Dr. Johnson was a voluminous writer, and critical remarks are scattered all
over his works. But his claim as a literary critic chiefly rests upon Preface to the Dictionary
of the English Language, Preface to Shakespeare, Lives of the Poets, and Essays and
Articles contributed from time to time to the Rambler, a periodical founded and edited by
Johnson himself.
Dr. Johnson is a pioneer in the filed of biographical criticism i.e. criticism which
seeks to evaluate the work of a writer in the light of the facts of his life. His fame as a
biographer rests on his Lives of the Poets. He considered truth, uncompromising truth, to
be the aim of biography. He is, therefore, despite his many prejudices, always painfully
and consciously striving, to give the truth, and nothing but the truth, as he sees it. He
neither lauds, nor condemns, but displays the minutest details of the everyday life of his
subject, so that his readers may see the whole of him, and know the full truth about him,
and thus appreciate his works better.
By the intimacy of his knowledge, by his shrewdness and massive commonsense, by
his genius for details, by his innate love of truth and by his easy, graceful, and
conversational style, he was eminently fitted for the task of a biographer. All these
qualifications and many more, combine to make the Lives of the Poets, a great monument
and landmark in the history of English literature. In its three volumes Johnson gives us
biographical and critical studies of fifty-two poets. Of these only six are now considered
of first-rate importance.
Johnson’s criticism of poetry is often marred by his prejudices and personal dogmatism. Music and imagination are the most essential qualities of poetry, and Johnson had no ear, and he had no imagination. His opinion of Lycidas is well known: he found it “easy, vulgar, and therefore, disgusting.” Of the songs in Comus, he remarks: “they are harsh in their diction, and not very musical in their numbers.” He remains blind to the passionate intensity of Donne and the elevation of Gray. While Johnson’s criticism of the other poems of Milton is vitiated by his many prejudices, his remarks on Paradise Lost are singularly free from any such pre conceptions. First of all, the critic discusses the characters, the plan and the sentiments of the epic, which he regards as the best and the maturest proof of Milton’s genius. The poet’s first task is to find moral and praises Milton in this respect and finds that Moral is an essential part of his poem. Moreover, this moral has been conveyed in an “attractive and surprising narrative.” Having praised, Paradise Lost on all these counts, the doctor analyses the faults of the epic.
A study of the Lives gives us the clue to his main critical position and aims. His aim
was to re- introduce sincerity into literature, to make it actual and moving, and to rid it of
artificial ornaments, conventions and far-fetched themes. The poetry of the 18th century
was encrusted with a dead mythology which Johnson opposed. He wanted to wed poetry
to life and to use it for moral teaching. The Lives explains why he disliked blank verse
and advocated the use of the rhymed couplet. He was a ‘classic’ in his critical doctrines;
but he never followed rules slavishly. Instances are numerous where he boldly supported
the freer and more spontaneous usages of English poetry. He might have lacked
imagination and aesthetic sensibility, but in his Lives, by reminding us again and again
that poetry is as much craft as inspiration, he focuses attention on the linguistic
achievements of poets like Dryden and Pope.
In his Life of Milton, the doctor defines poetry as, “the art of uniting pleasure
with truth, by calling imagination to the help of reason.” The poet is a creator by virtue of
his inventive and imaginative powers, and the evidence of that creative ability is to be
found in the poem’s imagery. Poetry must give pleasure, but it must also have truth. In
other words, it must serve the purposes of life.
Johnson’s passion for sincerity and reality explains his dislike for blank verse which
he regarded as verse, “only to the eye.” Poetry, he believed, should express natural
sentiments in a language, dignified, indeed, but not too remote from the speech of daily
life. The use of too many new words destroys the intimacy and confidence of the relation
between writer and reader. But, if verse is to be easy, natural, probable and familiar, why
not use prose which is the natural medium of expression for man. Poetry was to be
preferred to prose only for the addition of pleasure which come from verse—the pleasure
of melody and pattern. Johnson held ‘rhyme’ to be essential for poetry, for it not only
gives pleasure but also imparts emphasis. Johnson permits the use of blank verse to poets,
“who would describe wild landscapes, or indulge in unfettered imagination, or express
conceptions of superhuman majesty in unusual; and gorgeous language. “Milton,
Thomson and Young may use it but not other lesser poets, for it is likely to betray them
into such self-indulgence. In other words blank verse is to be avoided, for it may betray
feeble minds into all sorts of excess.
He, no doubt, judged by rules, but he derived his principles of judgment not from
books, like his predecessors, but from reason, from his experience of life. When at his
best he could rise above all narrowness and display a remarkable breadth of vision and
imagination. In his appreciation of Shakespeare’s mingling of the tragic and the comic,
and his violation of the unities, he ceases to be a classic and goes over to the other camp.
Proximity with the great epic of Milton inspires him, and the passage on Paradise Lost
remains upto date one of the finest pieces of criticism in English literature. It reveals that
he was capable of highest poetic sensibility.
