Content
"Poor Robin" established a tradition of parody, reporting the trivial and inconsequential juxtaposed with the serious, in parallel chronologies—set in rhymed couplets—of the "Loyal" and the "Fanatic", which began in 1663 and became Old Poor Robin with the 1777 issue. Poor Robin offered deadpan prognostications of the obvious, and substituted parodic saints' days under the "Fanatic" rubric. From the turn of the 18th century, the satire becomes blunted and wise homilies of prudence take their place. It observes the continued use of cucking stools in 1746.
Read more about this topic: Poor Robin
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“Thoughts tending to content flatter themselves
That they are not the first of fortune’s slaves,
Nor shall not be the last, like silly beggars
Who, sitting in the stocks, refuge their shame
That many have and others must sit there,
And in this thought they find a kind of ease.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“Quintilian [educational writer in Rome about A.D. 100] hoped that teachers would be sensitive to individual differences of temperament and ability. . . . Beating, he thought, was usually unnecessary. A teacher who had made the effort to understand his pupil’s individual needs and character could probably dispense with it: “I will content myself with saying that children are helpless and easily victimized, and that therefore no one should be given unlimited power over them.””
—C. John Sommerville (20th century)
“No healthy man, in his secret heart, is content with his destiny. He is tortured by dreams and images as a child is tortured by the thought of a state of existence in which it would live in a candy store and have two stomachs.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)