Extracts from Literature
Posts in The Copybook tagged ‘Extracts from Literature’
When literary critics decide that a book is not worthy of their notice they expect the public to follow their lead, but ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ was different.
In 1672, Charles II relaxed the Conventicle Act that had imprisoned preachers who were not members of the Church of England. The authorities duly released John Bunyan (1628-88) from Bedford gaol, and at once he returned to preaching. Six years later he published ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, an immensely popular allegory of the Christian life for which literary experts had nothing but scorn.
In January 1807, newspapers breathlessly reported that Napoleon Bonaparte’s rampage across Europe was at an end — but was it true?
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.
Dutch scholar Desiderius Erasmus urged Fausto Andrelini not to miss out on England’s enchanting contribution to good manners.
Desiderius Erasmus, the Dutch scholar, first came to England in 1499, a guest of the English court thanks to William Blount, Lord Mountjoy, and of John Colet at Oxford. During this time he paid a visit to a country house and learnt to enjoy some quaint English customs, as he told his Parisian friend Fausto Andrelini, poet to Queen Anne of France.
There are solid reasons why countries with lower taxes and less regulation tend to be more prosperous.
Eighteenth-century Britain was by comparison with most of Europe a remarkably free and stable society, and also a driving force behind industrial innovation and economic growth. John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon regarded this as cause and effect: countries where government is quiet will be busier, more prosperous and internationally more friendly, and they explained why this will always be so.
Riding through Sussex, William Cobbett comes across a large family relaxing together in front of their charming cottage.
Radical MP William Cobbett was a man of strong emotions. Among them was a rooted objection to the Revd Thomas Malthus, who in a learned study on population begged Government to dampen the birth-rate among the working classes, or else the planet would soon be stalked by famine, war and pestilence. Cobbett faced the prospect of impending catastrophe without anxiety.
When Porus, the Indian king, surrendered to Alexander the Great at Jhelum, he had only one request to make of him.
Alexander the Great’s Indian expedition (327-325 BC) pushed the boundaries of his vast empire into much of what is now Pakistan and into India’s Punjab. The most serious resistance came from Porus, King of Paurava, in a fierce battle in May 326 BC at the Hydaspes or River Jhelum in the Punjab, during which Alexander demonstrated once again that he was a prince as well as a general.