John Bartlett (1820–1905). Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. 1919.
Page 418
| William Cowper. (1731–1800) (continued) |
| 4500 |
| Oh for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 1 Some boundless contiguity of shade, Where rumour of oppression and deceit, Of unsuccessful or successful war, Might never reach me more. |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 1. |
| 4501 |
| Mountains interposed Make enemies of nations who had else, Like kindred drops, been mingled into one. |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 17. |
| 4502 |
| I would not have a slave to till my ground, To carry me, to fan me while I sleep And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth That sinews bought and sold have ever earn’d. |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 29. |
| 4503 |
| Slaves cannot breathe in England; if their lungs Receive our air, that moment they are free! They touch our country, and their shackles fall. 2 |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 40. |
| 4504 |
| Fast-anchor’d isle. |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 151. |
| 4505 |
| England, with all thy faults I love thee still, My country! 3 |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 206. |
| 4506 |
| Presume to lay their hand upon the ark Of her magnificent and awful cause. |
| The Task. Book ii. The Timepiece, Line 231. |
| Note 1. Oh that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men!—Jeremiah ix. 2. Oh that the desert were my dwelling-place!—Lord Byron: Childe Harold, canto iv, stanza 177. [back] |
| Note 2. Servi peregrini, ut primum Galliæ fines penetraverint eodem momento liberi sunt (Foreign slaves, as soon as they come within the limits of Gaul, that moment they are free).—Bodinus: Liber i. c. 5. Lord Campbell (“Lives of the Chief Justices,” vol. ii. p. 418) says that “Lord Mansfield first established the grand doctrine that the air of England is too pure to be breathed by a slave.” The words attributed to Lord Mansfield, however, are not found in his judgment. They are in Hargrave’s argument, May 14, 1772, where he speaks of England as “a soil whose air is deemed too pure for slaves to breathe in.”—Lofft: Reports, p. 2. [back] |
| Note 3. See Churchill, Quotation 9. [back] |