What he did not see he could not appreciate; perhaps it is too
much to ask of his self-contained and unbending intellect that he should
appreciate the report of it by other men.
(2)
As we have seen, Johnson was not only great in himself, he was great in
his friends. Round him, meeting him as an equal, gathered the greatest
and most prolific writers of the time. There is no better way to study
the central and accepted men of letters of the period than to take some
full evening at the club from Boswell, read a page or two, watch what
the talkers said, and then trace each back to his own works for a
complete picture of his personality. The lie of the literary landscape
in this wonderful time will become apparent to you as you read. You will
find Johnson enthroned, Boswell at his ear, round him men like Reynolds
and Burke, Richardson and Fielding and Goldsmith, Robertson and Gibbon,
and occasionally drawn to the circle minnows like Beattie and a genius
like Adam Smith. Gray, studious in his college at Cambridge, is
exercising his fastidious talent; Collins' sequestered, carefully
nurtured muse is silent; a host of minor poets are riding Pope's poetic
diction, and heroic couplet to death. Outside scattered about is the
van of Romance--Percy collecting his ballads; Burns making songs and
verses in Scotland; the "mad" people, Smart and Chatterton, and above
all Blake, obscurely beginning the work that was to finish in Wordsworth
and Coleridge and Keats.
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