Northanger Abbey / Нортенгерское аббатство. Книга для чтения на английском языке

“Catherine grows quite a good-looking girl – she is almost pretty today,” were words which caught her ears now and then; and how welcome were the sounds! To look almost pretty is an acquisition of higher delight to a girl who has been looking plain the first fifteen years of her life than a beauty from her cradle can ever receive.

Mrs. Morland was a very good woman, and wished to see her children everything they ought to be; but her time was so much occupied in lying-in and teaching the little ones, that her elder daughters were inevitably left to shift for themselves; and it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, baseball, riding on horseback, and running about the country at the age of fourteen, to books – or at least books of information – for, provided that nothing like useful knowledge could be gained from them, provided they were all story and no reflection, she had never any objection to books at all.

But from fifteen to seventeen she was in training for a heroine; she read all such works as heroines must read to supply their memories with those quotations which are so serviceable and so soothing in the vicissitudes of their eventful lives.

From Pope[3 - Pope – Александр Поуп (1688–1744), английский поэт (далее цитата из его стихотворения «Элегия в память несчастной дамы»)], she learnt to censure those who “bear about the mockery of woe.

”

From Gray[4 - Gray – Томас Грей (1716–1771), английский поэт (далее неточная цитата из самого известного его стихотворения «Элегия, написанная на сельском кладбище»)], that “Many a flower is born to blush unseen,

“And waste its fragrance on the desert air.”

From Thompson[5 - Thompson – Джеймс Томсон (1700–1748), английский поэт (далее цитата из его стихотворения «Весна»)], that —

“It is a delightful task

“To teach the young idea how to shoot.

”

And from Shakespeare she gained a great store of information – amongst the rest, that —

“Trifles light as air,

“Are, to the jealous, confirmation strong,

“As proofs of Holy Writ.