 | Samuel Johnson - English poetry - 1905 - 530 pages
...cannot be supplied. Thejvant of human 252 interest is. always fHt. Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets...take up again. None ever wished it longer than it is3. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure 4. We read Milton for instruction, retire 1 In the... | |
 | Samuel Johnson - 1907 - 172 pages
...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...None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal isj^u^jathejjian a .pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and... | |
 | Walter Bagehot - English literature - 1908 - 294 pages
...profound mysteries in the last ; but in what could not Coleridge 1 ' Paradise Lost is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets...is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure. . . .' — Lives of the Poets : ' Milton.' find a mystery if he wished ? Dryden more wisely remarked... | |
 | Charles Wells Moulton - American literature - 1910 - 812 pages
...power to astonish. . . . The want of human interest is always felt. "Paradise Lost" is one of the books which the reader admires and lays down, and forgets...a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation ; we desert our master... | |
 | C. C. Barfoot - Literary Criticism - 1982 - 234 pages
...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... | |
 | James Boyd White - Language Arts & Disciplines - 1985 - 400 pages
...the imagination place himself; he has, therefore, little natural curiosity or sympathy"; and "no one ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure." 13. Of course Johnson uses the word "pride" somewhat differently in the two papers, allowing it to... | |
 | Bill Moore - Cooking - 1987 - 180 pages
.... . . (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 - Fiction - 1991 - 308 pages
...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...up again. None ever wished it longer than it is." Even Professor Merlin-Smith seemed to be suffering from the reading, although the student's monotone... | |
 | John T. Shawcross - Literary Criticism - 1995 - 500 pages
...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...a duty rather than a pleasure. We read Milton for instruction, retire harassed and overburdened, and look elsewhere for recreation; we desert our master,... | |
 | John L. Mahoney - Literary Collections - 1998 - 388 pages
...Johnson's famous (or infamous) remarks about the reader's response to Paradise Lost. He calls it a book "the reader admires and lays down, and forgets to...longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure."2 This seems a surprising conclusion, for Johnson's commentary on the poem begins with the... | |
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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. 
