Johnson, Samuel (1709-1784)

Life of Cowley [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

1779, 1781

"A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness."

This is an instance of the natural desire of man to propagate a wonder. It is surely very difficult to tell any thing as it was heard, when Sprat could not refrain from amplifying a commodious incident, though the book to which he prefixed his narrative contained its confutation. A memory admitting some things and rejecting others, an intellectual digestion that concocted the pulp of learning, but refused the husks, had the appearance of an instinctive elegance, of a particular provision made by Nature for literary politeness. But in the author's own honest relation, the marvel vanishes: he was, he says, such 'an enemy to all constraint, that his master never could prevail on him to learn the rules without book.' He does not tell that he could not learn the rules, but that, being able to perform his exercises without them, and being an 'enemy to constraint,' he spared himself the labour.

Body::Digestion Plant::Pulp Plant::Husks

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. 1 (London: Bathurst et al., 1779). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO>

Text from Jack Lynch's online edition, based on G. B. Hill's Lives of the English Poets, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1905). <Link>

04/30/2011