The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Gregory urged the persecuted Christians of Nazianzus to be the better men.
From 361 to 363, the Roman Empire was ruled by Julian the Apostate, so named because he had been brought up as a Christian but had chosen Roman paganism instead. In 362, Julian began a systematic persecution of Christians, leading to anger and rebellion. Gregory, a priest in the town of Nazianzus, told his parishioners not to play Julian’s game — even when the tables were turning.
Mary Mitford makes an appeal for the traditional village cricket match.
In 1819, Lady’s Magazine began publishing Mary Mitford’s sketches of village life in Berkshire, and was rewarded with a satisfying leap in circulation from 250 to 2,000. This extract comes from the beginning of a reflection on the superiority of village cricket over the professional game; given that Mary was writing to help pay off her father’s huge gambling debts, her point of view is understandable.
John Donne gives God a free hand to do whatever needs to be done.
In this sonnet, John Donne, Dean of St Paul’s, compares himself to a town occupied by an enemy and now under siege by its true King. The inhabitants want to let him in to liberate them, but their own leading men are too weak or corrupt; so the people send out a desperate message: use all force necessary.
The busy crossroads outside the Houses of Parliament was the testing ground for a new technology.
The first traffic lights in the world began operation outside the Houses of Parliament on December 9th, 1868. The previous evening, readers of the Express learnt about the ingenious if somewhat ungainly new technology, and looked forward to a time when all busy junctions would be made safe by traffic lights.
Being a free citizen doesn’t mean that everyone else has to get out of your way.
In 1917-18, Arthur Ransome (who would later write Swallows and Amazons) was in St Petersburg, then named Petrograd, reporting on the Communist revolution for the Daily News. One of his tales tickled fellow journalist Alfred Gardiner, who nonetheless drew from it a serious lesson about liberty, a word bandied about as carelessly then as it is today.
George Santayana reprimanded politicians and military men who thought war was good for the country’s soul.
Writing in 1905, American essayist George Santayana was full of admiration for the common soldier, and for the ordinary citizen who stands up to a bully. But to bellicose politicians and generals, and to anyone who romanticised war, he had some stern words to say.