction
In January 1807, as Napoleon Bonaparte’s armies swept across the Continent building his French Empire, British newspapers printed a cheering story about how the Russians had inflicted a calamitous defeat on Napoleon. William Cobbett didn’t believe a word of it, and expressed his doubts in a masterly metaphor which made ‘red herrings’ into a household proverb.
WHEN I was a boy, we used, in order to draw off the harriers from the trail of a hare that we had set down as our own private property, to get to her haunt* early in the morning, and drag a red-herring,* tied to a string, four or five miles over hedges and ditches, across fields and through coppices, till we got to a point, whence we were pretty sure the hunters would not return to the spot where they had thrown off;* and, though I would, by no means, be understood, as comparing the editors and proprietors of the London daily press to animals half so sagacious and so faithful as hounds, I cannot help thinking, that, in the case to which we are referring, they must have been misled, at first, by some political deceiver.
It was on Saturday, the 24th of January, that the Morning Chronicle,* the leader of the pack, came, all at once, athwart the drag.*
* A regular feeding spot, a place to which the hounds would be led in order to catch the hare’s scent. The idea was to lead the hounds so far away from there that the hunt gave up and went home, leaving William and his rascally companions to catch hares in peace.
* A red herring is a smoked herring or kipper, cured in such a way as to turn the flesh red. Red herrings had been used for generations to train hounds to the scent; William Cobbett’s reminiscence made them a metaphor for a false trail, a sense which the words have kept to this day.
* In hunting parlance, to ‘throw off’ is to set off after a scent.
* A newspaper founded in 1769, and in 1807 owned by John Perry (1756-1821) though Cobbett attributed its editorial policy around this time to Robert Spankie (1774-1842). Whereas the Times was a Tory paper, the Morning Chronicle tended to Whig radicalism, and had supported the French revolution throughout the Reign of Terror; but Napoleon’s coronation as Emperor of the French in 1804 and his subsequent annexation of European states changed many minds.
* ‘Athwart the drag’ means ‘across the [false] trail’. ‘Drag hunting’ is a form of hunting in which hounds do not pursue an animal but follow a trail left by something that has been impregnated with a scent and dragged across the ground.
Précis
In discussing a misleading news story planted during the Napoleonic Wars, William Cobbett was reminded of a time in his childhood when he and some friends used a red herring to distract the hounds chasing a hare, so that the boys could catch the hare for themselves. The newspapers, he said, had been similarly duped by someone in Government. (59 / 60 words)
In discussing a misleading news story planted during the Napoleonic Wars, William Cobbett was reminded of a time in his childhood when he and some friends used a red herring to distract the hounds chasing a hare, so that the boys could catch the hare for themselves. The newspapers, he said, had been similarly duped by someone in Government.
Variations: 1.increase the length of this precis to exactly 65 words. 2.reduce the length of this precis to exactly 55 words. 3.introduce one of the following words into the precis: although, because, if, just, must, not, whereas, who.
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