...infinite repetition that for him amounts to aesthetic cruelty, Johnson asserts another sort of end: "The only end of writing is to enable the readers...life, or better to endure it; and how will either of those be put more in our power by him who tells us that we are puppets, of which some creature not...

...productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure? The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it" (AfW 536). Not to be outdone in sentiments of this type, Hume concludes his Enquiry concerning Human...

...pre-eminent value of all writings, biographies included, was to provide persuasive models of conduct "to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it."49 I end with Johnson because his criticism was to be the last significant expression of a residual...

...productions of the last bounteous year, how many can be said to serve any purpose of use or pleasure ! The only end of writing is to enable the readers better...life, or better to endure it ; and how will either of those be put more in our power, by him who tells us, that we are puppets, of which some creature, not...

...parenthetically in the text. 9. Johnson powerfully concludes the review of Jenyns with a different sort of "end": "the only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it." Samuel Johnson, "Review of [Soame Jenyns], A Free Enquiry into the Nature and Origin of Evil" (1757),...

...the universal principle or final cause of poetry. 'The only end of writing', according to Johnson, 'is to enable the readers better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.'4 Hence the central issues of criticism were defined or adjudicated in terms of effects on readers....

...Many of the JSooks which now crowd the World, may be juftly fufpe&ed to be written for the Sake cf fome invifible Order of Beings, for furely they are...put more in our Power by him who tells us, that we arc Puppets, of which fome Creature not much \\ifer than tourfelves manages the Wires. That a Set of...

...language of pain," he added, "is more exact than the language of well-being." Or as Samuel Johnson put it, "The only end of writing is to enable the readers better to enjoy life or better to endure it." I want to talk, then, about poetry as consolation, consolation both for the reader and for the writer....