Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 by Samuel Johnson
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Samuel Johnson >> Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1
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DR. JOHNSON'S WORKS.
LIVES OF THE POETS.
VOL. I.
THE
WORKS
OF
SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D.
IN NINE VOLUMES.
VOLUME THE SEVENTH.
MDCCCXXV.
CONTENTS OF THE SEVENTH VOLUME.
THE LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS.
Cowley
Denham
Milton
Butler
Rochester
Roscommon
Otway
Waller
Pomfret
Dorset
Stepney
J. Philips
Walsh
Dryden
Smith
Duke
King
Sprat
Halifax
Parnell
Garth
Rowe
Addison
Hughes
Sheffield, duke of Buckinghamshire
PREFATORY NOTICE
TO
THE LIVES OF THE POETS.
Such was the simple and unpretending advertisement that announced the
Lives of the English Poets; a work that gave to the British nation a new
style of biography. Johnson's decided taste for this species of writing,
and his familiarity with the works of those whose lives he has recorded,
peculiarly fitted him for the task; but it has been denounced by some as
dogmatical, and even morose; minute critics have detected inaccuracies;
the admirers of particular authors have complained of an insufficiency
of praise to the objects of their fond and exclusive regard; and the
political zealot has affected to decry the staunch and unbending
champion of regal and ecclesiastical rights. Those, again, of high and
imaginative minds, who "lift themselves up to look to the sky of poetry,
and far removed from the dull-making cataract of Nilus, listen to the
planet-like music of poetry;" these accuse Johnson of a heavy and
insensible soul, because he avowed that nature's "world was brazen, and
that the poets only delivered a golden[1]."
But in spite of the censures of political opponents, private friends,
and angry critics, it will be acknowledged, by the impartial, and
by every lover of virtue and of truth, that Johnson's honest heart,
penetrating mind, and powerful intellect, has given to the world
memoirs fraught with what is infinitely more valuable than mere verbal
criticism, or imaginative speculation; he has presented, in his Lives of
the English Poets, the fruits of his long and careful examination of men
and manners, and repeated in his age, with the authoritative voice of
experience, the same dignified lessons of morality, with which he
had instructed his readers in his earlier years. And if these lives
contained few merits of their own, they confessedly amended the
criticism of the nation, and opened the path to a more enlarged and
liberal style of biography than had, before their publication, appeared.
The bold manner in which Johnson delivered what he believed to be the
truth, naturally provoked hostile attack, and we are not prepared to
say, that, in many instances, the strictures passed upon him might not
be just. We will call the attention of our readers to some few of the
charges brought against the work now before us, and then leave it to
their candid and unbiased judgment to decide, whether the deficiencies
pointed out are but as dust in the balance, when brought to weigh
against the sterling excellence with which this last and greatest
production of our Moralist abounds.
He has been accused of indulging a spirit of political animosity, of an
illiberal and captious method of criticism, of frequent inaccuracies,
and of a general haughtiness of manner, indicative of a feeling of
superiority over the subjects of his memorial.
In the life of Milton his political prejudices are most apparent. It is
not our duty, neither our inclination, in this place, to discuss the
accuracy of Johnson's political wisdom. We cannot, however, but respect
the integrity with which he clung to the instructions of his youth,
amidst poverty, and all those inconveniencies which usually drive men to
a discontent with things as they are.
Those who censure him without qualification or reserve, are as bad, or
worse, on the opposite side.
They accuse him of narrow-minded prejudice, and of bigoted attachment to
powers that be with a rancour little befitting the liberality of which
they make such vaunting professions. Johnson had a really benevolent
heart, but despised and detested the affectation of a sentimental and
universal philanthropy, which neglects the practical charities of
home and kindred, in its wild and excursive flights after distant and
romantic objects. He was no tyrant, even in theory, but he dreaded, and,
therefore, sought to expose, the lurking designs of those who opposed
constituted authorities, because they hated subjection; and who, when
they gained power themselves, proved the well-grounded nature of the
fears entertained respecting their sincerity. Johnson was a firm
English character, and his surly expressions were often philanthropy in
disguise. They have little studied his real disposition, who impute his
occasional austerity of manner to misanthropy at heart. The man who is
smooth to all alike, is frequently the friend of none, and those who
entertain no aversions, have, perhaps, few of the warmer emotions of
friendship.
In dwelling thus long on a part of Johnson's character, on which we have
elsewhere[2] avowed that we could not speak with perfect pleasure, we
are not attempting to vindicate him in all his violent reproaches of
those whom he politically disliked. We would, however, wish to deprecate
unmitigated condemnation, and also to ask, whether the conduct of those
whom he denounced, was not, in its turn, so harsh and arbitrary, as
almost to justify the utmost severity of censure. Were they not men who
would "scarcely believe in the substance of their liberty, if they did
not see it cast a shadow of slavery over others."
With respect to Johnson's powers as a critic, we confess that he had but
little natural taste for poetry, as such; for that poetry of emotion
which produces in its cultivators and admirers an intensity of
excitement, to which language can scarcely afford an utterance, to which
art can give no body, and which spreads a dream and a glory around us.
All this Johnson felt not, and, therefore, understood not; for he wanted
that deep feeling which is the only sure and unerring test of poetic
excellence. He sought the didactic in poetry, and wished for reasoning
in numbers. Hence his undivided admiration of Pope and the French
school, who cultivated exclusively the poetry of idea, where each moral
problem is worked out with detailed, and often tedious, analysis; where
all intense emotion is frittered away by a ratiocinative process.
Johnson, we repeat, had no natural perception nor relish for the high
and excursive range of poetic fancy, and the age at which he composed
his criticisms on the English poets, was far advanced beyond that when
purely imaginative poetry usually affords delight. Hence, no doubt,
proceeded his capricious strictures on the odes of Gray to which
we, with painful candour, advert. In criticism and in poetry, for
indignation only poured forth the torrent of his song, he kept steadily
in view the interests of morality and virtue: these he would not
compromise for the glitter of genius, and for their maintenance of
these, the main objects of his own life and labour, he praised many an
author whom other more courtly critics have thought it not cruelty to
ridicule. He sums up his eulogium on a poet with the reflection, that he
left
No line which, dying, he could wish to blot.
Johnson has also not escaped animadversion for entitling his collection
The Lives of the English Poets, when he has taken so confined a range.
It must be remembered, that he only professed, in the first instance,
to prefix lives to the works which the booksellers chose to publish; he
was, therefore, confined to a task, at which he more than once expressed
his repugnance to Boswell. It should also, in fairness to his memory,
be borne in mind, that he wrote, as he confesses in his preface, from
scanty materials, and on various authors. It was very easy, therefore,
for each successive biographer, who devoted his time to the collection
of memoirs for some single individual, to point out inaccuracies in
Johnson's general statements; and very natural, also for one who had
contracted an affection for the subject of his labours, by continually
having him present in his thoughts, to carp at all those who were not as
alive to the merits, and as blind to the defects of his idol as himself.
But Johnson, feeling a manly consciousness of ability, which he affected
not to hide, was not dazzled by the lustre of brilliant talents, and was
far too honest to veil from public view the faults and failings of the
sons of genius. This he did not from a sour delight in detecting and
exposing the frailties of his fellow men, but from a belief that, in so
doing, he was promoting the good of mankind. "It is particularly the
duty," says he, "of those who consign illustrious names to posterity,
to take care lest their readers be misled by ambiguous examples. That
writer may justly be condemned as an enemy to goodness, who suffers
fondness or interest to confound right with wrong, or to shelter the
faults, which even the wisest and the best have committed, from that
ignominy which guilt ought always to suffer, and with which it should be
more deeply stigmatized, when dignified by its neighbourhood to uncommon
worth: since we shall be in danger of beholding it without abhorrence,
unless its turpitude be laid open, and the eye secured from the
deception of surrounding splendour[3]." "If nothing but the bright side
of characters should be shown," he once remarked to Malone, "we should
sit down in despondency, and think it utterly impossible to imitate them
in any thing[4]." It was this conscientious freedom, we believe, that
has, more than any other cause, subjected the Lives of the Poets to
severe censure. We readily avow this our belief, since we are persuaded
that it is now generally admitted by all, but those who are influenced
by an irreligious or a party spirit. We might diffuse these remarks to
a wide extent, by allusions to the opinions of different authors on the
Lives, and by critiques on the separate memoirs themselves; but we will
not longer occupy our readers, since the literary history of the Lives
has been elsewhere so fully detailed, and is now so almost universally
known[5].
What we have already advanced, has chiefly been with a view to invite to
the perusal of a work, which, for sound criticism, instructive memoir,
pleasing diction, and pure morality, must constitute the most lasting
monument of Johnson's fame.
[Footnote 1: See sir Philip Sidney's Defence of Poetry.]
[Footnote 2: See vol. vi. 153.]
[Footnote 3: Rambler, 164.]
[Footnote 4: See Malone's letter, in Boswell, iv. 55.]
[Footnote 5: See Boswell; Dr. Drake's Literary Life of Johnson; and,
since we dread not examination, Potter's Inquiry into some Passages in
Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets; Graves's Recollections of Shenstone;
Mitford's preface to Gray's works; Roscoe's preface to Pope's works, &c.]
COWLEY
The life of Cowley, notwithstanding the penury of English biography, has
been written by Dr. Sprat, an author whose pregnancy of imagination
and elegance of language have deservedly set him high in the ranks of
literature; but his zeal of friendship, or ambition of eloquence, has
produced a funeral oration rather than a history: he has given the
character, not the life, of Cowley; for he writes with so little detail,
that scarcely any thing is distinctly known, but all is shown confused
and enlarged through the mist of panegyrick.
Abraham Cowley was born in the year one thousand six hundred and
eighteen. His father was a grocer, whose condition Dr. Sprat conceals
under the general appellation of a citizen; and, what would probably not
have been less carefully suppressed, the omission of his name in the
register of St. Dunstan's parish gives reason to suspect that his father
was a sectary. Whoever he was, he died before the birth of his son, and,
consequently, left him to the care of his mother; whom Wood represents
as struggling earnestly to procure him a literary education, and who, as
she lived to the age of eighty, had her solicitude rewarded, by seeing
her son eminent, and, I hope, by seeing him fortunate, and partaking
his prosperity. We know, at least, from Sprat's account, that he always
acknowledged her care, and justly paid the dues of filial gratitude.
In the window of his mother's apartment lay Spenser's Fairy Queen; in
which he very early took delight to read, till, by feeling the charms
of verse, he became, as he relates, irrecoverably a poet. Such are
the accidents which, sometimes remembered, and, perhaps, sometimes
forgotten, produce that particular designation of mind, and propensity
for some certain science or employment, which is commonly called
genius. The true genius is a mind of large general powers, accidentally
determined to some particular direction. Sir Joshua Reynolds, the great
painter of the present age, had the first fondness for his art excited
by the perusal of Richardson's treatise.
By his mother's solicitation he was admitted into Westminster school,
where he was soon distinguished. He was wont, says Sprat, to relate,
"that he had this defect in his memory at that time, that his teachers
never could bring it to retain the ordinary rules of grammar."
This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder.
It is, surely, very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when
Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though
the book to which he prefixed his narrative, contained its confutation.
A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual
digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks,
had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision
made by nature for literary politeness. But, in the author's own honest
relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such "an enemy to all
constraint, that his master never could prevail on him to learn the
rules without book." He does not tell, that he could not learn the
rules; but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and
being an "enemy to constraint," he spared himself the labour.
Among the English poets, Cowley, Milton, and Pope, might be said "to
lisp in numbers;" and have given such early proofs, not only of powers
of language, but of comprehension of things, as, to more tardy minds,
seems scarcely credible. But of the learned puerilities of Cowley there
is no doubt, since a volume of his poems was not only written, but
printed, in his thirteenth year[6]; containing, with other poetical
compositions, the Tragical History of Pyramus and Thisbe, written when
he was ten years old; and Constantia and Philetus, written two years
after.
While he was yet at school, he produced a comedy, called, Love's Riddle,
though it was not published, till he had been some time at Cambridge.
This comedy is of the pastoral kind, which requires no acquaintance with
the living world, and, therefore, the time at which it was composed adds
little to the wonders of Cowley's minority.
In 1636, he was removed to Cambridge[7], where he continued his studies
with great intenseness; for he is said to have written, while he was yet
a young student, the greater part of his Davideis; a work of which the
materials could not have been collected without the study of many years,
but by a mind of the greatest vigour and activity.
Two years after his settlement at Cambridge he published Love's Riddle,
with a poetical dedication to sir Kenelm Digby, of whose acquaintance
all his contemporaries seem to have been ambitious; and Naufragium
Joculare, a comedy, written in Latin, but without due attention to
the ancient models; for it is not loose verse, but mere prose. It
was printed with a dedication in verse, to Dr. Comber, master of the
college; but, having neither the facility of a popular, nor the accuracy
of a learned work, it seems to be now universally neglected.
At the beginning of the civil war, as the prince passed through
Cambridge, in his way to York, he was entertained with a representation
of the Guardian, a comedy, which, Cowley says, was neither written nor
acted, but rough-drawn by him, and repeated by the scholars. That this
comedy was printed during his absence from his country, he appears to
have considered as injurious to his reputation; though, during the
suppression of the theatres, it was sometimes privately acted with
sufficient approbation.
In 1643, being now master of arts, he was, by the prevalence of the
parliament, ejected from Cambridge, and sheltered himself at St. John's
college, in Oxford; where, as is said by Wood, he published a satire,
called the Puritan and Papist, which was only inserted in the last
collection of his works[8]; and so distinguished himself by the warmth
of his loyalty and the elegance of his conversation, that he gained the
kindness and confidence of those who attended the king, and, amongst
others, of lord Falkland, whose notice cast a lustre on all to whom it
was extended.
About the time when Oxford was surrendered to the parliament, he
followed the queen to Paris, where he became secretary to the lord
Jermyn, afterwards earl of St. Alban's, and was employed in such
correspondence as the royal cause required, and particularly in
ciphering and deciphering the letters that passed between the king and
queen; an employment of the highest confidence and honour. So wide was
his province of intelligence, that, for several years, it filled all his
days and two or three nights in the week.
In the year 1647, his Mistress was published; for he imagined, as
he declared in his preface to a subsequent edition, that "poets are
scarcely thought freemen of their company without paying some duties, or
obliging themselves to be true to love."
This obligation to amorous ditties owes, I believe, its original to the
fame of Petrarch, who, in an age rude and uncultivated, by his tuneful
homage to his Laura, refined the manners of the lettered world, and
filled Europe with love and poetry. But the basis of all excellence is
truth: he that professes love ought to feel its power. Petrarch was a
real lover, and Laura doubtless deserved his tenderness. Of Cowley, we
are told by Barnes, who had means enough of information, that, whatever
he may talk of his own inflammability, and the variety of characters by
which his heart was divided, he, in reality, was in love but once, and
then never had resolution to tell his passion.
This consideration cannot but, abate, in some measure, the reader's
esteem for the work and the author. To love excellence is natural; it
is natural, likewise, for the lover to solicit reciprocal regard by an
elaborate display of his own qualifications. The desire of pleasing has,
in different men, produced actions of heroism, and effusions of wit; but
it seems as reasonable to appear the champion as the poet of an "airy
nothing," and to quarrel as to write for what Cowley might have learned
from his master Pindar, to call "the dream of a shadow."
It is surely not difficult, in the solitude of a college, or in the
bustle of the world, to find useful studies and serious employment. No
man needs to be so burdened with life, as to squander it in voluntary
dreams of fictitious occurrences. The man that sits down to suppose
himself charged with treason or peculation, and heats his mind to an
elaborate purgation of his character from crimes which he was never
within the possibility of committing, differs only by the infrequency of
his folly from him who praises beauty which he never saw; complains of
jealousy which he never felt; supposes himself sometimes invited, and
sometimes forsaken; fatigues his fancy, and ransacks his memory, for
images which may exhibit the gaiety of hope, or the gloominess of
despair; and dresses his imaginary Chloris or Phyllis, sometimes in
flowers fading as her beauty, and sometimes in gems lasting as her
virtues.
At Paris, as secretary to lord Jermyn, he was engaged in transacting
things of real importance with real men and real women, and, at that
time, did not much employ his thoughts upon phantoms of gallantry. Some
of his letters to Mr. Bennet, afterwards earl of Arlington, from April
to December, in 1650, are preserved in Miscellanea Aulica, a collection
of papers, published by Brown. These letters, being written, like those
of other men, whose minds are more on things than words, contribute no
otherwise to his reputation, than as they show him to have been above
the affectation of unseasonable elegance, and to have known, that the
business of a statesman can be little forwarded by flowers of rhetorick.
One passage, however, seems not unworthy of some notice. Speaking of the
Scotch treaty, then in agitation: "The Scotch treaty," says he, "is the
only thing now in which we are vitally concerned; I am one of the last
hopers, and yet cannot now abstain from believing that an agreement will
be made; all people upon the place incline to that of union. The Scotch
will moderate something of the rigour of their demands; the mutual
necessity of an accord is visible, the king is persuaded of it. And, to
tell you the truth, which I take to be an argument above all the rest,
Virgil has told the same thing to that purpose."
This expression from a secretary of the present time would be considered
as merely ludicrous, or, at most, as an ostentatious display of
scholarship; but the manners of that time were so tinged with
superstition, that I cannot but suspect Cowley of having consulted,
on this great occasion, the Virgilian lots[9], and to have given some
credit to the answer of his oracle.
Some years afterwards, "business," says Sprat, "passed of course into
other hands;" and Cowley, being no longer useful at Paris, was, in 1656,
sent back into England, that, "under pretence of privacy and retirement,
he might take occasion of giving notice of the posture of things in this
nation."
Soon after his return to London, he was seized by some messengers of the
usurping powers, who were sent out in quest of another man; and, being
examined, was put into confinement, from which he was not dismissed
without the security of a thousand pounds, given by Dr. Scarborough.
This year he published his poems, with a preface, in which he seems to
have inserted something suppressed in subsequent editions, which was
interpreted to denote some relaxation of his loyalty. In this preface he
declares, that "his desire had been for some days past, and did still
very vehemently continue, to retire himself to some of the American
plantations, and to forsake this world for ever."
From the obloquy which the appearance of submission to the usurpers
brought upon him, his biographer has been very diligent to clear him,
and, indeed, it does not seem to have lessened his reputation. His wish
for retirement we can easily believe to be undissembled; a man harassed
in one kingdom, and persecuted in another, who, after a course of
business that employed all his days, and half his nights, in ciphering
and deciphering, comes to his own country, and steps into a prison, will
be willing enough to retire to some place of quiet and of safety. Yet
let neither our reverence for a genius, nor our pity for a sufferer,
dispose us to forget, that, if his activity was virtue, his retreat was
cowardice[10].
He then took upon himself the character of physician, still, according
to Sprat, with intention "to dissemble the main design of his coming
over;" and, as Mr. Wood relates, "complying with the men then in power,
which was much taken notice of by the royal party, he obtained an order
to be created doctor of physick; which being done to his mind, whereby
he gained the ill will of some of his friends, he went into France
again, having made a copy of verses on Oliver's death."
This is no favourable representation, yet even in this not much wrong
can be discovered. How far he complied with the men in power, is to be
inquired before he can be blamed. It is not said, that he told them any
secrets, or assisted them by intelligence or any other act. If he only
promised to be quiet, that they in whose hands he was might free him
from confinement, he did what no law of society prohibits.
The man whose miscarriage in a just cause has put him in the power
of his enemy may, without any violation of his integrity, regain his
liberty, or preserve his life, by a promise of neutrality; for, the
stipulation gives the enemy nothing which he had not before: the
neutrality of a captive may be always secured by his imprisonment or
death. He that is at the disposal of another may not promise to aid him
in any injurious act, because no power can compel active obedience. He
may engage to do nothing, but not to do ill.
There is reason to think that Cowley promised little. It does not appear
that his compliance gained him confidence enough to be trusted without
security, for the bond of his bail was never cancelled; nor that it made
him think himself secure, for, at that dissolution of government which
followed the death of Oliver, he returned into France, where he resumed
his former station, and staid till the restoration[11].
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