Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
We should not force ourselves and ‘our values’ onto the writers of the past.
In Sesame and Lilies, John Ruskin warned us not to try to manipulate the great writers of the past into agreeing with us or our times. And if we have so little respect for them as to want to try, we would be better off not entering the ‘court of the past’ at all.
On his first night in a school dorm, Arthur dared not do anything without seeking approval — with one exception.
Dr Thomas Arnold, the (real life) headmaster of Rugby School, has decided that it would settle Tom Brown down to be given some responsibility; so he has asked Tom to take a rather delicate new boy, thirteen-year-old Arthur, under his wing. Tom is called to action from Arthur’s first night in the dormitory.
Mousetraps are proof of human ingenuity, but also human ingratitude — so Tom does something about it.
In 1753, the house of inventor John Kay was trashed by weavers who feared that his ‘flying shuttle’ machine would put them out of work. Tom, hero of the satire The Life and Adventures of a Cat, published anonymously in 1760, felt the same way about mousetraps, and was just as willing to act.
Cracking down on benefit claimants and migrant workers didn’t make Godfrey Bertram as popular as he expected.
In Guy Mannering, King George III has been pleased to appoint Godfrey Bertram, Laird of Ellangowan, to the magistrates’ bench. (“Pleased! I’m sure he cannot be better pleased than I am.”) The Laird at once gave up good-humoured tolerance and began sweeping the idle into work, the sick from their beds, and the ragged from the streets.
One of China’s greatest poets reflects on silence, on speech, and on a song in the heart of a friend.
Po Chu-i or Bai Juyi (772-846) was a career bureaucrat in the Chinese government, national and regional, whose abilities and frank criticisms brought a head-spinning series of promotions and demotions. He is also one of China’s best-loved poets. Below are three of his many short poems, one playful, one protesting, and one a thoughtful tribute to his closest friend.
On the same day in 1537, so the story goes, two baby boys were born, but the similarity between them ended there.
In 1527, courtiers began to whisper of Henry VIII’s rising obsession with finding a male heir, calling it the King’s ‘Great Matter’. After Queen Catherine had been put away, and Queen Anne had been beheaded, his prayers were answered when in 1537, Queen Jane bore him a son, Prince Edward. It was against this historical background that Mark Twain opened the tale of The Prince and the Pauper, published in 1881.