Thought for today- the English

"A True-Born Englishman's a contradiction,

In speech an irony, in fact a fiction."

 Daniel Defoe, author and journalist   M. Vandergucht engraving, after Jeremiah Taverner 1703

"From this amphibious ill-born mob began

That vain ill-natured thing, an Englishman.

The customs, surnames, languages and manners,

Of all these nations are their own explainers:

Whose relics are so lasting and so strong,

They ha' left a shibboleth upon our tongue;

By which with easy search you may distinguish

Your Roman-Saxon-Danish-Norman English."

The True-Born Englishman: A Satyr  Daniel Defoe, 1700.

Defoe, a Non-conformist, was attacking the prejudice against the new king, William III and his Dutch friends.