...ignore differences and focus on existing commonalities. In Rasselas, Johnson suggests that the writer "must divest himself of the prejudices of his age...and transcendental truths, which will always be the same."68 The aim is not to understand concrete instances of otherness, but rather the abstraction of...

...the appeal of the particular and to focus on discovering general principles, the poet, Johnson says, "must divest himself of the prejudices of his age...transcendental truths, which will always be the same." 40 Reynolds asserts in his third Discourse that "the whole beauty and grandeur of the art consists,...

...position, just as the aviator's or D'Alembert's: "He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their...truths, which will always be the same ... he must write as the interpreter of nature, and the legislator of mankind, and consider himself as presiding...

...transcendental morality. The poet, Imlac says, "must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their...transcendental truths, which will always be the same" (p. 44). In Johnson's thinking, the elementary human passions are closely connected with moral realities...

...different shades in the verdure of the forest. . . . He must divest himself of the prejudices of his age or country; he must consider right and wrong in their...and transcendental truths, which will always be the same."2 On one level, these statements are commonplaces of classical aesthetic theory. Both restate...

...greatest activity and the best talent. Moreover, this ideal journalist, like the poet in Rasselas, must " disregard present laws and opinions, and rise...himself with the slow progress of his name; contemn the applause of his own time, and commit his claims to the justice of posterity. He must write as the interpreter...