{"id":4542,"date":"2009-03-02T02:18:34","date_gmt":"2009-03-02T02:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/?p=4542"},"modified":"2010-10-14T17:41:50","modified_gmt":"2010-10-14T16:41:50","slug":"john-bickhams-fables-and-other-short-poems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/2009\/03\/02\/john-bickhams-fables-and-other-short-poems\/","title":{"rendered":"John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"bickham1.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Or Fables and other short poems : collected from the most celebrated English authors : the whole curiously engrav’d for the practice & amusement of young gentlemen & ladies in the art of writing<\/em> to give its full title, a children’s primer from 1731 and another free title available at the Internet Archive<\/a>. John Bickham was one of the famous family of engravers among whom George the Elder is particularly celebrated for his own stunning penmanship in The Universal Penman<\/em><\/a> (1740), a book which is still in print<\/a>. The moral fables here are mostly single-page verse pieces with titles such as The Lady and the Wasp<\/em> or The Spaniel and the Camelion<\/em>. One short piece, On Liberty<\/em>, is especially pertinent following the weekend when the Convention on Modern Liberty<\/a> declared its mission to resist the rise of the Total Surveillance State.<\/p>\n

Oh Liberty! thou Goddess heav’nly bright,
\nProfuse of bliss, and pregnant with delight;
\nEternal pleasures in thy presence reign,
\nAnd smiling Plenty leads thy wanton train.
\nEas’d of her Load, Subjection grows more light,
\nAnd Poverty looks chearful in thy Sight.
\nThou mak’st the gloomy face of Nature gay,
\nGiv’st Beauty to the Sun, and pleasure to the Day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"bickham2.jpg\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Elsewhere on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 The illustrators archive<\/a>
\n\u2022 The etching and engraving archive<\/a><\/p>\n

Previously on { feuilleton }
\n\u2022 Letters and Lettering<\/a>
\n\u2022 Studies in Pen Art<\/a>
\n\u2022 Flourishes<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Or Fables and other short poems : collected from the most celebrated English authors : the whole curiously engrav’d for the practice & amusement of young gentlemen & ladies in the art of writing to give its full title, a children’s primer from 1731 and another free title available at the Internet Archive. John Bickham … Continue reading “John Bickham’s Fables and other short poems”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2,30,42,48,10],"tags":[266],"class_list":["post-4542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-art","category-black-white","category-books","category-illustrators","category-typography","tag-calligraphy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pq7rV-1bg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johncoulthart.com\/feuilleton\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}