...effusion of real passion ; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls...there is leisure for fiction there is little grief." — Samuel Johnson. " Can any candid and intelligent mind hesitate in determining which of these best...

...foul of Milton's Lycidas: "Its diction is harsh, its rhymes uncertain, its numbers unpleasing; . . . . in this poem there is no nature for there is no truth, there is no art for there is nothing new; .... it is easy, vulgar, and therefore disgusting." In our own time Mark Pattison pronounces this same...

...passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from myrtle and ivy, nor calls upon Arethuse and Mincius,...there is leisure for fiction there is little grief." " Johnson does not realize that the requirement of sincere grief in the poet himself, though justifiable...

...effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls...Mincius, nor tells of rough satyrs and fauns with rloven hoof. Where there is leisure for fiction there is little grief.' What is revealing here is less...

...effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls...;-' for there is nothing new. Its form is that of pastoral, easy, vulgar, and '2 therefore disgusting: whatever images it can supply, are long ago IT...

...the third. His analysis in the first paragraph involves a series of particular references: "Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls...tells of rough satyrs and fauns with cloven heel." This supports Johnson's general judgment of Milton's sentiment of grief: "It is not to be considered...

...failure of imagination and of art. This perception is similar to his statement that in Milton's "Lycidas" "there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new" ("Life of Milton," 1, 163) where Johnson's complaint is not mainly about the poem's pastoral form or...

...effusion of real passion; for passion runs not after remote allusions and obscure opinions. Passion plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy, nor calls...there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.' What possible point could there be in representing King and Milton as shepherds tending their flocks...

...the poems is of an artistic failure, and in this Johnson echoes his observation on "Lycidas" that: "In this poem there is no nature, for there is no truth; there is no art, for there is nothing new."4:1 But Johnson also comments on an experiential problem he sees in the metaphysicals, who "wrote...

...- 'Passion', says he, in his usual conclusive tone, (as if the force of critic could no further go) 'plucks no berries from the myrtle and ivy; nor calls...there is leisure for fiction, there is little grief.' This is only a more genteel common-place, brought in to put down a vulgar one. Dr Johnson, like most...