The Pleasures of the Imagination is a long didactic poem by Mark Akenside, first published in 1744.
The ideas were largely borrowed from Joseph Addison's essays on the imagination in The Spectator and from Lord Shaftesbury.
Samuel Johnson praised the blank verse of the poems, but found fault with the long and complicated periods.
[2] The Pleasures of the Imagination may also refer to The Spectator papers numbered 411 through 421, by Joseph Addison.
[3] These specific papers differed from the rest in that they were non-narrative and philosophical, and contained less obvious social commentary.