I have received your foolish and impudent letter. Any violence offered me I shall do my best to repel; and what I cannot do for myself, the law shall do for me. I hope I shall never be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.
What would you have me retract? I thought your book an imposture: I think it an imposture still. For this opinion I have given my reasons to the public, which I here dare you to refute. Your rage I defy. Your abilities, since your Homer, are not so formidable; and what I hear of your morals inclines me to pay regard not to what you shall say, but to what you shall prove. You may print this if you will.
Sam. Johnson
His Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland (1774), a travel book, shows the faculty of narrative, and contains passages of great skill. His last work of any consequence was The Lives of the Poets (1779–81), a series of prefaces to a collection of poetical works. They are the best specimens of Johnson’s criticism, which is virile and sagacious, though it is influenced by the emotions of the classical school of Pope.
Thus when we come to estimate the value of his work we must arrive at the conclusion that the towering eminence which he held among really able men was due rather to the personality of the man than to the outstanding genius of the writer. Moreover, it is important to observe that he founded no school and left no literary following. He is the last of the old generation.
JAMES THOMSON (1700–48)
Thomson can hardly be called a great poet, yet in the history of literature he is unusual enough to be regarded (chronologically) as a freak. As such he is important, and it is necessary to give him some prominence.
1. His Life. Born near Kelso, close to some of the loveliest valleys on the Scottish side of the Border, Thomson early came to London (1725) to seek a patron and fame. His Winter (1726), though its novelty embarrassed the critics, brought him recognition and afterward praise; he obtained the patronage of the great, and assiduously cultivated it; traveled as a tutor to a noble family; obtained Government places and emoluments; and passed a happy and prosperous life at his cottage near Richmond.
2. His Poetry. His Winter was afterward quadrupled in size by including the other three seasons, and became The Seasons (1730). It is a blank-verse poem, and consists of a long series of descriptive passages dealing with natural scenes, mainly those with which he was familiar during his youth on the Scottish Border. There is a great deal of padding, and the style is often marked by clumsy expressions; yet on the whole the treatment is exhilarating, full of concentrated observation and joy in the face of nature. Above all, it is real nature, obtained from the living sky and air, and not from books; and, coming when it did, the poem exerted a strong counter-influence against the artificial school of poetry.
Thomson also wrote Liberty (1736), a gigantic poem in blank verse, intolerably dull. It had no success. As Johnson says, “The praises of Liberty were condemned to harbour spiders, and to gather dust.”