Page 18 - English

The Persian war lasted about 500 years.
Greece had only 7 wise men.
Socrates destroyed some statues and had to drink Shamrock.

Here is a fact correctly stated; and yet it is phrased with such
ingenious infelicity that it can be depended upon to convey
misinformation every time it is uncarefully read:

By the Salic law no woman or descendant of a woman could occupy
the throne.

To show how far a child can travel in history with judicious and
diligent boosting in the public school, we select the following
mosaic:

Abraham Lincoln was born in Wales in 1599.

In the chapter headed “Intellectual” I find a great number of
most interesting statements. A sample or two may be found not
amiss:

Bracebridge Hall was written by Henry Irving.
Snow Bound was written by Peter Cooper.
The House of the Seven Gables was written by Lord Bryant.
Edgar A. Poe was a very curdling writer.
Cotton Mather was a writer who invented the cotten gin and wrote
histories.
Beowulf wrote the Scriptures.
Ben Jonson survived Shakspeare in some respects.
In the Canterbury Tale it gives account of King Alfred on his way to
the shrine of Thomas Bucket.
Chaucer was the father of English pottery.
Chaucer was a bland verse writer of the third century.
Chaucer was succeeded by H. Wads. Longfellow an American Writer.
His writings were chiefly prose and nearly one hundred years
elapsed.
Shakspere translated the Scriptures and it was called St. James because
he did it.

In the middle of the chapter I find many pages of information
concerning Shakspere’s plays, Milton’s works, and those of Bacon,
Addison, Samuel Johnson, Fielding, Richardson, Sterne, Smollett,
De Foe, Locke, Pope, Swift, Goldsmith, Burns, Cowper,
Wordsworth, Gibbon, Byron, Coleridge, Hood, Scott, Macaulay,

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