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The Age of Enlightenment , when men of science sought to illuminate every hitherto-obscure secret
of Nature with their air-pumps , microscopes , prisms , chronometers and chemical balances. A time
when "Reason with her brightest ray poured on misty Doubt resistless day" , a time for savants in
frock coats and powdered wigs. Newton , Kant and Hume. Leibnitz , Voltaire and Diderot. Credulity
,
superstition and hearsay would soon be back-pedalling into the mists of time whence they arose. It
was presented in our school history classes as a period of great British achievements, with its
blacksmith inventors and blind turnpike builders , gentlemen agronomists and economic philosophers
, eccentric bridge-builders and mining surveyors. We drew cross-section views of the new turnpike
roads' structure , diagrams of Hargreaves’ Jenny and Crompton’s Mule. After that it was on to
Turnip Townshend’s four-crop rotation system and old Jethro Tull.
On the social front , haughty landowning wealth co-existed with bare subsistence for over half the
population. Wigs and Whigs , breeches and stockings , buckled shoes and three-cornered hats.
Gambling dens , pleasure gardens and coffee houses. Highwaymen , smugglers , child labour , public
executions. If we want to tune into the accent of this lost time , the man for us is
Samuel Johnson. Lexicographer , poet , essayist ,
biographer , journalist and Homo Scribens of the age. Curiously for a chap who
enjoys an almost Shakespearean rank in the academic world , he is so little-known among the
general public that when a number of them were asked who Johnson was , some wondered if he was a
boxer ,
a drug-taking Canadian sprinter , or a Conservative MP. Burroughs observes that “a Johnson is not
a malicious , snooping , interfering , self-righteous , trouble making person who is good to have
on
your team.” To illustrate this Johnson's style , we have selected some lines from his long
poem The Vanity of Human Wishes. Note the italicised line , ye veterans of the Glastonbury main
stage.
Enlarge my life with a multitude of days,
In health, in sickness, thus the suppliant prays;
Hides from himself his state, and shuns to know
That life protracted is protracted woe ….
Year chases year, decay pursues decay,
Still drops some joy from withering life away;
New forms arise, and different views engage,
Superfluous lags the veteran on the stage,
Till pitying Nature signs the last release,
And bids afflicted worth retire to peace.
After his friend Boswell drew
his character in The Life of Johnson (1) as an eccentric conservative , a great
literary
arbiter and truculent member of a famous dining club , this image of him has persevered at the
expense of other aspects of his personality. One of his essays , titled The Itch of Writing
Universal ,
ponders the reason for it. “nor can I discover, whether we owe it to the influences of the
constellations, or the intemperature of seasons: whether the long continuance of the wind at any
single
point, or intoxicating vapours exhaled from the earth, have turned our nobles and our peasants,
our soldiers and traders, our men and women, all into wits, philosophers, and writers. He is
sometimes
a deft comedian. For Johnson , no place afforded “a more striking conviction of the vanity of
human hopes than a public library” and for us , the same office is fulfilled by the internet. We
google
and ramble like lost souls in purgatory , adrift from our moorings and , despite all the social
media we might compulsively wallow in , we’re as privately lonely as
Robinson Crusoe on his island. Johnson
remarked of the plot of Cymbeline
that it was impossible to criticise unresisting imbecility. Here is the appropriate response to
those who broadcast their opinions on the vacuous stretches of social media , whose unresisting
imbecility is all there is to it.
(1) Boswell was a morbid and vain fornicator and drunkard. He is one of so many who
emphatically demonstrate that in art , private lives don't matter. Only the work matters.
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Archive
Poets' Corner #1 – Poetic
Pessimism, 13th September 2012
Poets' Corner #2 – The Workman's
Friend, 10th October 2012
Poets' Corner #3 – On The Trail of
Two Dylans, 12th November 2012
Poets' Corner #4 – Omar Khayyam,
14th December 2012
Poets' Corner #5 – William Blake,
25th January 2013
Poets' Corner #6 – A Minor Poet,
19th February 2013
Poets' Corner #7 – Thomas Hardy,
20th March 2013
Poets' Corner #8 – Shakespeare's
Sonnets, 21st April 2013
Poets' Corner #9 – Edward Thomas,
20th May 2013
Poets' Corner #10 – Harry Smith's
Anthology, 19th June 2013
Poets' Corner #11 – William
Plomer, 21st July 2013
Poets' Corner #12 – Ghosts ,
20th August 2013
Poets' Corner #13 – William
Dunbar, 20th September 2013
Poets' Corner #14 – Bathtub
Thoughts, 20th October 2013
Poets' Corner #15 – Bagpipe Music,
20th November 2013
Poets' Corner #16 – Sylvia &
Emily, 20th December 2013
Poets' Corner #17 – The Fall Of
Icarus, 16th January 2014
Poets' Corner #18 – Those Gone
Before, 20th February 2014
Poets' Corner #19 – Rudyard
Kipling, 20th March 2014
Poets' Corner #20 – Martin Bell,
20th April 2014
Poets' Corner #21 – Another Modest
Proposal, 20th May 2014
Poets' Corner #22 – Thomas Gray
and The Eighteenth Century, 20th June 2014
Poets' Corner #23 – Edgar Allan
Poe, 18th July 2014
Poets' Corner #24 – Tread Softly,
19th August 2014
Poets' Corner #25 – Mad To Be
Saved, 24th December 2015
Poets' Corner #26 – Wants,
20th January 2016
Poets' Corner #27 – Samuel
Johnson, 15th February 2016
Poets' Corner #28 – T.S.Eliot,
10th March 2016
Poets' Corner #29 – Alfred Lord
Tennyson, 18th April 2016
Poets' Corner #30 – Leonard Cohen,
12th November 2016
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