



Produced by Les Bowler





LIVES OF THE POETS: GAY, THOMSON, YOUNG, and OTHERS

By Samuel Johnson


Contents.

     Introduction by Henry Morley.

     William King.
     Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax.
     Dr. Thomas Parnell.
     Samuel Garth.
     Nicholas Rowe.
     John Gay.
     Thomas Tickell.
     William Somervil[l]e.
     James Thomson.
     Dr. Isaac Watts.
     Ambrose Philips.
     Gilbert West.
     William Collins.
     John Dyer.
     William Shenstone.
     Edward Young.
     David Mallet.
     Mark Akenside.
     Thomas Gray.
     George Lyttelton.




INTRODUCTION.


This volume contains a record of twenty lives, of which only one--that
of Edward Young--is treated at length. 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.

The eldest of the Poets here discussed were Samuel Garth, Charles
Montague (Lord Halifax), and William King, who were born within the
years 1660-63. Next in age were Addison's friend Ambrose Philips,
and 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, who wrote the "Seasons," were both born in the
year 1700. They were two of three poets--Allan Ramsay, the third--who,
almost at the same time, wrote verse instinct with a fresh sense of
outward Nature which was hardly to be found in other writers of
that day. David Mallet, Thomson's college-friend and friend of
after-years--who shares 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 1720; and
Mark Akenside, in 1721. In Collins, while he lived with loss of reason,
Johnson, who had fears for himself, took pathetic interest. Akenside
could not interest him much. Akenside made his mark when young with "The
Pleasures of Imagination," a good poem, according to the fashion of the
time, when read with due consideration as a young man's first venture
for fame. He spent much of the rest of his life in overloading it with
valueless additions. The writer who begins well should let well alone,
and, instead of tinkering at bygone work, follow the course of his own
ripening thought. He should seek new ways of doing worthy service in the
years of labour left to him.

H. M.




KING.


William King was born in London in 1663; the son of Ezekiel King, a
gentleman. He was allied to the family of Clarendon.

From Westminster School, where he was a scholar on the foundation under
the care of Dr. Busby, he was at eighteen elected to Christ Church
in 1681; where he is said to have prosecuted his studies with so much
intenseness and activity, that before he was eight years' standing he
had read over, and made remarks upon, twenty-two thousand odd hundred
books and manuscripts. The books were certainly not very long, the
manuscripts not very difficult, nor the remarks very large; for the
calculator will find that he despatched seven a day for every day of
his eight years; with a remnant that more than satisfies most other
students. He took his degree in the most expensive manner, as a GRAND
COMPOUNDER; whence it is inferred that he inherited a considerable
fortune.

In 1688, the same year in which he was made Master of Arts, he published
a confutation of Varillas's account of Wickliffe; and, engaging in the
study of the civil law, became Doctor in 1692, and was admitted advocate
at Doctors' Commons.

He had already made some translations from the French, and written some
humorous and satirical pieces; when, in 1694, Molesworth published his
"Account of Denmark," in which he treats the Danes and their monarch
with great contempt; and takes the opportunity of insinuating those wild
principles by which he supposes liberty to be established, and by
which his adversaries suspect that all subordination and government is
endangered.

This book offended Prince George; and the Danish Minister presented a
memorial against it. The principles of its author did not please Dr.
King; and therefore he undertook to confute part, and laugh at the rest.
The controversy is now forgotten: and books of this kind seldom live
long when interest and resentment have ceased.

In 1697 he mingled in the controversy between Boyle and Bentley; and was
one of those who tried what wit could perform in opposition to learning,
on a question which learning only could decide.

In 1699 was published by him "A Journey to London," after the method of
Dr. Martin Lister, who had published "A Journey to Paris." And in
1700 he satirised the Royal Society--at least, Sir Hans Sloane, their
president--in two dialogues, intituled "The Transactioner."

Though he was a regular advocate in the courts of civil and canon law,
he did not love his profession, nor, indeed, any kind of business which
interrupted his voluptuary dreams or forced him to rouse from that
