 | Raymond Macdonald Alden - 1911 - 754 pages
...what is not unexpected cannot surprise. . . . The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take it up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We... | |
 | Raymond Macdonald Alden - 1911 - 744 pages
...what is not unexpected cannot surprise. . . . The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take it up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We... | |
 | Albert Mordell - 1915 - 144 pages
...incongruities that are part and parcel of its plot." Samuel Johnson spoke for many people wh " Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. No one ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure." Of course Walt... | |
 | Robert Anderson - 696 pages
...performed to Milton is weakened, by his pronouncing " Paradise Lost " " an object of forced admiration ; one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to tak« up again." In his derogatory estimate of lf Lycidas," that " surely no man could have fancied... | |
 | C. C. Barfoot - 1982 - 234 pages
...audience that has been invited to partake in his and their creation. Dr Johnson said that 'Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again'. Whatever the justice of this famous slight and its relevance to the true greatness of Milton's epic,10... | |
 | Bill Moore - 1987 - 180 pages
...under him . . . (Sunk, you note, not sank.) And the great lexicographer: Paradise Lost is one of those books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. . . . SAMUEL JOHNSON Talking about little children, on... | |
 | J. S. Borthwick - 1991 - 308 pages
...the back of the room, listened with half an ear, remembering Dr. Johnson's words that "Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is." Even Professor Merlin-Smith seemed to be suffering from the reading,... | |
 | John T. Shawcross - 1995 - 500 pages
...But original deficience cannot be supplied. The want of human interest is always felt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. (None ever wished it longer than it is.) Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction,... | |
 | Tim Fulford - 1996 - 274 pages
...aesthetic disabled conventional criticism and surpassed the interests of the common reader: 'Paradùe Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again' (p. 183). Here, allying himself with die common reader, Johnson gains critical revenge for the experience... | |
 | Lawrence Lipking - 2009 - 396 pages
...imagination place himself; he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy . . . Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is" (Lives 1: 181, 183). The final sentence, a particular favorite of common... | |
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Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. 
