Note 385 — Chapter II · INDICATIONS OF A NEW ATTITUDE TOWARD NATURE IN THE POETRY OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY (continued 2)

Ibid., 432–37 (1757). Akenside’s presentation of this doctrine has led Gosse to call him a “sort of frozen Keats,” but Akenside’s pleasure in Nature was philosophical rather than sensuous. His scientific delight in the analyzed rainbow (“Pleasures of Imagination,” Book II, 103–20 [1744]) would have filled Keats with horror.