...from representative writers, to set out the contrast. A briefer definition is that of Dr. Johnson: "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the aid of reason." There is the oft-quoted passage from Wordsworth: "The man of science seeks truth as...

...mind. By the general consent of cri ticks, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epick poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers...truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore...

...poem satisfy the demands of the epic ("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" [I, 170]), but it also overrides the imaginative and moral reservations Johnson usually has toward...

...to that only which he found the best."39 Nor was it only versification that had grown better. Since "poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason," modern advances in truth and reason would necessarily foster a poetry more worthy of intellectual respect,...

...new purpose." And in the Life of Milton Johnson was to indicate how learning develops into poetry: Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason. Epick poetry undertakes to teach the most important truths by the most pleasing precepts, and therefore...

...illustrated in his comments on the imagination in the Life of Milton. "Poetry" he there defines as "the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason." To the study of nature, life, and morality, Johnson explains, the poet must bring "an imagination capable...

...phrase, "to call in fancy to the aid of reason" echoes Samuel Johnson's in his "Life of Milton" (1779): "Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason" (Lives of the Poets, 1:170). him, to make him forget the subject of his own complaints. It is pleasant...

...Sublime." A century later,Johnson agrees that "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." He believed his century might produce more epic poetry: "I am persuaded that, had Sir Isaac Newton...

...role of reason as a way to knowledge. Johnson views poetry as an "enlargement of comprehension", or "the art of uniting pleasure with truth by calling imagination to the aid of reason" 8 : as such poetry is not strictly needed by religion precisely because religion cannot...

...reminiscent of Sidney's. In his 'Life of Milton', Dr. Johnson says: "... the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires...which are singly sufficient for other compositions ... "; further, Milton's Lycidas is severely criticised because "It's form is that of a pastoral, easy,...