 | Sir Henry Craik - 1911 - 664 pages
...and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion....descending to minuteness. It is with great propriety that subtilty, which in its original import means exility of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning... | |
 | Gustav Wendt - 1911 - 352 pages
...impertinent jokes, white lies, and shorl fits of pettishness ending in sunny good humour. (Macaulay.) 24. Great thoughts are always general, and consist in...and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. (S. Johnson.) 25. And many more: but it is enough to instance in a few. (S. Johnson.) 26. Cromwell... | |
 | Percy Hazen Houston - 1923 - 346 pages
...principles important to our purpose. " Sublimity," he declares, employing the word under discussion, "is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion....and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. . . . Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; for great... | |
 | John Ker Spittal - 1923 - 436 pages
...and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion. Great thoughts are always general, arid consist in positions not limited by exceptions, and in descriptions not descending to minuteness.... | |
 | René Wellek - 1981 - 378 pages
...discussion of the metaphysical poets. Johnson objects to their failure to reach the sublime. "Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion....and in descriptions not descending to minuteness." " We find this criterion again and again: Butler's Hudibras cannot last, because it is full of allusions... | |
 | David Daiches - 1979 - 336 pages
...his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased. . . . Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion....and in descriptions not descending to minuteness. . . . Those writers who lay on the watch for novelty could have little hope of greatness; for great... | |
 | Claude Arnaud - 1992 - 394 pages
...also operates at a high level of generality. "Great thoughts are always general," wrote Dr. Johnson, "and consist in positions not limited by exceptions,...and in descriptions not descending to minuteness." When the aphorist stylishly remarks upon the conduct of human behavior — and without style, that... | |
 | Irma S. Lustig - 308 pages
...metaphoric. A typical and characteristic expression of his position may be found in his "Life of Cowley": "Great thoughts are always general, and consist in...and in descriptions not descending to minuteness.""' He tells Boswell, "he always laboured when he said a good thing" (3: 260, 5: 77), by which he sometimes... | |
 | Greg Clingham - 1997 - 290 pages
...general terms. "Great thoughts are always general," Johnson was later to write in his "Life of Cowley," "and consist in positions not limited by exceptions,...and in descriptions not descending to minuteness" (Lives, I, 11). Johnson explains with some precision in the Preface what it means to write criticism... | |
 | Howard Anderson - 1967 - 429 pages
...and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration. Sublimity is produced by aggregation, and littleness by dispersion....subtlety, which in its original import means exility [ie, thinness, meagreness] of particles, is taken in its metaphorical meaning for nicety of distinction.... | |
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Nor was the sublime more within their reach than the pathetic, for they never attempted that comprehension and expanse of thought which at once fills the whole mind, and of which the first effect is sudden astonishment, and the second rational admiration.... 
