Monday, October 20, 2008

Yes, but ....

... `Interest, Instruction, Amusement'.

I should add that, while Johnson's Lives makes for wonderful reading, his judgments are hardly infallible (whose are?). I think he is wrong about Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" and also wrong about Gray's "Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat Drowned in a Tub of Goldfishes." In both cases Johnson seems unimaginatively literal and in the latter case the good doctor displays a definite need to lighten up.

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