Synthesized answer
The provided passages offer glimpses into the lives and works of poets from Garth to Akenside, with a focus on their birth and death dates, personal characters, and poetic merits [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]. For instance, Garth is described with social and liberal personal traits, and his poetry in "The Dispensary" is noted for its "smooth and free versification," though with few eminently elegant lines [1, 3]. Rowe, Philips, Watts, Parnell, Young, Gay, Tickell, Somerville, Dyer, Thomson, Ramsay, Mallet, West, Lyttelton, Shenstone, Gray, Collins, and Akenside are introduced with their birth years, providing a chronological framework [4, 5]. Thomson, Dyer, and Ramsay are highlighted for writing verse with a "fresh sense of outward Nature" [4]. Akenside's "The Pleasures of Imagination" is mentioned as a notable work made when he was young [5].
The passages allow for tracing some shifts in poetic concerns through the mention of a "fresh sense of outward Nature" appearing in poets like Thomson, Dyer, and Ramsay around the year 1700, which was "hardly to be found in other writers of that day" [4]. Akenside's "The Pleasures of Imagination" is presented as a "good poem, according to the fashion of…
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From the book
uary 18th, 1717–18, and was buried at Harrow-on-the-Hill. His personal character seems to have been social and liberal. He communicated himself through a very wide extent of acquaintance; and though firm in a party, at a time when firmness included virulence, yet he imparted his kindness to those who were not supposed to favour his principles. He was an early encourager of Pope, and was at once the friend of Addison and of Granville. He is accused of voluptuousness and irreligion; and Pope, who says that “if ever there was a good Christian, without knowing himself to be so, it was Dr.…
not whence they came, nor have ever inquired whither they are going. They stand upon the faith of the compilers. GARTH. SAMUEL GARTH was of a good family in Yorkshire, and from some school in his own county became a student at Peter House, in Cambridge, where he resided till he became Doctor of Physic on July the 7th, 1691. He was examined before the College at London on March the 12th, 1691–2, and admitted Fellow June 26th, 1693. He was soon so much distinguished by his conversation and accomplishments as to obtain very extensive practice; and, if a pamphlet of those times may be…
ts merit. In “The Dispensary” there is a strain of smooth and free versification; but few lines are eminently elegant. No passages fall below mediocrity, and few rise much above it. The plan seems formed without just proportion to the subject; the means and end have no necessary connection. Resnel, in his preface to Pope’s Essay, remarks that Garth exhibits no discrimination of characters; and that what any one says might, with equal propriety, have been said by another. The general design is, perhaps, open to criticism; but the composition can seldom be charged with inaccuracy or…
Nicholas Rowe the dramatist, who was also the first editor of Shakespeare’s plays after the four folios had appeared. Ambrose Philips and Rowe were born in 1671 and 1673, and Isaac Watts in 1674. Thomas Parnell, born in 1679, would follow next, nearly of like age with Young, whose birth-year was 1681. Pope’s friend John Gay was of Pope’s age, born in 1688, two years later than Addison’s friend Thomas Tickell, who was born in 1686. Next in the course of years came, in 1692, William Somerville, the author of “The Chace.” John Dyer, who wrote “Grongar Hill,” and James Thomson,…
ares with Thomson the curiosity of critics who would decide which of them wrote “Rule Britannia”—was of Thomson’s age. The other writers of whose lives Johnson here gives his note were men born in the beginning of the eighteenth century: Gilbert West, the translator of Pindar, in 1706; George Lyttelton, in 1709. William Shenstone, whose sense of Nature, although true, was mixed with the conventions of his time, and who once asked a noble friend to open a waterfall in the garden upon which the poet spent his little patrimony, was born in 1714; Thomas Gray, in 1716; William Collins, in…
More questions about this book
- The introduction notes that only Edward Young's life is "treated at length" in this volume. What might this editorial decision suggest about Johnson's criteria for assessing poets, or the broader purpose of his "Lives" series?
- The text contrasts the "fresh sense of outward Nature" found in Thomson, Dyer, and Ramsay with William Shenstone's "true, although mixed with the conventions of his time." What deeper implications might these distinctions hold for understanding the evolving relationship between poets and nature in this era?
- Beyond listing poets, the introduction sprinkles specific details like Nicholas Rowe being Shakespeare's first editor, or the critical debate around "Rule Britannia." What does the inclusion of such details suggest about the multifaceted scope and intellectual curiosity present in Johnson's original biographical project?
- Imagine you are explaining this introduction to someone completely unfamiliar with Samuel Johnson. How would you simplify the essential information provided here, and what two or three critical insights about Johnson's work or the period would you highlight to help them grasp its significance?