1. Vocabulary
1.1 Courting death for themselves, the good scholars time and again impeached the ruling clique.
Court 做名詞有法庭、球場、王宮之意，作動詞有討好、求愛、招致之意，這里應該是招致。
If you court something unpleasant such as disaster or unpopularity, you act in a way that makes it likely to happen. 招致
仿寫：
He is courting disaster.
impeach /?m?pi?t?/?
If a court or a group in authority impeaches a president or other senior official, it charges them with committing a crime that makes them unfit for office. 彈劾; 控告
仿寫：
It is not a good idea to impeach the president.
1.2 The birds knew that they would not be molested in this garden
molest /m??l?st/?
A person who molests someone, especially a woman or a child, interferes with them in a sexual way against their will. 對…性騷擾 (尤指婦女或孩子)
仿寫：
He was accused of sexually molesting a female colleague.
1.3 This pedantic style may be described as a continual piling up of abstruse phrases and obscure allusions in order to "beautify" one's composition.
abstruse /?b?stru?s/
not easy to understand; recondite; esoteric 深奧
obscure /?b?skj??/?
Something that is obscure is difficult to understand or deal with, usually because it involves so many parts or details. 復雜難懂的
abstruse, obscure意思相近
allusion /??lu???n/?
An allusion is an indirect reference to someone or something. 暗指
2. Guiding Questions
2.1 The central question that the author answered in this chapter is the childhood and youth of Su Tungpo. When Su Tungpo was between eight and ten years, his father went to the capital to take the imperial examinations, so his mother taught him. Su Tungpo entered school at the age of six. The brilliant young man distinguished himself quickly among a hundred pupils. He is supposed to have penned some extraordinary lines at the age of ten. At the age of eleven he entered the secondary school in serious preparation for the official examinations. The really hard thing was to copy the whole of the classics and histories, but this labor served Su Tungpo well in the future, for when pleading with the emperor or drafting an edict, he was never at a loss to quote examples.
2.2 Sentences
Corruption and graft and extortion, and arbitrary arrests, were the order of the day, for the local magistrates were all underlings and proteges of the eunuchs.
這句話例舉了后漢時朝政不修，政權(quán)落入宦官手里，許多地方官都是宦官豢養(yǎng)的走狗，貪婪、納賄、勒索、濫捕無辜。
Repeated waves of reform and protest followed repeated inquisitions.
改革與抗議之聲，此起彼落；調(diào)查與審訊之事，層出不窮。Inquisition 特指官方的調(diào)查和審訊。
They comforted each other in sorrow, helped each other in distress, and dreamed about each other and wrote poems to each other as a form of communication.
這句話寫出了蘇東坡和弟弟子由之間的深厚感情。兄弟二人憂傷時相慰藉，患難時相扶助，彼此相會于夢中，寫詩互相寄贈以通音信。
3. Reflection
本章講述的是蘇東坡童年和青年時光。蘇東坡從小就受到良好的教育和熏陶，長大后才會成為不朽的人物。蘇東坡小時候，媽媽給他講《后漢書》的《范滂傳》，他立志成為范滂那樣剛直不阿的人物；媽媽嚴厲禁止孩子仆人們抓鳥玩，所以蘇東坡從小關愛小動物，長大后才會心系黎民百姓；蘇東坡的叔父在朝中做官，家中常有官員來訪，這讓蘇東坡耳濡目染，奠定了長大后走仕途這條路；蘇東坡在學童時，就聽老師讀到歐陽修、范仲淹這些文人作品，對其走上文學道路起到很大的鼓舞。
They were names great in China's history, for in Su Tungpo's childhood China was ruled by perhaps the best emperor of the dynasty, who was a patron of literature and the arts.
生逢盛世，真是文人之幸事。宋朝仁宗皇帝統(tǒng)治下，天下太平，獎勵文學藝術，歐陽修、范仲淹及其后的一批文人皆受到重用；唐朝從貞觀之治到開元盛世，也曾涌現(xiàn)出一大批偉大的詩人。
The use of a famous phrase or of an allusion without indicating the source aroused an aristocratic and egoistic pleasure in the learned reader. It was a kind of coterie language; the reader conceived a respect for the writer for writing it and for himself for understanding it.
用著名的詞語與典故而不明言其來源出處，飽學之士讀來，便有高雅不凡之樂。這是癖好相投者的共用語言。讀者對作者之能寫此等文章，心懷敬佩，自己讀之而能了解，亦因此沾沾自喜。古人在學習時，經(jīng)典古籍必須熟讀至能背誦，這樣寫文章時才能引經(jīng)據(jù)典，信手拈來。如蘇東坡的這首詩：東坡四年黃州住，何事無言及李琪。卻似西川杜工部，海棠雖好不吟詩。這首詩中有個典故，杜甫母名海棠，所以他的詩作中，沒有一首詠海棠的詩，而蘇東坡知道這個典故，所以借此稱贊歌女李琪。一首詩，并非人人都能懂得，真正懂得之人必熟悉經(jīng)典，了解作者之用意。
納蘭這首詩中暗含十六個典故，你知道幾個呢？
金屋猶自賦長門，漁陽鼙鼓正銷魂。
沖冠易怒自古有，花叢懶顧又幾人。
淚灑傾盆長城斷，銀漢清淺兩下分。
彩蝶無奈舞翩翩，青衫濕遍泣孤墳。
金石錄成聲聲慢，斷橋殘雪戀君恩。
良駒不去江難渡，至尊緣何入空門。
孔雀年年東南去，三生石畔葬花魂。
莫待白頭吟釵鳳，扇底桃花又一春。
