... them which they must attempt to satisfy, cannot be still. They must walk along the periphery of the stage, darkly seeking for what cannot be found, and then, having arrived at the point at which they started, they must begin the same journey anew. (The story of Imlac tells us...

... seems to deserve our considera- tion. For just as Rasselas represents the seeking Johnson3 and as Imlac, the guide and philosopher, represents him in an ethical sense, so the astronomer represents Johnson as a suffering neurotic. Readers easily recall the “morals” which are pointed...

..., 102). Hazlitt would have found nothing surprising in the conclusion of this work, since nothing is concluded: Pekuah, the princess, and Rasselas are tempted by visionary schemes not unlike the ones they have been cau- tioned against all through the tale, and Imlac and the astronomer...

... likely to be severely punished. Some of these escapes were undertaken in company with a priest21- perhaps the germ of the idea of the learned Imlac as the companion and guide of Rasselas. Furthermore, the Happy Valley was not a valley at all, but the flat top of one of three very lofty...

... Tillotson, “Imlac and the Business of a Poet”; Ian Watt, “The Comic Syntax of Tristram Shnndy”; Kobert E. Moore, “Reynolds and the Art of Charactcrization”; Emilic Uuc 11- wald, “Gainsborough’s ‘Prospect, Animated Prospect’ “; James Scoggins, “‘I’lie Preface to Lyrical Ballads...

... in eighteenth-century theories of repre- sentation, particularly as applied to portraiture. The great com- monplace of “neo-classical” criticism was succinctly stated by Imlac in Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas: 25 British Miniaturists, p. 369. I have spelled out some of Long’s abbreviations; cf. Fos...

... that happiness is always alloyed and “a-la-mortal, finely chequered” (MP, p. 274), and her disappointing homecoming (which, like Imlac’s, failed to bring its expected felicity) recall the tenor and substance of Rasselas. Austen’s observation, “There is nothing like employment, active, indispensable...

..., the questioner, the very object of keen but good-humored satire who is seeking what. the poem already has, and who must learn to dismiss his own pernicious wishes for earthly success.6 As Edward Young says in 1719, “he that asks the son and Imlac in Chapter Ten of Rmselm,” ECS, 5 (197 l), 86-96...

... commented upon by Johnson himself: “Imlac in ‘Ras- selas,’ I spelt with a c at the end, because it is less like English, which should always have the Saxon k added to the c.” Boswell, Life, IV, 31. Addison like- wise suggests the romantic appeal of classical names. “A Discourse on Ancient...