...he therefore invested them with form and matter. This being necessary was therefore defensible; and he should have secured the consistency of his system by keeping immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has unhappily perplexed his poetry with his...

...therefore invested them with form and matter. This, being necessary, was therefore defensible; and he should have secured the consistency of his system, by keeping immateriality out of sight, and enticing his reader to drop it from his thoughts. But he has unhappily perplexed his poetry with his...

...understandings as might break the charm which it was his object to throw over their imaginations. This 30 is the real explanation of the indistinctness and...Johnson acknowledges that it was absolutely necessary that the spirits should be clothed with material forms. " But," says he, " the poet should have secured...