...232. D. Gattungen. Das Epos. Unter, allen Gattungen räumt Johnson dem Epos die erste Stellung ein, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. — Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore...

...dicta. Johnson inclines to be independent of the "rules"; stresses the moral aim of poetry; to him poetry is "the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling, imagination to the be]j2._Q£ reason" ; finds test of a poem in its popularity; condemns extravagance in thought and language....

...— By the general consent of criticks the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers...which are singly sufficient for other compositions. In short — and partly no doubt through the success of Paradise Lost — it became the tradition of...

...certain obvious limitations, which he was not unwilling to point out on occasion. He defines poetry as " the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason"; in which definition, it should be noted, imagination comes to the aid of reason; not the reverse process,...

...something good, admirable, of it. Burly Dr. Johnson roars from his dictator's chair, " Poetry is the art ot uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason " ; Lowell speaks from his quiet New England corner, "To open vistas for the imagination through the...

...THE LANGUAGE OF POETRY AND PROSE 80 IX. RHYTHM 89 684579 INTRODUCTION " POETRY," we have been told, "is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason" (Johnson); "the best words in the best order " or " that species of composition which is opposed to...

...eighteenth-century poets had always regarded as the core and justification of the whole. "Poetry," Johnson said, "is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason." The Vanity of Human Wishes, The Deserted Village, the Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College are...

...faculty in poetry. In that province, its function is to exemplify truth in an imaginative instance, for 'poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.' ** To find a conflation of the sources of art and the daydream we must look ahead to certain critics...

...completely, but each will help shed some light. The great dictionary man, Dr. Samuel Johnson, said this: Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the aid of reason. Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote: Poetry is the record of the best and happiest moments of...

...to the hymns that the poets of the church have taught us to sing. Samuel Johnson defined poetry as "the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the help of reason." "The power of poetry," says Michael Lewis, "is the ability to express the inexpressible ... in terms...