...of the Poets (1781; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 19o6), i. 14, discussing 'metaphysical' poets: 'Of Wit, thus defined, they have more than enough....heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence together.' It is, of course, in mis kind of 'wit' that Eagleton (and 'Theory') excel. finding homogeneities where...

...he missed them, wonders more frequently by what perverseness of industry they were ever found. . . . The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence...and allusions; their learning instructs and their subtlety surprises, but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and though he sometimes...

...dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike'. He continues: 'The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence...ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and allusions. 'Johnson apparently had little taste for the didactic aspects of metaphysical poetry, concluding that...

...combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblance's in things apparently unlike. . . . The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence...are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions."19 Remarkably, uneasiness about Li He's poetry in the Chinese tradition echoes what Johnson...

...concors. Indeed Gibbon conspicuously alludes to Samuel Johnson's critique of metaphysical poetry, that "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence...ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions." 24 For Gibbon, theology and its propensity for frolicking in the multiple connotations of the material...

...kind of discordia concors; a combination of dissimilar images, or a discovery ofoccult resemblances in things apparently unlike. Of wit, thus defined, they...enough. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by tiolence together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and allusions; their...

...neither are they just.' In particular he objected to the frequency of a 'conceit', which he defined. 'The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence...instructs, and their subtilty surprises; but the reader, . . . though he sometimes admires, is seldom pleased' - because the reader is not shown 'truth' by...

...in things apparendy unlike' continues thus: 'Of wit, thus defined, they [the English Metaphysicals ] have more than enough. The most heterogeneous ideas...and allusions ; their learning instructs, and their subdety surprises ; but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes...

...experience, that is the hinge of Johnson's account of Donne. When Johnson remarks that in Donne's poetry "the most heterogeneous ideas are yoked by violence...ransacked for illustrations, comparisons and allusions" (para. 56), he is, presumably, thinking of the idiom of such quintessential poems as "The Extasie,"...

...the Foulis brothers, he also expressed comparable displeasure at the Metaphysicals' inclusiveness: "nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons,...and allusions; their learning instructs and their subtlety surprises, but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought, and, though he sometimes...