A Poetical Review of the Literary and Moral Character of the late Samuel Johnson (1786) — Context and Discussion

Courtenay was the only writer before Boswell to praise Johnson's Latin verse, a body of poetry virtually ignored by other contemporary biographers and memorialists.[16] Furthermore, he employs footnotes skillfully. Though they impede the progress of the poem, they do support poetic statement with factual evidence and explain and amplify certain points made in the verses.

The clearest evidence for the care which Courtenay took with the _Review_ can be found upon examination of his revisions. He made few substantial changes in the second edition, but the third edition contains important revisions. Courtenay added ten lines and five footnotes in the final version, and lightened some of the scorn in the first portion by substituting weaker phrases for stronger ones. He also enclosed lines seven through twenty in quotation marks to make it appear that the sentiment expressed therein was not his own, but a judgment he had heard elsewhere.

But the most significant revisions are concerned with organization. By transferring segments of certain verse paragraphs to others, he achieves a more unified portrait of Johnson. By means of such revision, he forms his general evaluation of Johnson's writing into one unit and his comments on individual works into another, where before they had been awkwardly interwoven.

Courtenay's _Review_ did not go unnoticed at the time, though for obvious reasons it was given less attention by the reviewers than the more notorious Johnsoniana. Extracts from the poem were printed in several magazines. The reviewers were almost unanimous in damning the poem's inelegance, unevenness, and lack of harmony, but reserved praise for the sentiments and candor.[17] Chesterfield's apologist in William Hayley's _Two Dialogues; Containing a Comparative View of the Lives, Characters, and Writings of Philip, the Late Earl of Chesterfield, and Dr. Samuel Johnson_ (1787) protested that Courtenay was too kind to Johnson. The severest indictment of the Review came from the anonymous author of _A Poetical Epistle from the Ghost of Dr. Johnson_, mentioned earlier, who charged Courtenay with poor taste and with belaboring the obvious by proving that Johnson was "not quite destitute of brains."[18]

The greatest champion of the _Review_ was, of course, Boswell. The _Life_ is sprinkled with quotations from the third edition, 118 lines in all, mostly from Courtenay's commendatory verses. In view of the many published attacks on Johnson, Boswell must have appreciated Courtenay's sentiments all the more. Doubtless Courtenay's warm praise of the _Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides_ also found favor with Boswell.[19] Perhaps Boswell's final and least partial judgment of the _Review_ was expressed in his letter to James Abercrombie of Philadelphia dated 11 June 1792. He sent Abercrombie a copy of the poem, commenting that "though I except to several passages, you will find some very good writing."[20]

Courtenay's _Review_, together with several other little known _memorabilia_ concerning Johnson, stimulated one of the most energetic and splenetic literary controversies of the late eighteenth century. In addition, the _Review_ and pieces like it aroused a considerable amount of useful, if vitriolic, discussion about the art of biography.

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[2] For the information about Courtenay's election, I am indebted to Professor James M. Osborn of Yale University. Boswell gives no precise date for Courtenay's entry into the Club. His first reference to Courtenay's membership occurs in his journal entry of 19 January 1790. See _Private Papers of James Boswell_, ed. Geoffrey Scott and Frederick A. Pottle (Privately Printed, 1928-1934), XVIII, 22. See also Boswell's letter to Edmond Malone dated 16 December 1790, _Letters of James Boswell_, ed. C. B. Tinker (Oxford, 1924), II, 409-410. Courtenay and other intimates of Boswell were called "The Gang" by Philip Metcalfe. See _Private Papers_, XVII, 52, 55; XVIII, 15.

[3] _Private Papers_, XVI, 106.

[4] _Ibid._, XVII, 80. For additional testimony to Courtenay's reputation as a wit, see _Thraliana_, ed. Katharine C. Balderston (Oxford, 1951), I, 486, and James Prior, _Life of Edmond Malone_ (London, 1860), 287-288.

[5] _Private Papers_, XVII, 86.

[6] _Ibid._, pp. 76-77.

[7] _Ibid._, XVI, 178. "M. C." is Mrs. Rudd.

[8] See Boswell's letters to Malone, _Letters_, II, 405, 427, and _Private Papers_, XVIII, 100. Courtenay became alarmed over Boswell's deepening melancholy, as seen in this passage from his letter to Malone of 22 February 1791: "Poor Boswell is very low, & desperate & ... melancholy mad, feels no spring, no pleasure in existence, & is so perceptibly altered for the worse that it is remarked everywhere. I try all I can to revivify him, but he [turns?] so tiresomely & tediously--for the same cursed trite commonplace topics, about death &c.--that we grow old, and when we are old, we are not young--that I despair of effecting a cure. Doctors Warren and Devaynes very kindly interest themselves about him, but you wd be of more service to him than anyone." Quoted from a MS at Yale University Library by James Osborn, "Edmond Malone and Dr. Johnson," _Johnson, Boswell and Their Circle: Essays Presented to Lawrence Fitzroy Powell in Honour of His Eighty-fourth Birthday_ (Oxford, 1965), p. 16.