The Spectator s Club Richard Steele p 2641 The Aims of the Spectator Joseph Addison p 2644 Roxana Daniel Defoe p 2425 Letters Lady Mary Wortley Montagu p 2760 The Royal Exchange Joseph Addison p 2649 Gulliver s Travels Jonathan Swift p 2492 An Essay on Criticism Alexander Pope p 2669 An Essay on Man Alexander Pope p 2714 Lo the poor Indian whose untutored mind Sees God in clouds or hears him in the wind His soul proud Science never taught to stray Far as the solar walk or milky way Yet simple Nature to his hope has given Behind the cloud topped hill an humbler heaven Some safer world in depth of woods embraced Some happier island in the watery waste Where slaves once more their native land behold No fiends torment no Christians thirst for gold To be contents his natural desire He asks no angel s wing no seraph s fire But thinks admitted to that equal sky His faithful dog shall bear him company The Seasons James Thompson p 3044 Now black and deep the night begins to fall A shade immense Sunk in the quenching gloom Magnificent and vast are heaven and earth Order confounded lies all beauty void Distinction lost and gay variety One universal blot such the fair power Of light to kindle and create the whole Drear is the state of the benighted wretch Who then bewildered wanders through the dark Full of pale fancies and chimeras huge Nor visited by one directive ray From cottage streaming or from airy hall Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard Thomas Gray p 3054 The Vanity of Human Wishes Samuel Johnson p 2843 Let Observation with extensive view Survey mankind from China to Peru Remark each anxious toil each eager strife And watch the busy scenes of crowded life Then say how hope and fear desire and hate O erspread with snares the clouded maze of fate But scarce observed the knowing and the bold Fall in the general massacre of gold Wide wasting pest that rages unconfined And crowds with crimes the records of mankind For gold his sword the hireling ruffian draws For gold the hireling judge distorts the laws Wealth heaped on wealth nor truth nor safety buys The dangers gather as the treasures rise Unnumbered suppliants crowd Preferment s gate Arthirst for wealth and burning to be great Delusive Fortune hears the incessant call They mount they shine evaporate and fall On every stage the foes of peace attend Hate dogs their flight and Insult mocks their end Love ends with hope the sinking statesman s door Pours in the morning worshiper no more For growing names the weekly scribbler lies To growing wealth the dedicator flies From every room descends the painted face That hung the bright palladium of the place And smoked in kitchens or in auctions sold To better features yields the frame of gold For now no more we trace in every line Heroic worth benevolence divine The form distorted justifies the fall And Detestation rids the indignant wall The Preface to the Dictionary Samuel Johnson p 2931 Commerce however necessary however lucrative as it depraves the manners corrupts the language they that have frequent intercourse with strangers to whom they endeavor to accommodate themselves must in time learn a mingled dialect like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the Mediterranean and Indian coasts This will not always be confined to the exchange the warehouse or the port but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people and be at last incorporated with the current speech The great pest of speech is frequency of translation No book was ever turned from one language into another without imparting something of its native idiom this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation single words may enter by thousands and the fabric of the tongue continue the same but new phraseology changes much at once it alters not the single stones of the building but the order of the columns If an academy should be established for the cultivation of our style which I who can never wish to see dependence multiplied hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy let them instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries endeavor with all their influence to stop the license of translators whose idleness and ignorance if it be suffered to proceed will reduce us to babble a dialect of France The Preface to Shakespeare Samuel Johnson p 2937 Life of Johnson James Boswell p 2977 On Conciliation with the Colonies Edmund Burke p 3029 First the people of the colonies are descendants of Englishmen England Sir is a nation which still I hope respects and formerly adored her freedom The colonists emigrated from you when this part of your character was most predominant and they took this bias and direction the moment they parted from your hands They are therefore not only devoted to liberty but to liberty according to English ideas and on English principles Abstract liberty like other mere abstractions is not to be found Liberty inheres in some sensible object and every nation has formed to itself some favorite point which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness It happened you know Sir that the great contests for freedom in this country were from the earliest times chiefly upon the question of taxing The people are Protestants and of that kind which is the most adverse to all implicit submission of mind and opinion This is a persuasion not only favorable to liberty but build upon it Rule Britannia James Thompson p 3023 The Negros Complaint William Cowper p 96 The Interesting Narrative Olaudah Equiano p 100 p 3035 p 3042 A Discourse on the Love of Our Country Richard Price p 184 But the most important instance of the imperfect state in which the Revolution left our constitution is the inequality of our representation What an eventful period is this I am thankful that I have lived to it and I could almost say Lord now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace for mine eyes have seen thy salvation I have lived to see a diffusion of knowledge which has undermined superstition and error I have lived to see the rights of men better understood than ever and nations panting for liberty which seemed to have lost the idea of it I have lived to see Thirty Millions of people indignant and resolute spurning at slavery and demanding liberty with an irresistible voice their king led in triumph and an arbitrary monarch surrendering himself to his subject Reflections on the Revolution in France Edmund Burke p 187 All circumstances taken together the French revolution is the most astonishing