Here's a lesser-known one by DeFoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe (1719) and A Journal of the Plague Years (1665). This one, An Essay on Projects, is from 1697:
- On authorship and authenticity - "One happiness I lie under in the following book, viz.: That having kept the greatest part of it by me for near five years, several of the thoughts seem to be hit by other hands, and some by the public, which turns the tables upon me, as if I had borrowed from them." p5-6
- On large numbers - Talking about a bank, basically the idea of a bank, and how much money it would have, he says "...ten million sterling - a sum that everybody who can talk of does not understand." p19
- On seamen - "They are fellows that bid defiance to terror, and maintain a constant war with the elements; who, by the magic of their art, trade in the very confines of death, and are always posted within shot, as I may say, of the grave. It is true, their familiarity with danger makes them despise it (for which, I hope, nobody will say they are the wiser); and custom has so hardened them that we find them the worst of men, though always in view of their last moment." p38 And then he goes on to say how there should be like a pension for them.
- "The great family of mankind", just a phrase he uses. p52
- He wants to tax books for a fund for "fool-houses" (like a mental institution), and says: "Some tribute is due to God's goodness for bestowing extraordinary gifts [in this case the gift of being smart enough to be literate]; and who can it be better paid to then such as suffer for want of the same bounty?" p53
- On Academics (but really about language) - He wants more and better academies in England. He says France has the best, and that "The peculiar study of the academy of Paris has been to refine and correct their own language, which they have done to that happy degree that we see it now spoken in all the courts of Christendom, as the language allowed to be most universal. ... The English tongue is a subject not at all less worthy the labor of such a society than the French, and capable of a much greater perfection. ... That a society be enacted ... The work of this society should be to encourage polite learning, to polish and refine the English tongue, and to advance the so much neglected faculty of correct language, to establish purity and propriety of style, and to purge it from all the irregular additions that ignorance and affectation I have introduced; and all those innovation in speech, if I may call them such, which some dogmatic writers have the confidence to foster upon their native language, as if their authority were sufficient to make their own fancy legitimate. ... Into this society should be admitted none but persons eminent for learning, and yet none, or but very few, whose business or trade was learning. For I may be allowed, I supposed, to say we have seen many great scholars mere learned men, and graduates in the last degree of study, whose English has been far from polite, full of stiffness and affectation, hard words, and long unusual couplings of syllables and sentences, which sound harsh and untunable to the ear, and shock the reader both in expression and understanding ... The exercise of this society would be lectures on the English tongue. p64-67
- Listen to him talk shit about "that excrement of the mouth", "a frenzy of the tongue" - "Jack, God damn me Jack, how dost do? How has thou done this long time, by God?" And then they kiss; and the other, as lewd as himself, goes on: - "Dear Tom, I am glad to see thee with all my heart, let me die. Come, let us go take a bottle, we must not part so; pr'ythee let's go and get drunk, by God." p67
- On why people don't become seamen when they're required by the government: "A secret aversion to the service from a natural principal, common to the English nation, to hate compulsion". p84
Image credit: Daniel Defoe - credit unknown - National Maritime Museum London - circa
1700s
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