Rassalas by Samuel Johnson 1759
Channel: Age of Enlightenment
Date: 2015-12-06

Rasselas was written by Samuel Johnson in the year 1759, when his age was fifty. 

Ye who listen with credulity to the whispers of fancy, and pursue with eagerness the phantoms of hope; who expect that age will perform the promises of youth, and that the deficiencies of the present day will be supplied by the morrow, attend to the history of Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia.

Rasselas was the fourth son of the mighty Emperor in whose dominions the father of waters begins his course—whose bounty pours down the streams of plenty, and scatters over the world the harvests of Egypt.