was with at at the time of the in 1813. She went back to at the request of the , who assured her that the position of herself and her children was pe… - Sidney Dark

... in condemning it should be remembered that the statesmanship of intrigue of which she was a mistress has survived from her time to ours, and was not destroyed even by the . She was the pupil of Machiavelli, and she put the theories of the Italian political philosopher into more successful practice than any other sovereign or statesman in history.

It is improbable that Wycliff had much to do personally with the preparation of the , the first version four years afterward. This was the first complete translation of the into English, but it must not be supposed that before Wycliff's time the Scriptures had been altogether out of reach of the simple man with no understanding of Latin. It should be remembered that, in the Middle Ages, every one who could read, could read Latin. Before the era of the printing press translations were not as necessary as they are today.

Great literature is the creation of its age and its nation. It is inconceivable that Shakespeare's plays could have been written anywhere but in England and at any time but the later Renaissance. ... But while great literature is the child of one age it is the father of the next. As a nation reads, so it becomes. Let me decide what the people shall read, and you may make their laws. In saying this I am not merely referring to social and political and philosophic treatises. I am thinking of the whole gamut of a library, and particularly of works of the imagination.