Synthesized answer
The introduction states that only Edward Young’s life is “treated at length” in this volume, and that it “completes our edition of Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, from which a few only of the briefest and least important have been omitted” [1]. This suggests that Johnson’s criteria for assessing poets may prioritize those whose lives and works offer substantial material for moral or literary reflection, as Young’s “Night Thoughts” are noted for their religious and poetic significance [2]. The editorial decision implies that Johnson or his editors considered Young’s life more worthy of extended treatment than the others, possibly because of his unique combination of poetic ambition, clerical career, and personal struggles, which are detailed in the biography [5].
However, the passages do not explicitly state Johnson’s broader purpose for the “Lives” series or his specific criteria for selecting poets. The introduction only indicates that the omitted lives were “the briefest and least important” [1], leaving the reader to infer that Johnson valued poets who contributed significantly to English literature or whose lives illustrated moral lessons. The passages focus on Young’s later…
Synthesized from the book passages below. Chat with the book on Feynman for follow-up.
From the book
Transcribed from the 1889 Cassell and Company edition by Les Bowler. [Picture: Book cover] CASSELL’S NATIONAL LIBRARY. * * * * * LIVES OF THE ENGLISH POETS Gay Thomson Young Gray etc. BY SAMUEL JOHNSON, LL.D. [Picture: Decorative graphic] CASSELL & COMPANY, LIMITED: _LONDON_, _PARIS_, _NEW YORK & MELBOURNE_. 1889. INTRODUCTION. THIS volume contains a record of…
stubborn Troy,” and you will still leave him more than forty when he sate down to the miserable siege of court-favour. He has before told us— “A fool at forty is a fool indeed.” After all, the siege seems to have been raised only in consequence of what the general thought his “deathbed.” By these extraordinary poems, written after he was sixty, of which I have been led to say so much, I hope, by the wish of doing justice to the living and the dead, it was the desire of Young to be principally known. He entitled the four volumes which he published himself,…
escend not to earth but when compelled by necessity. The prose of ordinary occurrences is beneath the dignity of poets. He who is connected with the author of the “Night Thoughts” only by veneration for the Poet and the Christian may be allowed to observe that Young is one of those concerning whom, as you remark in your account of Addison, it is proper rather to say “nothing that is false than all that is true.” But the son of Young would almost sooner, I know, pass for a Lorenzo than see himself vindicated, at the expense of his father’s memory, from follies which, if it may be…
poetry; and, if his lyric poetry can be proved bad, it was first proved so by his own criticism. This surely is candid. Milbourne was styled by Pope “the fairest of critics,” only because he exhibited his own version of “Virgil” to be compared with Dryden’s, which he condemned, and with which every reader had it not otherwise in his power to compare it. Young was surely not the most unfair of poets for prefixing to a lyric composition an “Essay on Lyric Poetry,” so just and impartial as to condemn himself. We shall soon come to a work, before which we find indeed no critical essay, but…
eneral recommendation of Shenstone is easiness and simplicity; his general defect is want of comprehension and variety. Had his mind been better stored with knowledge, whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable. YOUNG. THE following life was written, at my request, by a gentleman (Mr. Herbert Croft) who had better information than I could easily have obtained; and the public will perhaps wish that I had solicited and obtained more such favours from him:— “Dear Sir,—In consequence of our different conversations about authentic…
More questions about this book
- How does the chronological arrangement and brief descriptions of various poets, from Garth to Akenside, help us trace potential shifts or continuities in literary trends and poetic concerns from the late 17th to the mid-18th century?
- 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?