Give an Account of Dr. Samuel Johnson as a Critic and Biographer from 'Life of Cowley.'

Dr. Samuel Johnson as a Critic and Biographer from 'Life of Cowley'

Dr. Samuel Johnson was a notable figure among his contemporaries. His physical traits have been given permanence by the painter Reynolds in a speaking portrait. He began his life in the midst of books in his father’s shop. He was a voracious reader and dipped into everything. He was an orthodox and had a respect for traditional hierarchies. He possessed a rational attitude of mind as well as conservative tendencies.

The progresses of his doctrine are less obvious in The Lives of the Poets. But these short compact memoirs are frequently regarded as

little masterpieces. Johnson was limited in his choice by the preferences of the publishers and therefore he accepted a perspective of literature which dated the rise of English poetry from Cowley. He approached the task imposed upon him as a psychologist. Here again in a board sense he was a moralist, no less than as a critic.

Beside the main figures, there pass before our eyes the minor ones, verse writers of noble birth and penurious men of letters. It was one of the reasons that Cowley gain a place in his Lives of the Poets. He was conscientious and grave tempered by humor. Johnson did not hesitate to distribute praise and blame. His measure of literacy merit is impartial. His attitude is firm and decided. It rests upon principles that are clearly conceived. In a sense it may be called dogmatic. It does not exclude delicate differences and tolerate the individual varieties of temperaments; even it does not always show all the same degree of sympathy.

Johnson overwhelmingly appreciates the poems of Cowley and makes him a great metaphysical poet but does not hesitate a bit to expose the shortcomings and failings in his writing. He appraises the significance of life of Cowley at its full value and traces back the work to the man. But he does not get rid of certain puritan narrowness. His mind is equipped with a kind of subtle relativism, which goes straight to the essential. These are the main traits of Johnson found in his Lives of the Poets. He is not only a biographer but also the critic who goes straight to the essential, seizes the kernel of ideas or of moral substance in the works of Cowley and bases his estimate upon the inner element.

Johnson therefore appreciates Cowley from the standpoint of the moralists, first of all and properly speaking as the philosopher. He appreciates Cowley as the artist. He feels and judges from in certain cases with felicity and sureness. No doubt, he attached essential importance to construction to harmony of tone, transition, to all the techniques of classicism.