Welcome to Litsy!

Of the many authors I'd like to read but lack of "World enough and time" has so far prevented, Alexander Pope & Samuel Johnson are included. Having just read Johnson's essay On Optimism, in which he demolishes Pope's argument that the sufferings of the poor are both necessary for the greater good and, if they could only realise it, they should enjoy & be grateful for, I'm inclined to promote SJ ahead of AP. ?

“Those who take little thought find it easy to pronounce an opinion."

- On Optimism, Samuel Johnson

It took me a couple of reads of John Toland's chapter, Christianity Not Mysterious, to understand his point, which I gather is that where the Bible does not accord with evident common sense, it should be taken figuratively not literally, as the latter leads to the building of layers of inconsistency and circular arguments of no useful meaning. I imagine he'd despair of modern-day fundamentalist creationism, 400 years following the Enlightenment.

• The French are the most expert in social manners.
• Society depends on women.
• A somewhat austere style of manners, political quarrels, and wars of religion combined to make you [the English] awkward and unpolished in behaviour.
• Poets have thus no idea, in all other countries, and even in England, how love was conducted among truly civilised people.
- Voltaire, "On Politeness in Drama", 1736

I got volume two from a charity shop and it looked like fun, so I ordered volume one online. They're a series of eighteenth-century essays by well-known, and less well-known, Enlightenment figures, each with its own short introduction.