Excerpt from Gullivers Travels by Jonathan Swift Friendship and benevolence are the two principal virtues among the Houyhnhnms; and these not confined to particular objects, but universal to the whole race. For a stranger from the remotest part is equally treated with the nearest neighbour, and wherever he goes, looks upon himself as at home. They preserve decency and civility in the highest degrees, but are altogether ignorant of ceremony. They have no fondness for their colts or foals, but the care they take in educating them proceeds entirely from the dictates of reason. And I observed my master to show the same affection to his neighbours issue that he had for his own. They will have it that nature teaches them to love the whole species, and it is reason only that maketh a distinction of persons, where there is a. superior degree of virtue. ******************** Born on this day; Jonathan Swift (November 30, 1667 - October 19, 1745) was an Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whigs, then for the Tories), poet and cleric who became Dean of St Patricks Cathedral, Dublin. He is remembered for works such as Gullivers Travels, A Modest Proposal, A Journal to Stella, Drapiers Letters, The Battle of the Books, An Argument Against Abolishing Christianity, and A Tale of a Tub. Swift is regarded by the Encyclopædia Britannica as the foremost prose satirist in the English language, and is less well known for his poetry. Swift originally published all of his works under pseudonyms - such as Lemuel Gulliver, Isaac Bickerstaff, MB Drapier - or anonymously. He is also known for being a master of two styles of satire: the Horatian and Juvenalian styles. [source: Wikipedia] Image: Jonathan Swift (portrait) by Francis Bindon
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 06:08:07 +0000
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