London (1738 poem)
Encyclopedia
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, produced shortly after he moved to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
. Written in 1738
1738 in poetry
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* During a visit to Morpeth this year, poet Mark Akenside gets the idea for his long didactic poem, The Pleasures of the Imagination, published in 1744.-United Kingdom:* Mark Akenside, A British...
, it was his first major published work. The poem in 263 lines imitates Juvenal's Third Satire, expressed by the character of Thales as he decides to leave London for Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. Johnson imitated Juvenal because of his fondness for the Roman poet and he was following a popular 18th-century trend of Augustan poets headed by Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
that favored imitations of classical poets, especially for young poets in their first ventures into published verse.
London was published anonymously and in multiple editions during 1738. It quickly received critical praise, notably from Pope. This would be the second time that Pope praised one of Johnson's poems; the first being for Messiah, Johnson's Latin translation of Pope's poem. Part of that praise comes from the political basis of the poem. From a modern view, the poem was outshone by Johnson's later poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes
The Vanity of Human Wishes
The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated is a poem by the English author Samuel Johnson. Written in 1749 , it was completed while Johnson was busy writing A Dictionary of the English Language and it was the first published work to include Johnson's name on the title page.As...
, and works like his A Dictionary of the English Language
A Dictionary of the English Language
Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language....
or Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets was a work by Samuel Johnson, comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century...
.
Background
During March 1737, Johnson lived in London with his former pupil the actor David GarrickDavid Garrick
David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...
. Garrick had connections in London, and the two stayed with his distant relative, Richard Norris, who lived in Exeter Street. Johnson did not stay there long, and set out to Greenwich near the Golden Hart Tavern to finish his play, Irene. Later, in October 1737, Johnson brought his wife to London; they first lived at Woodstock Street and then moved to 6 Castle Street. Soon, Johnson found employment with Edward Cave
Edward Cave
Edward Cave was an English printer, editor and publisher. In The Gentleman's Magazine he created the first general-interest "magazine" in the modern sense....
, and wrote for his The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine
The Gentleman's Magazine was founded in London, England, by Edward Cave in January 1731. It ran uninterrupted for almost 200 years, until 1922. It was the first to use the term "magazine" for a periodical...
.
According to Walter Jackson Bate
Walter Jackson Bate
Walter Jackson Bate was an American literary critic and biographer. He was born in Mankato, Minnesota.He is known for two Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies, of John Keats and Samuel Johnson...
, his work for the magazine and other publishers "is almost unparalleled in range and variety", and "so numerous, so varied and scattered" that "Johnson himself could not make a complete list". During this time, Johnson was exposed to the "imitations" of Horace composed by Pope and saw how they were used to attack contemporary political corruption. Both the form and subject were popular, and Johnson decided to follow Pope's lead by creating his own imitation.
In May 1738, London was published anonymously, and it went into a second edition that year. This was his first major work to be published to a wide audience and one of his longest "non-dramatic public poems". It was not written to be a general satire; instead, it was written to demonstrate Johnson's skill as a writer and to become popular in order to further his literary career.
London
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
to live in Cumae
Cumae
Cumae is an ancient Greek settlement lying to the northwest of Naples in the Italian region of Campania. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy , and the seat of the Cumaean Sibyl...
in order to escape from the vices and dangers of the capital city. In Johnson's version, it is Thales
Thales
Thales of Miletus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition...
who travels to Cambria (Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
) in order to escape from the problems of London. Johnson chose Juvenal as a model based on his own appreciation for Juvenal's works.
The poem describes the various problems of London, including an emphasis on crime, corruption, and the squalor of the poor. In order to emphasize his message, these various abstract problems are personified as beings that seek to destroy London. Thus, the characters of Malice, Rapine, and Accident "conspire" (line 13) to attack those who live in London.
The poem begins:
- Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel,
- When injured Thales bids the town farewell,
- Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend,
- I praise the hermit, but regret the friend,
- Resolved at length, from vice and London far,
- To breathe in distant fields a purer air,
- And, fixed on Cambria's solitary shore,
- Give to St David one true Briton more.
- (lines 1–8)
Who Thales represents is unknown, but it is possible that he represents Richard Savage
Richard Savage
Richard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....
, Johnson's friend who left London to travel to Wales.
The main emphasis of the poem comes to light on line 177: "Slow rises worth, by poverty depressed".
The poem is forced to cut short, and the narrator concludes:
- Much could I add, — but see the boat at hand,
- The tide retiring, calls me from the land:
- Farewell! — When youth, and health, and fortune spent,
- Thou fly'st for refuge to the wilds of Kent;
- And tired like me with follies and with crimes,
- In angry numbers warn'st succeeding times;
- Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid,
- Still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade;
- In virtue's cause once more exert his rage,
- Thy satire point, and animate thy page.
- (lines 254–263)
Politics
The content of London was opposed to the government of England under the WhigBritish Whig Party
The Whigs were a party in the Parliament of England, Parliament of Great Britain, and Parliament of the United Kingdom, who contested power with the rival Tories from the 1680s to the 1850s. The Whigs' origin lay in constitutional monarchism and opposition to absolute rule...
Sir Robert Walpole during the time that Johnson lived in London. The poem does not hide that it has a political agenda, and the lines directed against George II follow a Jacobite political sentiment. Although he does not mention George in line 50 ("Let ____ live here, for ____ has learned to live"), he is referring to the king. Not until the end of the poem does the narrator directly address the government when he says:
- Propose your schemes, ye Senatorian band,
- Whose Ways and Means support the sinking land;
- Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring,
- To rig another convoy for the K__g.
- (lines 244–247)
It is through the "Ways and Means", or the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Commons, that the king is able to tax the people, and this function is part of many that Johnson satirises.
The city of London was seen as a means to attack the Whig political party which was run by Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole
Robert Walpole, 1st Earl of Orford, KG, KB, PC , known before 1742 as Sir Robert Walpole, was a British statesman who is generally regarded as having been the first Prime Minister of Great Britain....
. In particular, Johnson compares the actions of George II and Walpole to those of the Roman emperors during the decline of the Roman Empire. Part of the attack included, as Brean Hammond puts it, "a nostalgic glorification of English history that went hand-in-hand with the representation of the present as in the grip of forms of corruption never previously encountered". This "nostalgic glorification" includes multiple references to Queen Elizabeth
Elizabeth I of England
Elizabeth I was queen regnant of England and Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. Sometimes called The Virgin Queen, Gloriana, or Good Queen Bess, Elizabeth was the fifth and last monarch of the Tudor dynasty...
and her defeat of the Spanish invaders while simultaneously claiming that Walpole is seeking to allow Spain to conquer England's trade investments.
Critical response
Johnson judged his own poem harshly; he revised it in 1748 and came to depreciate the genre of poetic imitations of which London was an example. Another aspect of the poem that Johnson disliked in his later years was the pastoral bias of the poem, to prefer the countryside to the city. However, his contemporaries did not agree with his later assessment, and Alexander PopeAlexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
from the first claimed that the author "will soon be déterré", although it did not immediately happen. This would be the second time that Pope directly praised a work of Johnson. Not everyone praised the work, as its political themes did cause controversy within the Hanoverian government and with the supporters of Walpole's administration. Johnson was not to receive recognition as a major literary figure until a few years later when he began to work on his A Dictionary of the English Language
A Dictionary of the English Language
Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language....
.
The printer and bookseller Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley
Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....
bought the copyright from Johnson for £10. Later, London would be rated as his second greatest poem, as The Vanity of Human Wishes would replace it in the eyes of Walter Scott
Walter Scott
Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....
and T. S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot
Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...
. The later critic, Howard Weinbrot, agreed with Scott's and Eliot's assessment and says "London is well worth reading, but The Vanity of Human Wishes is one of the great poems in the English language." Likewise, Robert Folkeflik says, "It is not Johnson's greatest poem, only because The Vanity of Human Wishes is better". Some critics, like Brean Hammond, only see the poem as "no better than a somewhat mechanical updating of Juvenal's third Satire." Others, like Walter Jackson Bate consider the poem as "masterly in its versification".