...it." Similarly, Johnson's gestures at ranking works according to artistic excellence - Paradise Lost, "considered with respect to design, may claim the...place, and with respect to performance the second" could seem both unequivocal and perfunctory, as if they were merely rhetorical and not actually positing...

...Milton's scholarship "places him in the first rank of writers and criticks." Most tellingly, Johnson calls Paradise Lost "a poem which, considered with respect...performance the second, among the productions of the human mind."26 As Paul Fussell observes,"This is a remarkable flux of enthusiasm from Johnson, a man who...

...acrimonious republican with a Turkish contempt for females, and yet he said that "Paradise Lost [is] a poem which, considered with respect to design, may...the second, among the productions of the human mind" ("Milton" 1.170). (As is usual, priority is assigned to the Iliad.) Johnson therefore concludes his...

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

...sein Werk Paradise Lost erhebt Johnson auf den Gipfel der Dichtkunst: "with respect to design, [it] may claim the first place, and with respect to performance the second, among the productions of the human mind."154 Doch wie bei der Person des Dichters bleibt auch Johnsons Urteil über das Werk ambivalent....

...Those little pieces may be despatched without much anxiety ; a greater work calls for greater care. I am now to examine Paradise Lost ; a poem which,...the second, among the productions of the human mind. 97 and therefore relates some great event in the most affecting manner. History must supply the writer...

...commences his criticism si Paradise Lost by observing that ' considered with respect to design, it may claim the first place, and with respect to performance,...the second, among the productions of the human mind' ; his lengthy analysis of the poem according to Aristotelian methods of criticism abounds with unaffected...

...\etry. Or " By the general consent of critics the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers...which are singly sufficient for other compositions." (Johnson, Life of Milton.) Explain this, and illustrate it from Paradise Lost IV. SECTION IL 1 Discuss...