Samuel Johnson:Life of Cowley (1174)

Johnson’s “Life of Cowley”

Johnson’s description of [metaphysical wit] begins with introducing Metaphysical poets; he accuses them of being a bunch of showing off versifiers rather than true poets whose verses are mere celebration of their extreme knowledge of the world and scientific studies. In fact, Johnson and his contemporaries did not use the term “metaphysical” equal to “spiritual” or in opposition to “physical”; it rather connotes the philosophical and scientific aspect of the poetry rich with strange conceits such as compasses, ether, etc. only at hand for a scholar, not a poet. Johnson condemns these poets of being too much concerned with rhyme. Poetry, he believes, is what engages men’s hearts and opens up their eyes to the “softness of love” as in the poetry of Shakespeare and Milton.

Johnson then attacks the poetry from two different angles: mimetic and pragmatic. The Metaphysicals’ first failure, according to Johnson, could be found out through Aristotle’s criteria for true poetry – as imitative art: Metaphysical poetry is far from truth by copying neither “nature” nor “life”. He then approaches the poetry from another angle and that is its failure to affect the reader the way true poetry does. In other words, Johnson attempts to prove that Metaphysical poetry, though admirable, is not able to please the reader as a harmonious, unified, and beautiful piece of poetry, soothing the minds of the readers. In order to prove so, he questions the central anchor of Metaphysical poetry, namely “wit”:

He first confirms that the true value of their poetry only lies in the merit and extent of their wit. Even Dryden admitted that he and his contemporaries “fall below Donne in wit, but surpass in poetry”. But in order to attack this anchor, he wittily provides two different definitions of ‘wit’. According to Pope, wit is what “has been often thought, but was never before so well expressed”. Based on this definition, Metaphysical poets have failed to such wit, since they “just tried to get singular thought, and were careless of diction”, and language. Here Johnson wittily and boldly questions even Pope’s definition, and provides a new concept of ‘wit’, as being “at once natural and new”. Thus Metaphysical thoughts “are often new, but seldom natural”. In fact the unnaturalness of their poetry is what makes them unpleasing to the mind of the reader.

Having put the two previous definitions of ‘wit’ aside as not working in the case of metaphysical poets, Johnson then takes a step further to define their wit as an example of discordia concors; “a combination of dissimilar images, or discovery of occult resemblances in things apparently unlike”. He decries their roughness and violation of decorum, the deliberate mixture of different styles, this kind of wit they have “more than enough”.

Johnson may seem to condemn the pragmatic failure of metaphysical poetry as “not successful in representing or moving the affections”, but is actually leaving the ground for the values of their poetry but providing subjective definitions for pragmatic and mimetic values of true poetry:

If by a more noble and more adequate conception, that be considered as wit which is at once natural and new, that which, though not obvious, is, upon its first production, acknowledged to be just; if it be that which he that never found it, wonders how he missed; to wit of this kind the metaphysical poets have seldom risen. 

Johnson here knowingly emphasizes the significance of the reader in producing the final poem, and if by any chance Metaphysical conceits fail to prove “natural”, “just” or “obvious”, they may turn to be so in another time and place, as it really happened in the 20^th century and the strange conceits and fragmentation of images seemed so natural to the shattered subjects (readers) of the post-war time. As Goethe remarks, “the unnatural, that too is natural,” and the metaphysical poets continue to be studied and revered for their intricacy and originality because of the very naturalness of images found in their once supposed far-fetched conceits. Such evaluations totally depend on the context, the understanding of the reader, and the time it is being read.

Johnson’s other criteria for wit was being “new” to the reader, but how could a conceit prove new if over-used? In fact, if a conceit or thought become a dead metaphor, it will lose all its magic and wit; and this factor is also dependant on the time and era in which it is read.

His ending, however, is that of a fair judgment and sometimes admiration rather than condemnation: “if they frequently threw away their wit upon false conceits, they likewise sometimes struck out unexpected truth; if their conceits were far fetched, they were often worth the carriage”. Apart from finding a kind of ‘truth’ in their poetry, he also confirms a number of valuable features in their poetry such as “acuteness”, “powers of reflection and comparison”, “genuine wit”, “useful knowledge”, and finally “more propriety though less copiousness of sentiment”.

Johnson’s view of Metaphysical poets, though not totally confirming, proved to be fair and influenced by his own era’s literary canon – which valued imitativeness and unity over fragmentation and metaphysical expressions. We should keep in mind that metaphysical poetry was a reaction against the deliberately smooth and sweet tones of much 16th-century verse, a courageous act even against the literary canon of their own time. And that is why the metaphysical poets adopted a style that seems so energetic, uneven, and rigorous and much appealing to the fed up 20^th century reader.