Write a note on Dr. Johnson and his circle or club.
Answer:
Samuel
Johnson was more important in 18th century culture for the influence
he exerted as a man letters and upon the creative writer. As a writer in the
neo-classical tradition, Johnson came to stand last in a line of literary
culture that thrived by reference to the antiquated past of the Greek and Roman
times. Johnson’s credit lies not an inciting a process but in enhancing its. Samuel
Johnson had manifest as a writer- he is a critic, a novelist, a poet and a lexicographer.
The publication of his “A Dictionary of the English language”
(1755) brought him immediate attention and fame. He commentaries on
writers, past and contemporary. In “The Lives of the Poets” has been
referred to time. Johnson was writing transitional time and career which epitomize
the changing status of the writers in the 18th century. He marshaled
the artist, writers and thinkers of his time to form a club which represented
what is known as “Dr. Johnson and his
Circle”. It was instituted with members like Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmund
Burke, Samuel Johnson and Oliver Goldsmith in 1764. The members of the
circle met at Turk’s head Inn in Gerrard Street Soho, every week. As the years
went by more and more members joined it and the name suggest that it was a
veritable figure of contemporary society. Later, some members included in the
circle like Bishop Thomas Parcy, Adam Smith, and Jane Boswell. The life in
the club was one of the cultural and intellectual intercourses and Johnson
increasingly spent more time in the club than at home. The Johnson circle represented
the cultural of collective concenees that influenced the literary values of his
neo- classical practice.
Dr. Johnson readily recognised both the potential and the
real perils of the life of English writer in London as evident in his own, “Life
of Mr Richard Savage”(1744). Dr. Johnson was the most important writer
of the age of transition. He is a poet, critic, essayist and novelist. He is
known mostly by prose writing. His prose works may be divided into two classes,
those in which he is primarily a moralist, and those in which he is a critic. His
“The
Rambler” and “Idler Rasselas” belong to the first category writings
while “A Dictionary of the English language” (1755), “Preface to Shakespeare”
and “The Lives of the poets” are belonged to the later group.
Dr. Johnson had come to London in 1737 carrying with him the
incomplete blank verse tragedy like “Irene”, a play performed
twelve years later. His poem “London” is a verse satire. It is modeled the
third satire of Juvenal. His next
work, “The Vanity of Human Wishes” is also an imitation of Juvenal.
Dr. Johnson’s fame as a critic of literature rests on his “The Lives
of the Poets” (1789), and “Preface to Shakespeare” (1765). Walter
Jackson Bate considered Dr. Johnson as a neo-classical critic. In his “The
Lives of the Poets”, Dr. Johnson presents the lives and achievements of the
English poets from Chaucer to Alexander Pope. In this volume, he gives us the
biographical and the critical studies of 52 poets. Among these only six—Milton,
Dryden, Pope, Thompson, Gray and Coleridge would considered of first rate
importance.
In “The lives of the poets”, Dr. Johnson gives less space to
criticism and more space to biography. His criticism of Milton’s poem “Lycidas” and Gray’s,
“Odes” are considered defective because neither he appreciates the music
of “Lycidas” nor the
learning of Gray.
Boswell’s, “The Life of Samuel Johnson” appeared in 1791.
It projects the image of Johnson as Degen (king) of his age, generous, honest,
compassionate and devout.
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