But that of idleness, and taste no scenes ARGUMENT OF THE SECOND BOOK. Reflections suggested by the conclusion of the former book....Peace among the nations recommended, on the ground of their common fellowship in sorrow.... Prodigies enumerated....Sicilian earthquakes.... Man rendered obnoxious to these calamities by sin....God the agent in them....The philosophy that stops at secondary causes reproved....Our own late miscarriages accounted for....Satirical notice taken of our trips to Fontainbleau....But the pulpit, not satire, the proper engine of reformation....The Reverend Advertiser of engraved sermons.... Petit-maitre parson....The good preacher....Pictures of a theatrical clerical coxcomb.... Story tellers and jesters in the pulpit reproved.... Apostrophe to popular applause....Retailers of ancient. philosophy expostulated with....Sum of the whole matter....Effects of sacerdotal mismanagement on the laiety....Their folly and extravagance....The mischiefs of profusion....Profusion itself, with all its consequent evils, ascribed, as to its principal cause, to the want of discipline in the universities. THE TASK. BOOK II. THE TIME-PIECE. OH for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Might never reach me more. My ear is pain'd, Of wrong and outrage with which earth is fill'd. It does not feel for man; the natʼral bond That falls asunder at the touch of fire. He finds his fellow guilty of a skin Not colour'd like his own; and, having pow'r |