...that this matter of meaningfulness was still a central difficulty even for a writer as late as Dryden: "He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning,...of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy."5 This absence of significance, this impossibility of attaining to meaning in discourse, is...

...and communication. With his habitual sonority, Johnson caught the thought nicely, saying of Dryden: "He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning,...of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy."13 Science was certainly already considered a means to grasp the reality of nature both in...

...utmost limits of our language" (which Gray exceeded) is consistent with his description of Dryden's wit: "He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning,...absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy" (Lives 1: 460). 50. Rasselas, chap. 11; Works 16: 46. 51. Francis Blackburne (1780), in Boulton, p....

...argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and excentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink...absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy" (vol. i, 460). 45. John Dryden and His World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), 269. 46. For...

...argument, his delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment, in the irregular and excentrick violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink...of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy.1^ Critics who have followed up Johnson's insight have generally construed this side of Dryden's...

...the lunar world securely pry. It was confusions such as this that led Dr Johnson to say of Dryden: 'He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning,...precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of un ideal vacancy.' In a universe such as the Einstein world, whose curvature is positive and is everywhere...