the experience of reading in Britain, from 1450 to 1945...

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St Matthew : Matthew 2:1

'It had [...] been a favourite idea of my mother's that her girls should learn Latin, and she engaged an old schoolmaster living in a back street in our native town to give my eldest sister and myself lessons when we were about ten and eight years of age [...] But the lessons did not last long. The tears I shed over the difficulties of the first verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which was the material for our first Latin lesson, were so bitter that they were too much for my mother's tender heart, and I was allowed to give up the study [...] The failure of this attempt, which was never renewed, has been a regret to me all my life.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Elizabeth Missing Sewell      Print: Book

St Matthew : Gospel

'Saturday -- Jan. 8th. Read the Auto of La Vida es Sueno. Begin the Life of Romulus [...] Work in the Evening while Shelley reads the Gospel of Mathew [sic] aloud.'

Century: 1800-1849     Reader/Listener/Group: Percy Bysshe Shelley      Print: Book

St Matthew : Gospel

From Hallam Tennyson's account of his father's last days: 'On Sept. 3rd [1892] he complained of weakness and of pain in his jaw [...] 'On Wednesday the 29th we telegraphed for Sir Andrew Clark [?physician] [...] 'He read Job, and St Matthew, and Miss Swanwick's new book on Poets as the Interpreters of the Age. Sir Andrew arrived, and did not think so badly of him as I did. He and my father fell to discussing Gray's "Elegy."'

Century: 1850-1899     Reader/Listener/Group: Alfred Tennyson      Print: Book

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