7 Who each wrote a book about a long and peculiar romance,
8 aWhich convinced a lot of other women down through history to do the same thing,
9 Unfortunately.
10 There was also bGeorge Eliot,
11 Who was a woman too,
12 For some reason.
13 Then there was cElizabeth Barrett Browning,
14 dWho extended the odd Brit system of counting to include love,
15 eWithout much success.
CHAPTER 451 And even though there was absolutely no chance that they could ever live up to Shakespeare,
2 The Brits also tolerated attempts at literature by writers from their most benighted provinces,
3 fSuch as Ireland, Scotland, and America,
4 Even though most of the writers from these places didn't really like English,
5 And kept trying to turn it into something else,
6 Like gRobert Burns, a Scot who owned a hstinking iapostrophe factory in Glasgow and thought English would be better if it had several apostrophes in each word,
7 And jGeorge Bernard Shaw, an Irishman who thought English would be better if the right spellings for words could be decided by five hundred drunken Irishmen in a pub,
8 And kJames Joyce, an Irishman who thought he'd like English better if he turned it into a language that nobody could understand,
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9 lUnless their name was James Joyce,
10 And mWilliam Butler Yeats, an Irishman who thought English would be better if it kind of seemed to make sense,
11 nUntil you read it more carefully,
12 And oT.S. Eliot, an American who thought that English would be better if it contained so many pdepressing foreign-language references that no American would ever be able to figure them out,
13 Unless that American had the exquisite taste to move to Britain,
14 And spend the rest of his life looking up neat foreign language references in qdusty Brit libraries,
15 Under the shadow of Shakespeare.
CHAPTER 461 In addition to all of their own culture, the Brits owned quite a lot of rartwork,
2 From Egypt and Greece and Rome,
3 And France and Germany and Italy,
4 And lots of other places too,
5 Which they stored in museums and scastles and stately homes,
6 And looked at every so often,
7 Just to make sure,
8 That it wasn't as great as Shakespeare.
CHAPTER 471 And then there was the peculiar Brit cultural obsession with something called "sport,"
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