The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
William Cobbett gives his son James some helpful examples of collective nouns.
In 1818, William Cobbett MP published some letters written to his son James, in which he had developed a thorough introduction to English grammar. Cobbett was a man of strong opinions, and more than happy to illustrate his remarks on good, plain English with some good, plain speaking on corruption in the House of Commons.
Henry Longfellow tells us how his tale of a heroic Native American warrior came to him.
In 1855, American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow published The Song of Hiawatha, a long narrative poem named after the twelfth-century Ojibwe warrior and leader of the Iroquois Confederacy of Native American peoples. The tale he told was wholly fictitious, but in the opening lines he nevertheless told us where he got it from.
Two men find an axe, and then find some trouble, but they aren’t keen on sharing either of them.
A well-known politician once told entrepreneurs to stand back, look at their handiwork and say not ‘I built that!’ but ‘We built that!’, since no one does anything without the help of wider society. On the surface, this little Aesop’s Fable appears to back him up: the reader must be left to judge how deep the similarity goes.
Peter foretold that King John would cease to be England’s sovereign, and he was right, though John still wore his crown.
Peter of Pomfret (Pontefract, near Wakefield in Yorkshire’s West Riding) was a simple, unlettered hermit who incautiously prophesied that by Ascension Day in 1213, King John would no longer be king of England. When that day had passed, and John still sat upon his throne, the King had poor Peter hanged; but as Sir George Wrong explains, the prophecy wasn’t so wide of the mark.
If little Maggie Tulliver is going to get her hair cut, it’s going to be done on her own terms.
Little Maggie Tulliver’s aunts have called round, and she has been subjected to repeated criticism for her heavy shock of unruly black hair. Even her father has ventured that “it ’ud be as well if Bessy ’ud have the child’s hair cut, so as it ’ud lie smooth.” Rebellion rises, and Maggie beckons to her older brother Tom.
Elizabeth Bennet stonewalls her way through a disagreeable encounter with Lady Catherine de Bourgh.
In Pride and Prejudice, Lady Catherine de Bourgh has heard that her wealthy nephew, Fitzwilliam Darcy, is planning to propose to Elizabeth Bennet, instead of her own daughter. She has raced to Longbourn, Elizabeth’s home, to demand an explanation of the ‘impossible’, but Lizzy sees no reason to be defensive.