The English Miscellany

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye During a Tour July 13, 1798 . Extract. Once again I see            These hedge-rows, hardly hedge-rows, little lines                   Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral farms,             Green to the very door; and wreaths of smoke   Sent up, in silence, from among the trees!           With some uncertain notice, as might seem         Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods,                Or of some Hermit’s cave, where by his fire       The Hermit sits alone.            These beauteous forms, Through a long absence, have not been to me     As is a landscape to a blind man’s eye:            But oft, in lonely rooms, and ’mid the din            Of towns and cities, I have owed to them           In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,             Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;            And passing even

For some people, I suspect, libraries have become an act of faith, or a kind of heritage; they hang on to libraries like cathedrals long after their belief in the deity has past away. No doubt the great libraries will survive. Those are the ones with vast national collections, or those with a special antiquity, or a majestic architecture. The fate of the rundown relics of suburbia is less clear; not matter how much we celebrate the power of the little library it appears that its extinction is as likely as the video-hire shop, or even the local bookshop, with its greeting cards, its quaint plantpots, and its local authors. Yet some of us still delight in tea-leaves, coffee-beans, and the safe solidity of printed books, long after the the victory of the instant download has streamlined the past, the present, and the future, in a dizzying sea of sameness. Sometimes there is something radical in remembering the past; it need not collapese into a conservative tear-torn nostalgia. Ga

Are you familiar with the terror of the blank page in the exam room? Do you experience a sense of writer's block in this situation? Are you just unsure about your technique in starting an essay? In fact, there are many tried and tested openings that will get your writing off to a confident and winning start. Although there are infinite possible ways of leading into an essay, blog, or news article, there are some common opening gambits that writers rely on (as in a game of chess). After a strong opening you will be ready for a winning middle game. Before outlining the Eight Openings , here are some points to think about: Is your aim to engage the reader by being relevant, creative, and original? Are you trying to arouse curiosity or to meet expectations? Are you explaining what’s on offer (like a menu), or offering a taster session? In a promotional sense you want to encourage the reader to come through the door: to enter your mental world. Some reader