SAMUEL JOHNSHON

• Often referred to as Dr.Johnson was an English writer who made lasting contributions to Eng literature as a poet,essayist,moralist,literary critic,biographer,editor and lexicographer.

• He was an Anglican and a Tory.

• He was born in Lichfied.

• Attended Pembroke College Oxford.

• He was the first one to compile a dictionary in 1755.

FROM MILTON

• Milton is one of the poets on whom much praise is bestowed his one such poem is “Lycidas”

• Summary of the poem Lycidas.

CRITICISM ON LYCIDUS

• Diction is hard,rhymes uncertain and numbers unpleasing.

• Beauty if any is in the images and sentiments.

LACK OF PASSION

• There is no passion in “Lycidas: passion runs away from “allusions” and “obscure opinions”

• Passion plucks no berries “myrtle” and “ivy” nor calls upon “Arethuse” and Mincius nor tells of rough”satyrs” and “farns with cloven heel”

• Where there is leisure for fiction there is a little grief.

UNORIGINAL

• There is no nature.

• No truth,no art.

• Because there is nothing new.

• Unimaginative.

• Images are long ago exhausted.

• Inherent improbability.

• Dissatisfaction of mind.

ALLEGORY

• It’s a poor allegory.we know that they never drove a field there were no flocks.

• The true meaning is so uncertain and remote.

• Among the flocks and copses and flowers appear the heathendieties with a long train of mythological imagery.

• Nothing less displays knowledge or less exercise invention then to tell how a shepherd has lost his companion and must now feed his flocks alone and how one god asks another what is become of Lycidas and how neither god can tell.He who thus grieves will excite no sympathy;he who thus praises will confer no honour.

• Tripling fiction are mixed with sacred truths.

• Evolution of shepherd to the ecclesiastic pastor.

• Such equivocations are always unskillful and at least an approach to impiety of which the writer not to have been conscious.

• Milton has earned his reputation and the blaze of this reputation keep one away from closely examining the poetry.

• Had one not known who has written this poem it cannot be a pleasure.

L’ALLEGRO & IL PENSOROSO

• These two poems are read with pleasure.

• The authors design is not to show how objects derive their colour from mind but rather how aming the successive variety of appearance every disposition of mind takes hold on those by which it ma be gratified.

DIFFERENCE B/W CHEERFUL & THE PENSIVE MAN

• Cheerful man hears the lack in the morning and the pensive man hears the nightingale in the evening.

• How a cheerful man observes a day of labor

• How a pensive man sees a day of labor.

• Both Mirth and Melancholy are solitary silent inhabitants of the breast that neither receive nor transmit communication no mention is therefore made of a philosophical friend or a pleasant companion.

• The seriousness is not the result of a calamity nor is happiness caused by the bottle.

CHEERFUL MAN & THE PENSIVE VISIT THE CITY

• Cheerful man would walk the streets attend the assemblies he will attend the theatre.

• The pensive man never loses himself in crowds but walks the cloisters or frequents the cathedral.

• Both his characters delight in music

• For the old age of cheerfulness he makes no provision but Melancholy he conducts with great dignity to the close of life.his cheerfulness is without levity and his pensiveness is without asperity.

• Through these poems images are properly selected mostly distinguished.

• Diction seem not sufficiently discriminated.

• No mirth can indeed be found in his melancholy however there is melancholy in his worth.

• They are two noble efforts of an imagination

MASK OF COMUS

• Can be seen as his most juvenile performance.

• In it we can see the dawn or twilight of “paradise lost”

• This poem shows that Milton has earlier devised a system of diction and mode of verse which his maturer judgment approved and from which he never deviated.

• It is also an exhibit of his power of diction his vigour of sentiment which he has used in order to proise and defend virtue.

A POETICAL WORK

• Truly poetical work rarely found as there are allusions,images descriptive epithets adorn every period.

• It deserves all the admiration he got.

• As a drama it is deficient because the action is not probable.

• A mask is understandable in case of supernatural but its action is merely human it ought to be reasonable.

• Story.

• What deserves more reprehensive is that the prologue spoken in the wild wood by the attendant spirit is addressed to the audience ;a mode of communication unprecedented.

• The discourse of spirit is too long they appear to be declamations on a moral question.Audience listen to it as a lecture without passion and without anxiety.

THE SONG OF COMUS

• Airiness & jollity

• But the invitations to pleasure are so general that no distinct image is formed and t does not ignite the fancy.

SOLILOQUIES

• They are elegant but tedious can only be pleasant if the singer had a good voice.

• When the brothers enter they are too came and when they have confessed their worry about the safety of their sister,the elder makes a speech in praise of chastity and the younger finds how fine it is to be a philosopher.

THE SPIRIT

• The spirit descends in form of a shepherd the brother praises his singing and inquires about his business on finding that the Lady is in the power of Comus the brother moralizes again.

THE STYLE

• The language is poetical,

• Sentiments are generous.

• But there is something wanting.

• Figures are too bold.

• Language too luxuriant for drama.

• Drama in epic style.

• Inelegantly splendid.

• Tediously instructive.