Toleration should be allowed to those who dissent from an Establishment, & that such Establishment should be guarded by a Test Law. Both these things… - Richard Hurd

Mr. Burke's book [Reflections on the Revolution in France] is very entertaining, and, what is better, contains much truth and sound political reflection, though sometimes dressed in a fantastic mode of expression. I hope the innovating humour will decline among us, and that men will be satisfied in being happy after the old way.

The spirit of Chivalry was a fire which soon spent itself: but that of Romance, which was kindled at it, burnt long, and continued its light and heat even to the politer ages.
The greatest geniuses of our own and foreign countries, such as Ariosto and Tasso in Italy, and Spenser and Milton in England, were seduced by these barbarities of their forefathers; were even charmed by the Gothic Romances. Was this caprice and absurdity in them? Or, may there not be something in the Gothic Romance peculiarly suited to the views of a genius, and to the ends of poetry? And may not the philosophic moderns have gone too far in their perpetual ridicule and contempt of it?

Nobody...ought to be punished for religious opinions.