Happy to see this, as I have been hankering for some solid 18th c common sense. I love Johnson, in all his manifestations. My personal favorite lines in this poem occur a bit further on:
New forms arise, and diff’rent views engage,
Superfluous lags the vet’ran on the stage
That's how I feel these days. In fact I started to rename my blog "The Veteran," with that motto. It doesn't seem to intend "veteran" in the military sense that we so often use it now.
The hankering has me reading Pope's "Essay on Man." I'm not very enthusiastic so far. It's a little *too* 18th c.
In a tough part of my life, I found solace in Johnson's solidity, knowing that it was achieved against many kinds of difficulties and instability. "Rasselas" was a favorite at that time, but so were the prefaces to his edition of Shakespeare and his dictionary. I read through "The Lives of the Poets." His taste is not ours, and sometimes he lacks that generosity of spirit I like to associate with him. His life of Richard Savage seems to me considerably too generous but I find myself liking Johnson all the more for his loyalty to Savage.
The "Essay on Man" is hard-going. "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" is more interesting to me, with Pope's pride, pathos, and humor poured out in full measure. The poem's investment in the quarrelsome literary scene makes it a little like "The Dunciad," but a lot shorter and without the epic machinery. That such a hard-edged satire could also be a moving apologia shows the distance from our literary sensitivities.
By the way, I'm enjoying your essays in "Sunday Light."
Thank you! I don't know if they quite merit being called "essays," but whatever the right word is, I'm pleased that you like them.
I have a big thick Johnson anthology which contains a selection of Rambler and Idler pieces. I had never read them before, or forgotten if I had, until a year or two ago, and I am very impressed. I'm wondering if the quality is consistently that high, enough to warrant buying a collection with more, if not all. Never tackled Rasselas, always assumed it was just a Story With A Moral, more moral than story, but I'm probably mistaken.
I disagree with Lewis about Johnson being deaf to metre. He just has a view of metre and a taste for strict regularity peculiar to the age. As for imagination, Johnson had enough of it to be vast in his sympathies, even towards people he otherwise disagreed with (as in his comments about the Mass not being idolatrous because Catholics believe God to be there).
I think Lewis was speaking there of Johnson's lack of imagination in his poetry criticism, not his general lack of imagination. And it strikes me as a fair criticism, though incomplete, of Johnson's Lives of the Poets. When he coined "metaphysical" to describe Donne et al., he didn't mean it as a compliment.
Ah, but madness and fury have been unleashed upon our world. The best of us do what we can to staunch the flow, the rest do indoors, well-secured, and read Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson, or write verses that only one's cohorts will understand. We cannot pretend that such messages will bring much sanity and calm in the byways where madness and anger thrive: your ears must be circumcised if you would hear sense, and a tender heart if you would have the compassion of the old saints for those who are lost.
Johnson is certainly not among my favorite poets, but I full agree with you about the need for "a little sanity, a little wisdom, a little awareness that the human condition has always been as it is," and Johnson does give us this in a wonderfully adult and sane way. A good poem for these days!
I highly recommend the 2003 selection from the Rambler, the Adventurer and the Idler, in Penguin Classics, edited by David Womersley.
Happy to see this, as I have been hankering for some solid 18th c common sense. I love Johnson, in all his manifestations. My personal favorite lines in this poem occur a bit further on:
New forms arise, and diff’rent views engage,
Superfluous lags the vet’ran on the stage
That's how I feel these days. In fact I started to rename my blog "The Veteran," with that motto. It doesn't seem to intend "veteran" in the military sense that we so often use it now.
The hankering has me reading Pope's "Essay on Man." I'm not very enthusiastic so far. It's a little *too* 18th c.
In a tough part of my life, I found solace in Johnson's solidity, knowing that it was achieved against many kinds of difficulties and instability. "Rasselas" was a favorite at that time, but so were the prefaces to his edition of Shakespeare and his dictionary. I read through "The Lives of the Poets." His taste is not ours, and sometimes he lacks that generosity of spirit I like to associate with him. His life of Richard Savage seems to me considerably too generous but I find myself liking Johnson all the more for his loyalty to Savage.
The "Essay on Man" is hard-going. "The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot" is more interesting to me, with Pope's pride, pathos, and humor poured out in full measure. The poem's investment in the quarrelsome literary scene makes it a little like "The Dunciad," but a lot shorter and without the epic machinery. That such a hard-edged satire could also be a moving apologia shows the distance from our literary sensitivities.
By the way, I'm enjoying your essays in "Sunday Light."
We must after all thank Johnson every time we open a dictionary!
Thank you! I don't know if they quite merit being called "essays," but whatever the right word is, I'm pleased that you like them.
I have a big thick Johnson anthology which contains a selection of Rambler and Idler pieces. I had never read them before, or forgotten if I had, until a year or two ago, and I am very impressed. I'm wondering if the quality is consistently that high, enough to warrant buying a collection with more, if not all. Never tackled Rasselas, always assumed it was just a Story With A Moral, more moral than story, but I'm probably mistaken.
I am borrowing this space to put in a plug for tomorrow’s poem, for election day, to be Casey at the Bat.
There will definitely be no joy in Mudville for some, and few poems bring that out more.
I disagree with Lewis about Johnson being deaf to metre. He just has a view of metre and a taste for strict regularity peculiar to the age. As for imagination, Johnson had enough of it to be vast in his sympathies, even towards people he otherwise disagreed with (as in his comments about the Mass not being idolatrous because Catholics believe God to be there).
I think Lewis was speaking there of Johnson's lack of imagination in his poetry criticism, not his general lack of imagination. And it strikes me as a fair criticism, though incomplete, of Johnson's Lives of the Poets. When he coined "metaphysical" to describe Donne et al., he didn't mean it as a compliment.
Ah, but madness and fury have been unleashed upon our world. The best of us do what we can to staunch the flow, the rest do indoors, well-secured, and read Jane Austen and Samuel Johnson, or write verses that only one's cohorts will understand. We cannot pretend that such messages will bring much sanity and calm in the byways where madness and anger thrive: your ears must be circumcised if you would hear sense, and a tender heart if you would have the compassion of the old saints for those who are lost.
Johnson is certainly not among my favorite poets, but I full agree with you about the need for "a little sanity, a little wisdom, a little awareness that the human condition has always been as it is," and Johnson does give us this in a wonderfully adult and sane way. A good poem for these days!