Areopagus Volume XLV

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the forty fifth volume of the Areopagus. This week I'm trying something a little different. After all, is not variety the spice of life? That famous line comes from a poem called The Task, written by William Cowper in 1785:

Variety’s the very spice of life,
That gives it all its flavour. We have run
Through every change that fancy, at the loom
Exhausted, has had genius to supply,
And, studious of mutation still, discard
A real elegance, a little used,
For monstrous novelty and strange disguise.
We sacrifice to dress, till household joys
And comforts cease.

Aha! Turns out Cowper was offering sardonic praise of variety (and fast fashion)... one of those many lines that no longer mean what their authors intended. Still, what was it Aristotle said about moderation in all things? And so this week I have allowed myself no more than three hundred words for each chapter of the Areopagus. A challenge for me; something different for you. Seven short lessons every Friday, coming rig…