InformationalPrivacy
| The first requisite of style is choice of words, and this comes under the head of Diction, the property of style which has reference to the words and phrases used in speaking and writing. The secret of literary skill from any standpoint consist... Read more of DICTION at Speaking Writing.com | Informational Privacy |
|
Most Viewed- Tycho Brahe's Nose- Praise Of Ale - Leigh Hunt And Thomas Carlyle - Captain Morris's Songs - Moore's Epigram On Abbott - Booksellers In Little Britain - A Carouse At Boileau's - Lord Elibank And Dr Johnson - Miss Burney's Evelina - Anacreontic Invitation By Moore - A Composition With Conscience - The Blue-stocking Club - Bunyan's Copy Of The Book Of Martyrs - Dr Johnson And Hannah More - Writing Up The Times Newspaper - Death Bed Revelations - Families Of Literary Men Least Viewed- The Mermaid Club- Popularity Of The Pickwick Papers - The Two Sheridans - Hearne's Love Of Ale - Swift's Loves - Mathematical Sailors - Popularity Of Lope De Vega - Johnson's Club-room - Latest Of Dr Johnson's Contemporaries - Thomas Day And His Model Wife - Ludicrous Estimate Of Mr Canning - Quid Pro Quo - Chances For The Drama - Voltaire And Ferney - Walpole's Way To Win Them - Dr Chalmers's Industry - Origin Of The Edinburgh Review |
Dr Johnson's CriticismsJohnson decided literary questions like a lawyer, not like a legislator. He never examined foundations where a point was already ruled. His whole code of criticism rested on pure assumption, for which he sometimes gave a precedent or authority, but rarely troubled himself to give a reason drawn from the nature of things. He judged of all works of the imagination by the standard established among his own contemporaries. Though he allowed Homer to have been a greater man than Virgil, he seems to have thought the AEneid to have been a greater poem than the Iliad. Indeed, he well might have thought so; for he preferred Pope's Iliad to Homer's. He pronounced that after Hoole's translation of Tasso, Fairfax's would hardly be reprinted. He could see no merit in our fine old English ballads, and always spoke with the most provoking contempt of Dr. Percy's fondness for them. Of all the great original works which appeared during his time, Richardson's novels alone excited his admiration. He could see little or no merit in Tom Jones, in Gulliver's Travels, or in Tristram Shandy. To Thomson's Castle of Indolence he vouchsafed only a line of cold commendation--of commendation much colder than what he has bestowed on The Creation of that portentous bore, Sir Richard Blackmore. Gray was, in his dialect, a barren rascal. Churchill was a blockhead. The contempt which he felt for Macpherson was, indeed, just; but it was, we suspect, just by by chance. He criticized Pope's epitaphs excellently. But his observations on Shakspeare's plays, and Milton's poems, seem to us as wretched as if they had been written by Rymer himself, whom we take to have been the worst critic that ever lived. * * * * * Next: Gibbon's House At Lausanne Previous: Walpole's Way To Win Them
Viewed 120 |
||||||||||||||||||||
