Clay Lane

The Copy Book

A Library of History and Literature in English

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715

Borrowed Tools

Ethel Smyth encouraged writers to try to find their own words before deciding to borrow someone else’s.

In her book of essays ‘Streaks of Life’, composer Dame Ethel Smyth (rhymes with Forsyth) was unusually severe on the Quotation Freak, the writer who borrows phrases from more famous authors simply to save himself the trouble of turning his own.

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Picture: © Andrzej Kuros, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.

716

Careless Talk

A French sea-captain let his tongue wag over dinner, and New Zealand’s destiny took a different turn.

When Britain finally decided to make a colony of New Zealand, she sent Captain William Hobson (1792-1842) of the Royal Navy to North Island, as Lieutenant to the Governor of New South Wales in Australia. He landed at Kororareka (now Russell) in the Bay of Islands on January 29th, 1840.

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Picture: © Phillip Capper, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0 generic.. Source.

717

The Cradle of Our Race

Edmund Burke warned that the French Revolution could have a devastating effect on British and European culture.

Edmund Burke (1729-1797) regarded the fates of England and France as closely intertwined, and consequently the catastrophic events of the French Revolution in 1789 made him afraid for England. If France falls into tyranny and moral decline, he warned, it will be that much harder for England to resist going the same way.

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Picture: © Stephen McKay. Licence: CC-BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

718

Peasie and Beansie

Peasie wants to visit her lonely father, but she can’t get her sister Beansie to come along with her.

This story comes from a collection of folktales from the Punjab, as told by Flora Annie Steel (1847-1929) who spent twenty-two years in India. It reminds us that little acts of kindness bring their own rewards, so long as the rewards aren’t the reason that we do them.

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Picture: © nishad kaippally, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.. Source.

719

The Zong Massacre

After a hundred and forty-two slaves were tossed overboard in an insurance scam, Granville Sharp wouldn’t let the matter rest.

The scandal of the slave-ship ‘Zong’ was one of the turning points in the campaign to end slavery throughout the British Empire. As so often, the quest for justice was led by self-taught jurist Granville Sharp, who turned to the Press after a sensational court case had failed to deliver any kind of justice at all.

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Picture: By JMW Turner (1775-1851), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.

720

An Ever-Fixed Mark

William Shakespeare in sombre mood clings to love as the only changeless thing in a world of decay.

Sonnet 116 was published in 1609, when William Shakespeare was forty-five and still working as an actor in London. The capital was ravaged that year by particularly relentless outbreaks of plague, which perhaps helps to explain the sombre tone of his poem about love, the one constant in a world of sickness, age and death.

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Picture: © 0x010C, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC-BY-SA 4.0.. Source.