SOURCE: "'The Most Fatal of All Faults': Samuel Johnson on Prior's Solomon and the Need for Variety," in Papers on Language & Literature, Vol. 33, No. 4, Fall, 1997, pp. 422-37.

[In the following essay, Davis examines the negative aspects of Samuel Johnson 's The Life of Prior, in particular focusing on Johnson's assessment that much of Prior's work is tedious. Although the piece focuses on Johnson, it provides insightful analyses of his views on Prior's works.]

As literary critics we are always tempted to blur the categories of instruction and pleasure, to conclude that a work of literature is aesthetically excellent simply because we find it ideologically excellent. Perhaps no literary critic has ever managed to keep these two categories completely separate: our aesthetic judg-ments are always partially informed by our ideological beliefs. But the influence of ideological beliefs on aesthetic judgment is a matter of degree. Some critics are virtually incapable of detecting faults in works which flatter their own ideological principles; others are more willing to "divide against themselves" and concede the aesthetic shortcomings of their ideological favorites.

In this essay I wish to argue that Samuel Johnson falls into the second category. Johnson's remarks on Matthew Prior's Solomon provide a striking proof that Johnson was not automatically pleased with a work of literature which confirmed his own world view. It would be hard to find a poem that is closer to Johnson's ideological views than Prior's Solomon, and yet Johnson does not allow this ideological affinity to overpower his aesthetic sense. He praises Prior's poem for its instructive excellence, but he damns it for its aesthetic shortcomings, especially its tediousness and lack of variety. Johnson's comments on Solomon are interesting in their own right, but they also provide a key which can help us understand a number of his other critical verdicts, as well as his approach to criticism in general.

As the title suggests, Prior's Solomon on the Vanity of the World (1708) has a great deal in common with Johnson's Vanity of Human Wishes (1749).¹ Both are Christian philosophical poems, heavily influenced by Ecclesiastes and the Preacher's lament that "All is vanity." Both are written in heroic couplets, and both offer sweeping surveys of life. Johnson "Survey[s] Mankind from China to Peru" (2) and concludes that man "Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good" (10). Prior's Solomon "considers Man through the several Stages and Conditions of Life" (Argument to Book III) and concludes that "We pursue false Joy, and suffer real Woe" (I.13).

There are also a number of remarkable local similarities between these two poems. Johnson examines the trials and tribulations of eminent men and gives five English examples: Wolsey, Villiers, Harley, Wentworth, and Hyde (99-134). Solomon does the same, but he gives five Biblical examples: Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David (III.347-466). Both Johnson and Solomon conclude that "no Rank, no Station, no Degree" can escape the "contagious Taint of Sorrow" (III.249-50).

Johnson observes that wealth cannot buy peace of mind: "Wealth heap'd on Wealth, nor Truth nor Safety buys, / The Dangers gather as the Treasures rise" (27-28). Solomon likewise finds that wealth is not "the potent Sire of Peace" he had hoped it would be (111.245). The philosopher-king builds elaborate mansions and palaces, but he finds that "all the various Luxe of costly Pride" (11.14) cannot drive away unhappiness:

To my new Courts sad Thought did still repair;
And round my gilded Roofs hung hov'ring Care.

In vain on silken Beds I sought Repose;
And restless oft' from purple Couches rose.
(11.53-56)

Many men seek military glory, but Johnson recognizes that military triumphs generally benefit individuals rather than nations:

The festal Blazes, the triumphal Show,
The ravish'd Standard, and the captive Foe,
The Senate's Thanks, the Gazette's pompous Tale,
With Force resistless o'er the brave prevail…

Yet Reason frowns on War's unequal Game,
Where wasted Nations raise a single Name,
And mortgag'd States their Grandsires Wreaths regret
From Age to Age in everlasting Debt.
(175-78, 185-88)

Solomon describes how the victorious general returns from war "with Conquest on his Brow," "Captive Generals" tied to his chariot, and "Joyful Citizens" echoing his victories (111.291-95). But Solomon also recognizes the darker side of this triumphal show, and of military aggression in general:

The Wretches he brings back, in Chains relate,
What may To-morrow be the Victor's Fate.
The Spoils and Trophies born before Him, show
National Loss, and Epidemic Woe,
Various Distress, which He and His may know.
(111.298-302)

It is natural to wish for a long life, but Johnson reminds his readers that an old man is generally a sick man: "Unnumber'd Maladies his Joints invade, / Lay Siege to Life and press the dire Blockade" (283-84). Solomon asks, "Why seek We Brightness from the Years to come?" (111.98) He reminds us that in our old age we will suffer from "slow Disease, and subtil Pain … / The Gout's fierce Rack, the burning Feaver's Rage, / The sad Experience of Decay … and Age" (III.136,142-43).

When senility sets in, Johnson explains, nature and the rhythm of the seasons will delight us no more:

In vain their Gifts the bounteous Seasons pour,
The Fruit Autumnal, and the Vernal Flow'r,
With listless Eyes the Dotard views the Store,
He views, and wonders that they please no more.
(261-64)

Solomon describes the same withering away of nature's delights:

The verdant Rising of the flow'ry Hill,
The Vale enamell'd, and the Crystal Rill,
The Ocean rolling, and the shelly Shoar,
Beautiful Objects, shall delight no more;
When the lax'd Sinews of the weaken'd Eye
In watr'y Damps, or dim Suffusion lye.
(III. 158-63)

Nor will music appease the dotard. Johnson:

Approach, ye Minstrels, try the soothing Strain,
Diffuse the tuneful Lenitives of Pain:
No Sounds alas would touch th' impervious Ear,
Though dancing Mountains witness'd Orpheus near.
(267-70)

And Solomon:

Nought shall the Psaltry, and the Harp avail,
The pleasing Song, or well repeated Tale,
When the quick Spirits their warm March forbear;
And numbing Coldness has unbrac'd the Ear.
(III. 154-57)

Johnson notes that even the best retirement has its share of woe:

But grant, the Virtues of a temp'rate Prime
Bless with an Age exempt from Scorn or Crime;
An Age that melts with unperceiv'd Decay,
And glides in modest Innocence away …
Yet ev'n on this her Load Misfortune flings,
To press the weary Minutes flagging Wings:
New Sorrow rises as the Day returns,
A Sister sickens, or a Daughter mourns.
Now Kindred Merit fills the sable Bier,
Now lacerated Friendship claims a Tear.
(291-94, 299-304)

Solomon makes precisely the same point:

But be the Terror of these Ills suppress'd:
And view We Man with Health and Vigor blest.…
Hap'ly at Night He does with Horror shun
A widow'd Daughter, or a dying Son

The next Day, and the next he must attend

His Foe triumphant, or his buried Friend.
In ev'ry Act and Turn of Life he feels
Public Calamities, or Household Ills.
(III. 185-86, 192-93, 196-99)

At the end of The Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson urges his reader to abandon vain dreams and pray for the good things in life:

Pour forth thy Fervours for a healthful Mind,
Obedient Passions, and a Will resign'd;
For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill;
For Patience sov'reign o'er transmuted III;
For Faith, that panting for a happier Seat,
Counts Death kind Nature's Signal of Retreat.
(359-64)

At the end, of Prior's poem, an angel appears to Solomon and tells him to make the happiness he has not found:

Thy Hope of Joy deliver to the Wind:
Suppress thy Passions; and prepare thy Mind

Go forth: Be strong: With Patience, and with Care
Perform, and Suffer: To Thy self severe,
Gracious to Others, Thy Desires suppress'd,
Diffus'd Thy Virtues, First of Men, be Best.
(III.723-24, 867-72)

Both poets conclude by urging resignation to the will of God. Johnson makes the point in a couplet: "Implore his Aid, in his Decisions rest, / Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best" (355-56). The more verbose Prior supplies a triplet: "Thy sum of Life must His Decrees fulfill: / What derogates from His Command, is III; / And that alone is Good, which centers in His Will"(III.843-45).

Given these similarities, it is hardly surprising that Johnson should conclude that Solomon contains "much knowledge and much thought … many passages, to which [the reader] may recur for instruction or delight: many from which the poet may learn to write, and the philosopher to reason" (Lives II: 207). What is surprising, however, is Johnson's negative view of Prior's poem as an aesthetic whole. In his Life of Dryden Johnson insists that "It is not by comparing line with line that the merit of great [lengthy] works is to be estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result" (I: 454). Although he concedes that individual passages of Solomon may please, Johnson denies that the general effect or ultimate result is pleasing.

Johnson gives two reasons why Prior's poem fails to please. The first has to do with Prior's versification. In the Life of Milton Johnson explains why he believes rhyme is vital in English verse:

The musick of the English heroick line strikes the ear so faintly that it is easily lost, unless all the syllables of every line co-operate together: this co-operation can be only obtained by the presevation of every verse unmingled with another as a distinct system of sounds, and this distinctness is obtained and preserved by the artifice of rhyme. (I: 192)

Here Johnson imagines that rhyme will prevent one line from "mingling" its sounds with the next, but in Solomon rhyme does not serve this function, for Prior has admitted what Johnson calls "broken" or "interrupted" lines:

In his preface to Solomon he proposes some improvements [to the heroic couplet], by extending the sense from one couplet to another, with a variety of pauses. This he has attempted, but without success; his interrupted lines are unpleasing, and his sense as less distinct is less striking. (II: 209)

Anyone who glances back at the excerpts from Solomon which I have quoted above will see what Johnson has in mind. Whereas Johnson's couplets are generally end-stopped, Prior more frequently carries the sense across a rhyme. In general, the results are not particularly satisfying. Enjambment robs the rhymes of much of their emphasis, and Prior loses the succinctness and detachability of the couplet without gaining the flow of blank verse. His sense is indeed "less distinct," and his couplets are certainly less memorable: when was the last time you heard someone quote a couplet from Solomon?

However, Johnson insists that the most devastating weakness of Solomon has to do not with versification, but with organization anddisposition. In The Life of Dryden Johnson explains that "Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention" (I: 454). Johnson thinks that Prior's Solomon fails to do this. Prior "perceived … many excellences" in his poem, but he "did not discover that it wanted that without which all others are of small avail, the power of engaging and alluring curiosity" (II: 206). Johnson insists that the wisdom of Solomon is vitiated first and foremost by tediousness:

The tediousness of this poem proceeds not from the uniformity of the subject, for it is sufficiently diversified, but from the continued tenour of the narration; in which Solomon relates the successive vicissitudes of his own mind, without the intervention of any other speaker or the mention of any other agent, unless it be Abra: the reader is only to learn what he thought, and to be told that he thought wrong. The event of every experiment is foreseen, and therefore the process is not much regarded.²

It is this same-ishness or predictability, more than anything else, which ultimately sinks Prior's poem. That Johnson was able to discover and admit this flaw in a poem which expresses so many of his own views is remarkable. It shows the radical honesty of his judgment and indicates that he distinguished carefully between ideological and aesthetic excellence.

Johnson is interested in Prior's poem itself, but he is also interested in the larger critical lessons to be drawn from it. He therefore uses his discussion of Solomon to enlarge on the dangers of tediousness:

Tediousness is the most fatal of all faults; negligences or errors are single and local, but tediousness pervades the whole: other faults are censured and forgotten, but the power of tediousness propagates itself. He that is weary the first hour is more weary the second; as bodies forced into motion, contrary to their tendency, pass more and more slowly through every successive interval of space. (II: 206)

In his Dictionary, Johnson defines "tediousness" as "wearisomeness by continuance" or "wearisomeness by prolixity." This is clear enough, but the analogies which Johnson gives in his discussion of Solomon testify to the power of tediousness in a way that the Dictionary definitions do not. First, Johnson suggests that tediousness has the power to "propagate itself," like some heinous Spenserian monster. However, he quickly changes direction and develops instead an analogy drawn from Newtonian physics: tediousness slows a reading mind as friction slows a moving object.

This is one of many comparisons and similes which Johnson borrows from Newtonian physics. He uses Newtonian physics in Adventurer 34 to explain how men fall into poverty: "as the attraction grows more strong the nearer any body approaches the earth, when once a man begins to sink into poverty, he falls with a velocity always increasing" (Yale II: 344). He uses the same Newtonian simile in Rambler 207 to illustrate the desire we feel as we approach the end of a project: "All attraction is encreased by the approach of the attracting body. We never find ourselves so desirous to finish, as in the latter part of our work" (Yale V: 312). He even uses Newtonian physics in conversation to explain why some people choose to live in the country: "Sir, it is in the intellectual world as in the physical world; we are told by natural philosophers that a body is at rest in the place that is fit for it; they who are content to live in the country are fit for the country."³

One might say that Johnson had breathed in the Newtonian ether of his time. This is certainly true, but it lumps Johnson in with all of the other warm bodies of his day and allows no room for individual personality. There are good reasons why Samuel Johnson, in particular, would have been attracted to Newtonian metaphors and similes. Newton sought to isolate universal laws of physics; Johnson sought to isolate universal laws of psychology and reader response. It was only natural that the essentialist psychologist-critic would borrow images and concepts from the essentialist scientist. Indeed, Johnson's oeuvre might be described as an ongoing series of attempts to find psychological equivalents for Newton's laws of physics.

In The Life of Prior Johnson explains that tediousness is not only "the most fatal of all faults," it is also the most difficult fault for an author to avoid:

Unhappily this pernicious failure is that which an author is least able to discover. We are seldom tiresome to ourselves.… every couplet when produced is new, and novelty is the great source of pleasure. Perhaps no man ever thought a line superfluous when he first wrote it, or contracted his work till his ebullitions of invention had subsided. And even if he should controul his desire of immediate renown, and keep his work nine years unpublished, he will still be the author, and still in danger of deceiving himself.⁴

Since Johnson believes that tediousness is difficult for authors to detect, it is not surprising that the adjective "tedious" comes up again and again in his criticism, particularly in the Lives of the English Poets. Prior's Henry and Emma is "a dull and tedious dialogue" (II: 202-03). Rowe's Golden Verses are "tedious" (II: 77). Blackmore's King Arthur is "tedious and disgusting," but John Dennis's criticism of the poem is even "moretedious and disgusting than the work which it condemns" (II: 238). The king's speech in Dryden's Annus Mirabilis is "rather tedious" (I: 434). "Of the ancient poets, every reader feels the mythology tedious and oppressive" (I: 213).

In each of these cases, and in many other cases which it would be tedious to enumerate, Johnson avoids subjective statements. He does not say, "I find X tedious." He says either "X is tedious," or else, in the last instance, "every reader feels that X is tedious." In other words, he presents his verdicts not as idiosyncratic and subjective responses but as objective and universally-accepted judgments. This method of presentation gives Johnson's opinions an aura of authority and inevitability: the declaration "X is tedious" is rhetorically stronger than the statement "I think X is tedious." But Johnson's reasons for expressing himself in this fashion are not (I think) primarily rhetorical. Rather, this aspect of his style grows out of his belief in the fundamental sameness of human nature.

If every mind is fundamentally different, then we should expect a variety of reactions to any set of words put down on paper. But if all minds are essentially similar, then we should expect substantial agreement. Johnson believes that the latter proposition is true. He believes, as I have already suggested in my brief discussion of Newtonian metaphors, that there are laws of human psychology just as there are laws of physics. Intellectual fashions come and go, but beneath these ephemeral influences there exist certain "general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated" (Yale VII: 62). In The Life of Butler Johnson traces the literary phenomenon of tediousness back to these "general passions and principles" which agitate the mind:

The great source of pleasure is variety. Uniformity must tire at last, though it be uniformity of excellence. We love to expect; and, when expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting. For this impatience of the present, whoever would please must make provision. The skillful writer irrital, mulcet [agitates, then soothes]; makes a due distribution of the still and animated parts. It is for want of this artful intertexture and those necessary changes that the whole of a book may be tedious, though all the parts are praised. (I: 212)

This is one of those passages which shows, as Walter Jackson Bate has written, that "almost every aspect of [Johnson's] thought is … intimately connected with all the others" (vii). Johnson is in fact reiterating a point he had made fifteen years earlier in his Preface to Shakespeare: "upon the whole, all pleasure consists of variety" (Yale VII: 67). But Johnson's psychology of literary response is also intimately connected with his psychology of everyday life.⁵ According to Johnson, we respond to a book in muchthe same way that we respond to life itself. As participants in life, "we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something new, and begin a new persuit" (Yale III: 35). As readers, "we love to expect; and, when expectation is disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting." In both cases the emphasis is not on attaining the object but on the expectation of attainment. As Johnson says in Rambler 71, "the pleasure of expecting enjoyment … is often greater than that of obtaining it" (Yale IV:9). It is this power of expectation which must be continuously re-evoked if literature is to be kept from stagnating. In order to please, an author must satisfy our need for variety by cultivating what Johnson calls "artful intertexture."

In his criticism Johnson points to a number of works which please precisely because they achieve such "artful intertexture." Pope's Windsor Forest is one such work. In this poem, Johnson explains, Pope excels in "variety … and the art of interchanging description, narrative, and morality." As the reader makes his way through the poem, his "attention" is continually "excited by diversity" (Lives III: 225).

When it comes to prose style, Johnson is generally thought of as an uncompromising advocate of parallel structure and balance, but Johnson believed that Dryden's critical prefaces were delightful largely because of their stylistic variety: "none of his prefaces were ever thought tedious. They have not the formality of a settled style, in which the first half of the sentence betrays the other. The clauses are never balanced, nor the periods modelled; every word seems to drop by chance, though it falls in its proper place" (Lives I: 418).

However, Johnson reserves his highest accolades for Shakespeare's plays. He explains in his dedication to Lennox's Shakespear Illustrated that it is "variety" which makes Shakespeare's plays "more entertaining than those of any other Author" (Yale VII: 49). Johnson also stresses this point in his notes on specific plays. Macbeth has a pleasing "variety of … action" (VIII: 795), and Coriolanus "a very pleasing and interesting variety" of characters (VIII: 823). Romeo and Juliet is "one of the most pleasing of our author's performainces," in large part because its scenes are "busy and various" (VIII: 956). The scenes in Othello are artfully "varied by happy interchanges" (VIII: 1048). In Antony and Cleopatra "the variety of incidents" and "frequent changes of the scene" help to keep "curiosity always busy, and the passions always interested."⁶ In King Lear the Gloucester sub-plot brings an "addition of variety" which helps the play keep attention "strongly fixed" (VIII:703-04). Johnson thinks that Hamlet is an especially diverse work, even by Shakespeare's standards:

[W]e must allow to the tragedy of Hamlet the praise of variety.… The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and solemnity.… New characters appear from time to time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and particular modes of conversation … and every personage produces the effect intended. (VIII: 1011)

Johnson also finds many works which fail to achieve an "artful intertexture" and thus succumb to tediousness. If Prior's Solomon is tedious because it lacks dialogue, other works are tedious because they contain almost nothing except dialogue. Milton's Paradise Regained is one such work. Johnson writes that Paradise Regained is "every-where instructive," and contains many "exalted precepts of wisdom" (Lives I: 188). However, he thinks the poem is more instructive than pleasurable: "the basis of Paradise Regained is narrow; a dialogue without action can never please like an union of the narrative and dramatick powers." Milton reverses Prior's imbalance: Solomon contains 2652 lines of narration with almost no dialogue; Paradise Regained contains 2070 lines of dialogue with almost no action. In both cases the lack of variety causes the reader to lose momentum.

Butler's Hudibras is another instructive poem made tedious by a superabundance of dialogue. In Hudibras, Butler not only champions Johnson's beloved Royalists but also adds much to "the general stock of practical knowledge." However, Butler's poem is less pleasing than it might have been because there is too much talk and not enough action:

I believe every reader regrets the paucity of events, and complains that in the poem of Hudibras, as in the history of Thucydides, there is more said than done. The scenes are too seldom changed, and the attention is tired with long conversation. (Lives I: 211)

Cowley's Davideis is full of "wit and learning," but the reader of Cowley's poem is "never delighted" (Lives I: 55). When Cowley decided to leave this poem unfinished, Johnson deadpans, "posterity lost more instruction than delight" (I: 54). Why does The Davide is fail to please? Johnson says it is because Cowley's abortive epic contains little that can "reconcile impatience or attract curiosity" (I: 51). The poet expends all of his energy on a "tedious" accumulation of conceits and digressions. He describes everything at excessive length. When he describes the Angel Gabriel, for instance, he cannot "let us go till he [has] related where Gabriel first got his skin, and then his mantle, then his lace, and then his scarfe" (I: 53, emphasis added).

Dryden's Absalom and Achitophel supports "the king's friends," i.e. the Tories, and attacks "the faction which, by lord Shaftesbury's incitement, set the duke of Monmouth at its head," i.e. the Whigs(Lives I: 373). Few poems could have been more gratifying to Johnson's own Tory political views. And yet strong political affinity does not keep Johnson from recognizing a certain tediousness in the poem:

The subject had likewise another inconvenience: it admitted little imagery or description, and a long poem of mere sentiments [opinions] easily becomes tedious; though all the parts are forcible and every line kindles new rapture, the reader, if not relieved by the interposition of something that soothes the fancy, grows weary of admiration, and defers the rest. (I: 437)

So far we have been discussing poems, but Johnson believes that plays may also suffer from tediousness. In dramatic performances, he argues, dialogue is the essential thing; anything else is likely to become tedious very quickly. Johnson does not find Shakespeare's plays tedious throughout. In fact, as we have seen, he thinks they are generally paragons of variety. However, Johnson does object to the passages of extended narrative which crop up occasionally in Shakespeare:

In narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction and a wearisome train of locution, and tells an incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. Narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. Shakespeare found it an encumbrance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour. (Yale VII: 73)

Johnson thinks that the tedious passages in Shakespeare are blissfully rare, but he insists that Milton's masque Comus is tedious from start to finish. There is no question that Comus is an instructive work. It is written, Johnson notes approvingly, "in the praise and defense of virtue" (Lives I: 167). However, it is "tediously instructive." Johnson finds Comus windy and monotonous, from the opening speech on:

The discourse of the Spirit is too long, an objection that may be made to almost all of the following speeches; they have not the spriteliness of a dialogue animated by reciprocal contention, but seem rather declamations deliberately composed and formally repeated on a moral question. The auditor therefore listens as to a lecture, without passion, without anxiety.⁷

Throughout the masque, Johnson insists, "there is something wanting to allure attention" (I: 169). Even the most "animated" scene, the dispute between the lady and Comus, needs "a brisker reciprocation of objections and replies."⁸

In his criticisms of Solomon, Paradise Regained, Hudibras, The Davideis, Absalom and Achitophel, and Comus Johnson divides against himself. He concedes the instructive excellence of these works, but he questions their aesthetic excellence. What's more, in each of these cases it is the absence of variety, or the presence of tediousness, which Johnson cites as critical. On the other hand, it is the presence of variety and the consequent absence of tediousness which make Pope's Windsor Forest, Dryden's critical prefaces, and Shakespeare's plays such pleasing works.

There is a consistency in Johnson's comments on tediousness and variety which should lead us to question those critics who insist that Johnson's approach to criticism is haphazard and unprincipled. Paul Fussell insists that Johnson's critical thinking recognizes "hardly any fixed principles," and that "his literary sensibility … is really madly irrational, unsystematic, impulsive, and untidy" (60). Harold Bloom has recently advanced a similar view. He contends that Johnson is hostile to "rules, principles, [and] methods." According to Bloom, Johnson's criticism proves that "there is no method except oneself (2).

The passages which I have examined suggest that Fussell and Bloom have overstated their case. It is true that Johnson was no friend to the neoclassical "rules." It is also true that his criticism cannot be reduced to a simple "method," like painting by numbers. However, as we have seen, certain patterns and principles do emerge in Johnson's criticism. When it comes to the need for variety, Johnson is neither "madly irrational" nor "impulsive." Rather, he is reasonable, consistent, and principled. Not only in his comments on Prior's Solomon but throughout his criticism Johnson insists that variety is the most vital of all aesthetic principles and tediousness the most fatal of all faults.

Notes

¹ Ian Jack notes several parallel passages in his article, but he does not cite any of those which I cite below. In general his emphasis is on stylistic similarities rather than ideological ones. All citations to Johnson's Vanity are by line number and are taken from the Fleeman edition. All citations to Prior's Solomon are by book and line number and are taken from Volume I of the Wright and Spears edition.

²Lives II: 207. There is a certain irony in this verdict, for Prior had written in his Preface to Solomon that, as precepts, "however true in Theory, or useful in Practice, would be but dry and tedious in verse… I found it necessary to form some Story."

³ Boswell, IV: 338. For more examples of Newtonian similes, see Adventurer 45 (Yale II: 359-60), Idler 1 (Yale II: 5), and Boswell, IV: 105-07. For commentary on Johnson and Newton, see Wiltshire, 161 and Jackson, 393-94.

⁴Lives II: 206. Here and elsewhere, Johnson declines to exalt authors above other human beings, as some romantic writers would do after him. Rather, Johnson insists that authors partake of flawed human nature just like everybody else. See also Rambler 207 (Yale V: 313).

⁵ For a fine discussion of Johnson's views on tediousness and boredom in daily life, see Spacks, 31-55.

⁶Yale VIII: 873. See also Johnson's comments on the Henry IV plays (VII: 522-23), The Merry Wives of Windsor (VII: 341), Midsummer Night's Dream (VII: 160), and The Tempest (VII: 135).

⁷Lives 1: 168. By likening Comus to a lecture, Johnson places Milton's masque in the unfortunate company of James Thomson's play Sophonisba. At the premiere of Thomson's play, "It was observed … that nobody was much affected, and that the company rose as from a moral lecture" (Lives II: 288).

⁸ Johnson made a similar comment on Hester Chapone's play The Father's Revenge, which he read in manuscript: "It seems to want that quickness of reciprocation which characterises the English drama, and is not always sufficiently fervid or animated." (Letters IV: 251).

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