...the gravest censure of a defect which "the barbarity of the age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time and place." From such representative data it clearly transpires, and is indeed the fact, that throughout...

...excellencies, has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit." "The plots are often so loosely formed that a very...seems not always fully to comprehend his own design." "In his comic scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations...

...men to live better. This is borne out by another reflection in the same Preface, that it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent of time or place, by which the author seems willing to accept the most insufferable of moral preachments....

...examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate ; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice...may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that lie seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. He omits opportunities of instructing or delighting...

...to operate by chance. This is a fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time and place." Johnson has been widely admired for this type of pronouncement, for his sturdy common sense,...

...• for it is always a writer's duty_to make the wqrld^ better, and justice is a virtue independant on time or \ . place. The plots are often so loosely...seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. Iie_omits_ppgQrJ:ij.nities, .of instructing_or delighting which the train of his story seems to forcejurjpn...

...evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked. . . It is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independam on time or place.*T The pragmatic orientation, ordering the aim of the artist and the character...

...evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked ... It is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independant on time or place.47 The pragmatic orientation, ordering the aim of the artist and the character...

...examples to operate by chance. This fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place It will be thought strange that, in enumerating the defects of this writer,26 I have not yet mentioned...

...centuries, that a poet must represent a just universe. Johnson states explicitly that "it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place" (p. 71). Although he avoids using the term, in his emphasis on "a just distribution of good and evil,"...