July 20: A Cobbler in Jail (Vol. 15, pp. 59-69)

John Bunyan was thrown in jail for preaching without a license. He should have been thrown in jail for writing "Pilgrim's Progress," which the editors call "the greatest allegory in any language, second only to the Bible, and I call unreadable rubbish.

July 19: She Wanted Heroes All to Herself (Vol. 33, pp. 311-320)

Sir Walter Raleigh was imprisoned on this day in 1603. He was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth, but when he fell in love with another woman, he was thrown in the clink. Today's reading, "Discovery of Guiana," is more of that heroic explorer nonsense the editors seem to love.

July 18: They Loved In Vain (Vol. 18, pp. 359-368)

I wasn't aware that Robert Browning also wrote plays, but then again, drama is one of my literary blind spots. But this selection from "The Blot in the 'Scutcheon" is as stilted as 17th and 18th century drama -- even if this was written in the 1830s.

July 17: A Throne for Son or Stepson? (Vol. 26, pp. 133-148)

The playwright John Baptiste Racine was elected to the French Academy on this day in 1673. Racine was a contemporary of Corneille, except that he supposedly has more humanized characters in his plays than Corneille's. It's hard to tell, though, since Racine's work — excerpted here from "Phaedre" — is just as unreadable as Corneille's.

July 16: The Mohammedan Jesus (Vol. 45, pp. 908-913)

This day in 622 A.D., marked the beginning the Muslim era of time, so we get this selection from the Koran.

Most Muslim haters don't know it, but Jesus Christ is part of Islam's pantheon of prophets, and the story of his birth is part of the Koran. It's just in Islam, Jesus plays second fiddle to Mohammed.

July 15: When Elizabeth Dined (Vol. 35, pp. 271-288)

More from Holinshed today on the manners of the Elizabethian era, this time — how they behaved at the dinner table in the presence of the Queen and her noblemen. Of interest only to the historical obsessives.

July 14: The French People Triumph (Vol. 24, pp. 268-273)

Allons enfants de la Patrie, Le jour de gloire est arrivé!
(Come, children of the Fatherland, The day of glory has arrived!)

Those opening words from La Marseillaise are for Bastille Day, the day in 1789 when that fortress prison was captured and the French Revolution was set in motion.

Unfortunately, today's selection from Edmund Burke, a conservative who deplored the excesses of the French Revolution, is the wrong choice for this occasion.