Page:Six Essays on Johnson.djvu/151

Rh What is true passion, if unblest it dies? And where is Emma’s joy, if Henry flies? If love, alas! be pain; the pain I bear No thought can figure and no tongue declare. Ne’er faithful woman felt, nor false one feign’d, The flames which long have in my bosom reign’d: The god of love himself inhabits there, With all his rage, and dread, and grief, and care, His complement of stores, and total war. If Johnson’s condemnation of this sort of thing is fusty-rusty, Cowper’s confession that he had given the poem a consecrated place in his memory is puffy-muffy—a word which Rossetti coined to describe some of Wordsworth’s colloquial efforts.

Johnson’s matter-of-fact commentary on many poetical conventions and imaginations gives us the clue to his main critical position. More than those who came immediately before him, he stands for the classical doctrine, in language and literature. The right work of his time, as he conceived it, was to reintroduce sincerity into literature; to make it actual and moving; to discard far-fetched themes, empty conventional ornament, extravagant metaphor, outworn poetic tradition; so that poetry might deliver its message in a language easy to understand—‘like a man of this world.’ His practice in this matter falls far short of the doctrine, in which yet he never wavered. His own mind was slow and ponderous in its movement: he had lived much alone in his youth; and it was natural to him to express his own sentiments with deliberate emphasis and measured dignity. On great or difficult themes he never fails; but he cannot always adapt his expression to matter of every day. Prior writes nervous classical English on the most trivial topics, and fails only where passion