...longer than it is"—and hear the reader joining Johnson in praising Gray's most famous poem—"In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader." We feel with readers the repellent grossness of Pope's and Swift's physical imagery— "such as every...

...poems, the Doctor had been ready to praise. Of the Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard he wrote, "I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the...

...of his panegyric thus functions as symptomatic discourse, as a commentary on the text-milieu itself: In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the...

...quotes the following appraisal of Gray by Dr. Johnson — certainly no friend of solitary brooding: "In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader . . . The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to...

...symptomatically to register the full force and resonance of the word "common" in eighteenth-century discourse: In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader, for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of suhtility and the...

...Dickens and a pathology of the mid-Victorian reading public Helen Small In the character of [Gray's] Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the...

...Elegy Wtitren in a Country Churchyards an example of genuine achievement: in the characrer of [Gray's] Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupred with lirerary prejudices, afrer all the refinements of subtility and the...

...isolate the issue to be discussed here. In his Lives of the English Poets, Dr Johnson famously declared: 'I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the...

...Johnson is clearly distinguishing himself from the "common reader" when he says in his "Life" of Gray: "In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the...

...any poem, would seem still to govern the judgements of most modern readers; as Johnson wrote of the Elegy: 'I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtlety and the...