Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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109

Pater’s Bathe

A charming children’s rhyme that is also a test of the clearest speaker’s diction.

110

Fricassée in France

In the opening lines of Laurence Sterne’s Sentimental Journey, the narrator explains the perverse whim that led him to leave his home shores behind.

111

Recollections of Slavery

Samuel Pepys ran into a little knot of seafaring men at the Exchange, who told him some hair-raising tales about their time in Algiers.

112

Jailbreak

When Rhoda, maid to John Mark and his mother, said Peter was standing at the gate, nobody in the house believed her.

113

Trouble at Belsize Gardens

In 1720, Welsh promoter William Howell opened a pleasure garden at Belsize House, but the pleasures drew the magistrates’ frowns.

114

Judges’ Wigs

On a countryside ramble in West Sussex, William Cobbett finds the weather turning against him.