Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Life of Young [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

1781

"In his 'Night Thoughts' he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour."

In his Night Thoughts he has exhibited a very wide display of original poetry, variegated with deep reflections and striking allusions, a wilderness of thought, in which the fertility of fancy scatters flowers of every hue and of every odour. This is one of the few poems in which blank verse could not be changed for rhyme but with disadvantage. The wild diffusion of the sentiments and the digressive sallies of imagination would have been compressed and restrained by regard to rhyme. The excellence of this work is not exactness but copiousness; particular lines are not to be regarded; the power is in the whole, and in the whole there is a magnificence like that ascribed to Chinese plantation, the magnificence of vast extent and endless diversity.
(pp. 107-8)

Geography::Wilderness Plant::Flowers

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. 10 (London: Bathurst et al., 1781). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>

10/20/2011