Some of them make confession that the subject transcends the capacity of human thought:—
Reason may grasp the massy Hills
And stretch from Pole to Pole,
But half thy Name our Spirit fills,
And overloads our Soul.
In vain our haughty Reason swells,
For nothing’s found in Thee
But boundless Unconceivables,
And vast Eternity.
If these verses, and others like them, deserve high praise, they also very clearly illustrate Johnson’s objections to devotion in verse. They are a kind of Hymn to Spaciousness. Detail is beneath their notice. The thing once said can only be repeated, with very little novelty of expression. Yet it is strange to remember that Johnson objected to the details in Shakespeare’s description of Dover Cliff, and maintained that in order to impress the mind with an idea of immense height, it should be ‘all vacuum.’ The conclusion would seem to be that his objection to religious poetry cannot be prevented from recoiling with some force on the classical doctrine of his age. A consistent preference for general statements will always, in the long run, make poetry dull.
He was a staunch Englishman: in many disputed questions he cut loose from the orderly doctrines of the Latin peoples, and boldly declared for the freer and more spontaneous usages of English poetry. He defends Shakespeare for neglecting the vaunted dramatic unities. What is more remarkable, he decides against the establishment of a literary academy in England, ‘which I,’ he says, ‘who can never wish to see dependence multiplied, hope the spirit of English liberty will hinder or destroy.’ Men of letters in England have always nibbled
