Chapter 1 - Johnson’s Compassion

Summary

This chapter explores David Ferry’s poetical recreations of Johnsonian prose under the aspect of “compassion.” Attention is initially focussed on Ferry’s poetical re-working of a passage from the “Life of Pope” on Pope’s physical disablements. The poem “Johnson on Pope – from the Lives of the Poets” (1960) is compelling. The chapter highlights how Johnson’s critical prose can be closely associated with the language of poetry. With each reading his language sinks deeper into our consciousnesses and eludes paraphrase. Also discussed are lines from Ferry’s “That Evening at Dinner” and use of a passage from Johnson’s review of Soame Jenyns’s Free Enquiry (1757). Through the language of his modern poem Ferry brings out the poignancy of suffering in the closing stages of life. This discussion is reinforced by a close analysis of Johnson on the final years of Jonathan Swift from the “Life of Swift.” Ferry’s formula – that of “unsentimental pity” – is then the basis for a closing examination of the final decline of the poet William Collins, one of the poets from the Lives of the Poets Johnson had known in person.