Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Life of Cowley [from Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, familiarly known as The Lives of the Poets]

London

Bathurst, J. Buckland, W. Strahan, J. Rivington and Sons, T. Davies

1779, 1781

"But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding."

In his poem on the death of Hervey there is much praise, but little passion, a very just and ample delineation of such virtues as a studious privacy admits, and such intellectual excellence as a mind not yet called forth to action can display. He knew how to distinguish and how to commend the qualities of his companion, but when he wishes to make us weep he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be worse for being true. The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as therefore this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness of physiology. But the power of Cowley is not so much to move the affections, as to exercise the understanding.

Body::Exercise

Reading

At least 3 entries in ESTC (1779, 1781, 1790). [vols. 1 to 5 dated 1779, vols. 5 to 10, 1781)

Samuel Johnson, Prefaces, Biographical and Critical, to the Works of the English Poets, vol. 1 (London: Bathurst et al., 1779). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>

Text from Jack Lynch's online edition, based on G. B. Hill's Lives of the English Poets, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905). <Link>

04/30/2011