Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets
Encyclopedia
Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets (1779–81) was a work by Samuel Johnson
, comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century. It is arranged, approximately, by date of death.
Six of the Lives have been singled out as the most "important": John Milton
, John Dryden
, Alexander Pope
, Joseph Addison
, Jonathan Swift
, and Thomas Gray
. One of the lives, Richard Savage
, was previously printed as Life of Mr Richard Savage
in 1744.
, Robert Blake
, and Francis Drake
. In 1744, he wrote his first serious "life", the Life of Mr Richard Savage
, in honour of his friend, Richard Savage
. Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson became close to Savage. In 1743, Savage found himself in debtors' prison and stayed there until his death shortly after. A year later, Johnson wrote Life of Savage (1744), a "moving" work that, according to Walter Jackson Bate
, "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography".
In 1773, publishers in Edinburgh started producing editions of the collected works of various English poets. In order to compete with this project, Johnson was asked by Tom Davies, William Strahan
and Thomas Cadell
to create this final major work, the Lives of the English Poets. He began this project and, on 3 May 1777, he wrote to James Boswell
that he was busy preparing a "little Lives" and "little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets". Johnson asked for 200 guineas, an amount significantly lower than the price he could have demanded. Johnson wrote many biographies over the next few years and reproduced his Life of Savage for the collection.
The original work was, however, supposed to comprise the first ten volumes of a sixty-volume work. Johnson's volumes were originally titled Prefaces, Biographical and Critical to the Works of the English Poets. After volumes I-IV were published in 1779 and V-X in 1781, the publishers decided to reprint them as The Lives of the English Poets, or Lives of the Poets, and sell them as an independent work. These were finished in March 1781 and the new collection was published in six volumes.
, in his Six Chief Lives from Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", considered the Lives of John Milton
, John Dryden
, Alexander Pope
, Joseph Addison
, Jonathan Swift
, and Thomas Gray
as "points de repère" or "points which stand as so many natural centres, and by returning to which we can always find our way again." These select Lives served as a model for Arnold's "ideal of liberal education." In essence, these six Lives represented "a crucial century and a half in English literature". To Arnold, the whole work, focusing on these six, formed a "compendious story of a whole important age in English literature, told by a great man, and in a performance which is itself a piece of English literature of the first class."
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...
, comprising short biographies and critical appraisals of 52 poets, most of whom lived during the eighteenth century. It is arranged, approximately, by date of death.
Six of the Lives have been singled out as the most "important": John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
, Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, and Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
. One of the lives, Richard Savage
Richard Savage
Richard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....
, was previously printed as Life of Mr Richard Savage
Life of Mr Richard Savage
Samuel Johnson's Life of Mr Richard Savage , short title is Life of Savage and full title is An Account of the Life of Mr Richard Savage, was the first major biography published by Johnson. It was released anonymously in 1744, and detailed the life of Richard Savage, a London poet and friend of...
in 1744.
Background
Johnson began writing his "lives", or individual biographical pieces, in 1740. His first "lives" were of Jean-Philippe BaratierJean-Philippe Baratier
Jean-Philippe Baratier was a German scholar. A noted child prodigy of the 18th century, he published eleven works and authored a great quantity of unpublished manuscripts.Baratier's early education was most carefully conducted by his father, François Baratier, a Huguenot minister at the...
, Robert Blake
Robert Blake (admiral)
Robert Blake was one of the most important military commanders of the Commonwealth of England and one of the most famous English admirals of the 17th century. Blake is recognised as the chief founder of England's naval supremacy, a dominance subsequently inherited by the British Royal Navy into...
, and Francis Drake
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake, Vice Admiral was an English sea captain, privateer, navigator, slaver, and politician of the Elizabethan era. Elizabeth I of England awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581. He was second-in-command of the English fleet against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He also carried out the...
. In 1744, he wrote his first serious "life", the Life of Mr Richard Savage
Life of Mr Richard Savage
Samuel Johnson's Life of Mr Richard Savage , short title is Life of Savage and full title is An Account of the Life of Mr Richard Savage, was the first major biography published by Johnson. It was released anonymously in 1744, and detailed the life of Richard Savage, a London poet and friend of...
, in honour of his friend, Richard Savage
Richard Savage
Richard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....
. Between 1737 and 1739, Johnson became close to Savage. In 1743, Savage found himself in debtors' prison and stayed there until his death shortly after. A year later, Johnson wrote Life of Savage (1744), a "moving" work that, according to Walter Jackson Bate
Walter Jackson Bate
Walter Jackson Bate was an American literary critic and biographer. He was born in Mankato, Minnesota.He is known for two Pulitzer Prize-winning biographies, of John Keats and Samuel Johnson...
, "remains one of the innovative works in the history of biography".
In 1773, publishers in Edinburgh started producing editions of the collected works of various English poets. In order to compete with this project, Johnson was asked by Tom Davies, William Strahan
William Strahan
William Strahan was a Scottish printer and publisher, and a Member of Parliament.Born in Edinburgh as William Strachan, and educated at the Royal High School, Strahan was originally apprenticed to an Edinburgh printer but became a Master Printer in London...
and Thomas Cadell
Thomas Cadell (publisher)
Thomas Cadell was a successful 18th-century English bookseller, who published works by some of the most famous writers of the century....
to create this final major work, the Lives of the English Poets. He began this project and, on 3 May 1777, he wrote to James Boswell
James Boswell
James Boswell, 9th Laird of Auchinleck was a lawyer, diarist, and author born in Edinburgh, Scotland; he is best known for the biography he wrote of one of his contemporaries, the English literary figure Samuel Johnson....
that he was busy preparing a "little Lives" and "little Prefaces, to a little edition of the English Poets". Johnson asked for 200 guineas, an amount significantly lower than the price he could have demanded. Johnson wrote many biographies over the next few years and reproduced his Life of Savage for the collection.
The original work was, however, supposed to comprise the first ten volumes of a sixty-volume work. Johnson's volumes were originally titled Prefaces, Biographical and Critical to the Works of the English Poets. After volumes I-IV were published in 1779 and V-X in 1781, the publishers decided to reprint them as The Lives of the English Poets, or Lives of the Poets, and sell them as an independent work. These were finished in March 1781 and the new collection was published in six volumes.
The Lives
The Lives, which were critical as well as biographical studies, appeared as prefaces to selections of each poet's work, and they were quite larger than originally expected. As Johnson justified in the advertisement for the work, "my purpose was only to have allotted to every Poet an Advertisement, like those which we find in the French Miscellanies, containing a few dates and a general character." However, he did not limit himself to a dry series of dates and biography, but created a series of Lives with, according to his 1783 edition Preface, "the honest intention of giving pleasure".Critical response
Greg Clingham describes the Lives in these terms: "The topics in criticism covered in the Lives read like a list of most of the important issues in literary history during the years 1600-1781" along with having "equally important historical, biographical, and philosophical topics."Points de repère
Matthew ArnoldMatthew Arnold
Matthew Arnold was a British poet and cultural critic who worked as an inspector of schools. He was the son of Thomas Arnold, the famed headmaster of Rugby School, and brother to both Tom Arnold, literary professor, and William Delafield Arnold, novelist and colonial administrator...
, in his Six Chief Lives from Johnson's "Lives of the Poets", considered the Lives of John Milton
John Milton
John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, John Dryden
John Dryden
John Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
, Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope
Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
, Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison
Joseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
, Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, and Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray
Thomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
as "points de repère" or "points which stand as so many natural centres, and by returning to which we can always find our way again." These select Lives served as a model for Arnold's "ideal of liberal education." In essence, these six Lives represented "a crucial century and a half in English literature". To Arnold, the whole work, focusing on these six, formed a "compendious story of a whole important age in English literature, told by a great man, and in a performance which is itself a piece of English literature of the first class."
List of Lives
The poets included were:- Abraham CowleyAbraham CowleyAbraham Cowley was an English poet born in the City of London late in 1618. He was one of the leading English poets of the 17th century, with 14 printings of his Works published between 1668 and 1721.-Early life and career:...
- Sir John Denham
- John MiltonJohn MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
- Samuel Butler (Hudibras)
- John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
- Wentworth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon
- Thomas OtwayThomas OtwayThomas Otway was an English dramatist of the Restoration period, best known for Venice Preserv'd, or A Plot Discover'd .-Life:...
- Edmund WallerEdmund WallerEdmund Waller, FRS was an English poet and politician who sat in the House of Commons at various times between 1624 and 1679.- Early life :...
- John PomfretJohn PomfretJohn Pomfret was an English poet and clergyman.John Pomfret was the son of Thomas Pomfret, vicar of Luton, and went to school in Bedford...
- Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset
- George StepneyGeorge StepneyGeorge Stepney was an English poet and diplomat.Stepney was the son of George Stepney, groom of the chamber to Charles II, and was born at Westminster...
- John PhilipsJohn PhilipsJohn Philips was an 18th century English poet.- Early life and education :Philips was born at Bampton, Oxfordshire, the son of Rev. Stephen Philips, later archdeacon of Salop, and his wife Mary Wood. He was at first taught by his father and then went to Winchester College...
- William Walsh
- John DrydenJohn DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
- Edmund SmithEdmund SmithEdmund Smith , born Edmund Neale, was a minor English poet in the early 18th century. He is little read today but Samuel Johnson included him in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets in 1781.-Biography:...
- Richard DukeRichard DukeRichard Duke was an English clergyman and poet, associated with the Tory writers of the Restoration era.-Life:He was born in London, son of Richard Duke, and was admitted to Westminster School in 1670. He was elected to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1675, and proceeded B.A. in 1678, M.A. in 1682...
- William KingWilliam King (poet)-Life:Born in London, the son of Ezekiel King, he was related to the family of Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. From Westminster School, where he was a scholar under Richard Busby, at the age of eighteen he was elected to Christ Church, Oxford in 1681. There he is said to have dedicated himself...
- Thomas SpratThomas SpratThomas Sprat , English divine, was born at Beaminster, Dorset, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670.Having taken orders he became a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral in 1660...
- Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax
- Thomas ParnellThomas ParnellThomas Parnell was a poet and clergyman, born in Dublin and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was a friend of both Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He participated in the Scriblerus Club, contributing to The Spectator, and he also aided Pope in his translation of The Iliad...
- Samuel GarthSamuel GarthSir Samuel Garth FRS was an English physician and poet.Garth was born in Bolam in County Durham and matriculated at Peterhouse, Cambridge in 1676, graduating B.A. in 1679 and...
- Nicholas RoweNicholas Rowe (dramatist)Nicholas Rowe , English dramatist, poet and miscellaneous writer, was appointed Poet Laureate in 1715.-Life:...
- Joseph AddisonJoseph AddisonJoseph Addison was an English essayist, poet, playwright and politician. He was a man of letters, eldest son of Lancelot Addison...
- John Hughes
- John Sheffield, Duke of Buckingham
- Matthew PriorMatthew PriorMatthew Prior was an English poet and diplomat.Prior was the son of a Nonconformist joiner at Wimborne Minster, East Dorset. His father moved to London, and sent him to Westminster School, under Dr. Busby. On his father's death, he left school, and was cared for by his uncle, a vintner in Channel...
- William Congreve
- Sir Richard Blackmore
- Elijah FentonElijah Fenton-Life:Born in Shelton , and educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, for a time he acted as secretary to the Charles Boyle, 4th Earl of Orrery in Flanders, and was then Master of Sevenoaks Grammar School.In 1707, Fenton published a book of poems...
- John GayJohn GayJohn Gay was an English poet and dramatist and member of the Scriblerus Club. He is best remembered for The Beggar's Opera , set to music by Johann Christoph Pepusch...
- George Granville, Lord Lansdown
- Thomas YaldenThomas YaldenThomas Yalden was an English poet and translator. Educated at Magdalen College, Yalden entered the Church, in which he obtained various preferments. His poems include A Hymn to Darkness, Pindaric Odes, and translations from the classics.-Early life and education:The sixth son of Mr. John Yalden...
- Thomas TickellThomas TickellThomas Tickell was a minor English poet and man of letters.-Life:The son of a clergyman, he was born at Bridekirk near Cockermouth, Cumberland. He was educated at St Bees School 1695-1701, and in 1701 entered the Queen's College, Oxford, taking his M.A. degree in 1709...
- James HammondJames HammondJames Hammond was an eighteenth-century British poet included in Doctor Johnson's Lives of the Poets....
- William SomervileWilliam SomervileWilliam Somervile or Somerville was an English poet.-Ancestry:The name Somervile is derived from a town near Caen in Normandy subsequently named Somervile....
- Richard SavageRichard SavageRichard Savage was an English poet. He is best known as the subject of Samuel Johnson's Life of Savage , on which is based one of the most elaborate of Johnson's Lives of the English Poets....
- Jonathan SwiftJonathan SwiftJonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
- William BroomeWilliam BroomeWilliam Broome was an English poet and translator. He was born in Haslington, near Crewe, Cheshire and died in Bath.He was educated at Eton and Cambridge, entered the Church, and became rector of Sturston in Suffolk, and later Pulham in Norfolk and Eye in Suffolk...
- Alexander PopeAlexander PopeAlexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
- Christopher PittChristopher PittChristopher Pitt was a British poet and translator.His translations to English include Virgil's Aeneid and Vida's Art of Poetry.Pitt was educated at Winchester College, leaving in 1719 to study at New College, Oxford...
- James Thomson
- Isaac WattsIsaac WattsIsaac Watts was an English hymnwriter, theologian and logician. A prolific and popular hymnwriter, he was recognised as the "Father of English Hymnody", credited with some 750 hymns...
- Ambrose PhilipsAmbrose Philips-Life:He was born in Shropshire of a Leicestershire family. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in 1699. He seems to have lived chiefly at Cambridge until he resigned his fellowship in 1708, and his pastorals were probably written in...
- Gilbert WestGilbert WestGilbert West was a minor English poet, translator and Christian apologist in the early and middle eighteenth century. Samuel Johnson included him in his Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets.-Biography:...
- William CollinsWilliam Collins (poet)William Collins was an English poet. Second in influence only to Thomas Gray, he was an important poet of the middle decades of the 18th century...
- John DyerJohn DyerJohn Dyer was a painter and Welsh poet turned clergyman of the Church of England who maintained an interest in his Welsh ancestry...
- William ShenstoneWilliam ShenstoneWilliam Shenstone was an English poet and one of the earliest practitioners of landscape gardening through the development of his estate, The Leasowes.-Life:...
- Edward YoungEdward YoungEdward Young was an English poet, best remembered for Night Thoughts.-Early life:He was the son of Edward Young, later Dean of Salisbury, and was born at his father's rectory at Upham, near Winchester, where he was baptized on 3 July 1683. He was educated at Winchester College, and matriculated...
- David Mallet
- Mark AkensideMark AkensideMark Akenside was an English poet and physician.Akenside was born at Newcastle upon Tyne, England, the son of a butcher. He was slightly lame all his life from a wound he received as a child from his father's cleaver...
- Thomas GrayThomas GrayThomas Gray was a poet, letter-writer, classical scholar and professor at Cambridge University.-Early life and education:...
- George Lord Lyttelton
External links
- The lives of the most eminent English poets; with critical observations on their works (1783)
- The Works Of The English Poets From Chaucer To Cowper Including The Series Edited With Prefaces Biographical And Critical Volume I (1810)
- The lives of the most eminent English poets; with critical observations on their works, in three volumes (1810?) at Internet Archive
- Lives of the Poets in Two Volumes (1826) at Internet Archive
- The lives of the most eminent English poets; with critical observations on their works, in three volumes (1854; ed. Peter CunninghamPeter CunninghamPeter Cunningham FSA was a Scottish writer, son of Allan Cunningham and his wife Jean . Cunningham published several topographical and biographical studies, of which the most important are his Handbook of London and The Life of Drummond of Hawthornden .In 1851 Peter Cunningham appeared in an...
) at Internet Archive