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Samuel Johnson and the Art of Sinking 1709-1791 by Freya Johnston

2007; Modern Humanities Research Association; Volume: 102; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/mlr.2007.0073

2222-4319

Allan Ingram,

Linguistics and language evolution

486 Reviews (Dryden and patronage, and politics, and criticism, and empire, and satire; and so on). The essays are all extremely lively,and, though covering this familiar terrain,do so inoften new and invigoratingways. The collection serves extremelywell theneeds of the student coming toDryden inour times and for the firsttime: the contributions combine originality and contemporary scholarship with a refreshing excitement that should draw a new generation ofDryden scholars to the field.The volume is framed by two essays written by the editor, Steven N. Zwicker; and we have, through the collection, a kind of trajectory thatgoes froman initial consideration ofwhat it might mean to compose a 'literary life' in this case through to amore generalized question concerning Dryden's relation to 'literary modernity'. The shift is subtle, but telling: the intervening essays have found ways of relating the lived experience of the late seventeenth century to amore general set of conditions and questions, which relate experience as such towhat it might mean towrite in the always modernizing world. In the end, though,we are left with a series of hypotheses and questions concerning Dryden: ishe an embodiment of 'hiswicked and turbulent age', or is the age one that formed 'thesoul of thepoet', or, indeed, do age andman cohabit in some dialectic? For Zwicker, this seems all to be amystery, and valuable for itsenigmatic inscrutability; but for the essayists in thecollection, all thewonder lies inexploring precisely thatset of relations between poetry and occasion. That exploration ismore thanworthwhile in the case of thismost important ofwriters. Enchanted Ground follows a different kind of trajectory.The essays here are de signed to allow us to 'reimagine' Dryden. The gambit is that, for many, thequestion ofDryden and his 'placing' in literaryhistory iswell settled; and, given this, it is all themore important thatwe unsettle it.The essays here do this extremely well. They reconfigure Dryden inways thatmay be familiar to the reader of the twenty-first century.Historical Dryden isnow to be thought of in terms of historiography itself (Margery Kingsley), or pastoral retreat (Michael McKeon), or economy (Richard Kroll): it is a history that relates to large conceptual and general questions, questions whose answering may reveal something about an entire age or culture. Cultural and theatricalDryden is reconfigured in terms of literal enchantment, and what it might mean to 'sing' or to address the rhythms and tempo of an age. Both books are extremelywelcome, forboth offerus new ways intoDryden, whose historical and cultural importance for all thatwe consider modern, critical, politi cal, European, comparative -verything of our own present 'occasion'-cannot be overstated. UNIVERSITY OFWARWICK THOMAS DOCHERTY Samuel Johnson and theArt of Sinking 1709-179I. By FREYA JOHNSTON. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2005. xvii+265pp. ?40. ISBN 978-o-i9-925I82-7. Freya Johnston's subject, though the title might initially lead one to thinkotherwise, isnot literarybathos but rather the near relative to bathos that isbest described as littleness and itsplace, itsvery proper place, in Johnson's writing. 'It is theprivilege of real greatness', wrote Johnson in tribute toGeorge I II, 'not tobe afraid of diminu tion by condescending to the notice of little things' (p. 242), a remarkwith which Johnston concludes her book. The 'Art', though, of the book's title is so tomanage that 'notice' as to avoid the sinking that forPope and others constituted bathos and to embrace 'little things' as genuine features of one's 'real greatness'. Johnston devotes the four chapters of thisdetailed and scholarly study todemonstrating how Johnson does precisely that. There is,of course, ample classical precedent forgreatness condescending to the littlewithout sacrificing its standing or its dignity, just as 'the sublime writings of MLR, I02.2, 2007 487 Homer' had room for 'commonplace, humble words' (p. 6). But forJohnson, in spite of his devotion to and expertise in the classics, it is theChristian context that carries more weight. Christ himself, after all, stooped 'to the poor, themean, and the lowly' (p. i6), and, as Isaac Watts puts it, 'there is no Possibility of lessening ourselves comparably to the Self-abasement of the Son ofGod; and yet the nearer we are like him themore we shall partake of the Father's Love, and we shall be in...