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Samuel Johnson and Company 4/23/2016 7:18:15 AM
Samuel Johnson was one of the literary heroes of 18th century England whose name is still respected today. I haven't read much of his work, so I took volume one of his "Lives of the English Poets" from the shelf, blew the dust off the top, and began reading it.
Though he lets the reader know his Tory views and never seems in doubt about very much, Johnson's writing is humane, knowledgeable, sound, and balanced. I'll share with you a few passages that caught my attention. I'll modify spelling from time to time
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On Abraham Cowley: "Cowley, like other poets who have written with narrow views, and, instead of tracing intellectual pleasure to its natural sources in the mind of man, paid their court to temporary prejudices, has been at one time too much praised, and too much neglected at another."
Also from his essay on Cowley: "...great labour, directed by great abilities, is never wholly lost..."
On John Milton, the author of "Paradise Lost": "It appears, in all his writings, that he had the usual concomitant of great abilities, a lofty and steady confidence in himself, perhaps not without some contempt for others; for scarcely any man wrote so much and praised so few."
From "Milton": "It
has been observed, that they who most loudly clamour for liberty do not most liberally grant it."
From "Milton": "By the general consent of critics, the first praise of genius is due to the writer of an epic poem, as it requires an assemblage of all the powers which are singly sufficient for other compositions. Poetry is the art of uniting pleasure with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason."
From the same essay: "Milton would not have excelled in dramatic writing; he knew human nature only in the gross, and had never studied the shades of character, nor the combinations of concurring, or the perplexity of contending passions. He had read much, and knew what books could teach; but had mingled little in the world, and was deficient in the knowledge which human experience must confer."
On Samuel Butler, author of "Hudibras": "Imagination is useless without knowledge; nature gives in vain the power of combination, unless study and observation provide materials to be combined."
On Edmund Waller: "The essence of poetry is invention; such invention as, by producing something unexpected, surprises and delights."
Two lines from a poem by Waller that Dr. Johnson liked: ""The Soul's dark Cottage, batter'd and decayed/Lets in new Light thro' chinks that time has made."
On "Dryden": "He has been described as magisterially presiding over the younger writers, and assuming the distribution of poetical fame; but he who excels has a right to teach, and he whose judgement is incontestable may, without usurpation, examine and decide."
A sentence on a poet whose work has dropped from view, Edmund Smith: "Though he was an academic the greatest part of his life, yet he contracted no sourness of temper, no spice of pedantry, no itch of disputation, or obstinate contention for the old or new philosophy, no assuming way of dictating to others; which are faults (though excusable) which some are insensibly led into, who are constrained to dwell long within the walls of a private college."
I wish I'd come across the last quote decades ago.
