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 Vocabulary in
Curriculum Planning
Needs, Strategies and Tools
Edited by
Marina Dodigovic
María Pilar Agustín-Llach
Vocabulary in Curriculum Planning
 Marina Dodigovic
María Pilar Agustín-Llach
Editors

Vocabulary in
Curriculum Planning
Needs, Strategies and Tools
Editors
Marina Dodigovic María Pilar Agustín-Llach
University of La Rioja Department of Modern Philologies
Logrono, Spain University of La Rioja
Logrono, Spain

ISBN 978-3-030-48662-4    ISBN 978-3-030-48663-1 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48663-1

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2020

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar
or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgements

The editors would like to acknowledge the help and support of several
groups and individuals, without whom this project would not have suc-
ceeded. First and foremost, we would like to thank the contributing
authors for submitting the work of great substance. Next, we acknowl-
edge the American University of Armenia for sponsoring research proj-
ects included in this volume. Equally, we are grateful to the University of
La Rioja for providing research platforms and library resources. We are
also indebted to Jelena Colovic Markovic for her support from the begin-
ning of this project. Moreover, we are grateful to confidential reviewers
for their invaluable comments on our work. A debt of gratitude is also
owed to other readers of the manuscript who felt that they could support
it. Last, but not least, we would like to thank our Palgrave Macmillan
editor, Alice Green, for steering us most competently through this effort,
as well as the entire Palgrave Macmillan team, including of course Cathy
Scott, the Commissioning Editor for Language and Linguistics.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction to Vocabulary-Based Needs Analysis  1

Marina Dodigovic and María Pilar Agustín-Llach

Part I Some Lexical Principles for Needs Analysis   7

2 Vocabulary Size Assessment: Assessing the Vocabulary

Needs of Learners in Relation to Their CEFR Goals  9
James Milton and Thomaï Alexiou

3 The Comparison of Receptive and Productive Vocabulary

Size of Afghan Tertiary Students 29
Mohammad Asif Amin

4 How Does Vocabulary Knowledge Relate to Reading

Comprehension? 57
Xuerong Wei

vii
viii Contents

Part II Understanding Vocabulary Learning Strategies in

Another Language  75

5 Vocabulary Size and Strategies of English Learners in

Armenia: What the Research Says 77
Marina Dodigovic, Rubina Gasparyan, Syuzanna Torosyan,
and Mary Alik Karamanoukian

6 Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by Armenian EFL

Students103
Hripsime Manukyan

7 Cognitive and Metacognitive Vocabulary Learning

Strategies: Insights from Learning Diaries121
Brankica Bošnjak Terzić and Višnja Pavičić Takač

Part III Examining Lexical Errors 143

8 Lexical Errors in the Writing of EFL Students in the

Armenian Context145
Nektar Harutyunyan and Marina Dodigovic

9 Semantic and Conceptual Transfer in FL: Multicultural

and Multilingual Competences165
María Pilar Agustín-Llach

Part IV Developing Needs Based Procedures and Tools to

Support Vocabulary Learning 181

10 Fostering the Teaching of Cultural Vocabulary in EFL

Contexts183
Andrés Canga Alonso
 Contents ix

11 DIY Needs Analysis and Specific Text Types: Using The

Prime Machine to Explore Vocabulary in Readymade and
Homemade English Corpora199
Stephen Jeaco

Index225
 Notes on Contributors

María Pilar Agustín-Llach, Accredited Full Professor, University of La

Rioja. Her main research interest is the examination of vocabulary acquisi-
tion and teaching in light of the variables age, gender, proficiency level, L1
influence, learning context. Other vocabulary-related issues like lexical errors,
lexical transfer, vocabulary strategies are included in her research agenda.
Thomaï Alexiou is Associate Professor at the Department of Theoretical
and Applied Linguistics, School of English, Aristotle University of
Thessaloniki, Greece. Her expertise is in early foreign language learning,
SLA pedagogy and material development for young learners. She has also
authored textbooks for children learning English as a foreign language.
Mohammad Asif Amin grew up in a Pakistani refugee camp, at the
time of Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Now 36, Amin has been an
English lecturer at Nangrahar University for 12 years. In 2018 he com-
pleted his graduate degree of Teaching English as a Foreign Language
from the American University of Armenia.
Brankica Bošnjak Terzić is an English teacher at the Faculty of
Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture of the University of
Zagreb, Croatia, with more than 18 years of experience in teaching
ESP. Her main research interests are vocabulary learning strategies, ESP,
self-regulated learning and motivation in ESP and e-learning.

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

Andrés Canga Alonso is tenured Associate Professor of English Studies

at the University of La Rioja (Spain). His current research focuses on
young learners’ cultural vocabulary in EFL. He has published on EFL
learners’ cultural and receptive vocabulary in national and international
peer-reviewed journals.
Marina Dodigovic, PhD, is a professor of TESOL holding several hon-
orary titles. Her research interests include educational technology as well
as vocabulary teaching, learning and assessment. She has a number of
books, chapters and journal articles to her name.
Rubina Gasparyan is a lecturer at AUA. Her major interest is in lan-
guage assessment. She has participated in a number of assessment proj-
ects and research; presented papers on issues related to language testing
and assessment at professional conferences, such as TESOL Arabia and
ALTE; has co-authored reports, manuals and articles.
Nektar Harutyunyan, AUA MA TEFL (2018), currently teaching at
Military College named after Monte Melkonyan, RA. Her research inter-
ests include neurolinguistics and educational technology as well as vocab-
ulary teaching and learning. She has participated in several exchange
programs and in numerous workshops and trainings.
Stephen Jeaco is Associate Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong Liverpool
University in Suzhou, China. He has lived and worked in Higher
Education in China for over 20 years, with responsibilities in teaching
and managing EAP, and later, lecturing in linguistics and TESOL.
Mary Alik Karamanoukian received a master’s degree in Teaching
English as a Foreign Language from the American University of Armenia,
2018. Her research focus is on vocabulary, particularly the approaches
implemented by teachers to facilitate vocabulary teaching and learning.
Hripsime Manukyan received her BA in Linguistics in 2016 from the
Armenian State Pedagogical University. She received her MA in Teaching
English as a Foreign Language from the American University of Armenia
in 2018. Her research interests include English teaching and vocabulary.
 Notes on Contributors xiii

James Milton is Professor of Applied Linguistics at Swansea University,

UK. His long-term interest in assessing lexical learning and progress led
to extensive publications, including Modelling and Assessing Vocabulary
Knowledge (CUP 2007) Measuring Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition
(Multilingual Matters 2009) and Dimensions of Vocabulary Knowledge
(Palgrave 2014).
Višnja Pavičić Takač is a Professor of SLA and TEFL at the University
of Osijek, Croatia. Her main research interests include individual differ-
ences in SLA, communicative competence and lexical competence. Her
publications include three monographs, four co-edited volumes and over
50 papers. She has been involved in several international research projects.
Syuzanna Torosyan is an adjunct lecturer in BA in E&C program and
a recruitment coordinator in MA TEFL program, at AUA. Her interests
lie in the areas of teacher training, program evaluation and classroom
assessment. She has actively been involved in research projects, presented
in a number of local and international conferences.
Xuerong Wei is Examinations Officer at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool
University. She received her master’s degree in MA TESOL in 2017. Her
research interests include English language education, second language
teaching and learning, and higher education assessments.
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Vocabulary profile of a typical learner (adapted

Meara, 1992, p. 4) 13
Fig. 2.2 Vocabulary profiles are CEFR A2, B1 and B2 levels
(Milton, 2009) 17
Fig. 2.3 Computer-delivered X-Lex test 19
Fig. 2.4 Vocabulary size estimates 19
Fig. 2.5 Pic-lex screen (from Alexiou & Milton, forthcoming) 24
Fig. 3.1 Mean values 40
Fig. 3.2 Comparison of productive and receptive vocabulary sizes 40
Fig. 8.1 Frequency of words most prone to errors 154
Fig. 9.1 Distribution of participants across CEFR proficiency levels 171
Fig. 11.1 DIY Wordlist Tools tab in tPM213
Fig. 11.2 Concordance lines for innovation in a DIY corpus of
Chairman’s Statements and BNC: other publications 214

xv
 List of Tables

Table 2.1 Lexical knowledge and CEFR levels from the curriculum of
the Ministry of Education in Saudi Arabia (2016, p. 78) 14
Table 2.2 Lexical size associated with formal exams and other
standards (adapted from Meara & Milton, 2003) based on a
test of the most frequent 5000 lemmatised words in English 15
Table 2.3 Mean EFL vocabulary size scores and the CEFR (adapted
from Milton, 2009) 16
Table 2.4 Test of productive vocabulary size in a foreign language
(Roghani, 2017) 22
Table 2.5 Productive vocabulary knowledge and CEFR levels 23
Table 2.6 Pic-lex scores and the CEFR 24
Table 3.1 Results of the receptive vocabulary means 38
Table 3.2 Results of the productive vocabulary 39
Table 3.3 Paired samples statistics 42
Table 3.4 Correlations 43
Table 4.1 Descriptive statistics of students’ performance on VST,
WAT, and CET-4 reading 65
Table 4.2 Correlations between vocabulary depth, vocabulary size,
and reading performance 66
Table 4.3 Coefficients of the predictive power of VS and DVK on
reading comprehension performance 68
Table 4.4 Multiple Regression of the predictors and the reading
performance68

xvii
xviii List of Tables

Table 5.1 Private vs. public education 90

Table 5.2 Tertiary vs. secondary education 91
Table 5.3 Private university vs. private school 92
Table 5.4 Public school vs. state university 92
Table 5.5 Private schools vs. public schools 92
Table 5.6 Private university vs. state university 93
Table 6.1 Results of overall vocabulary learning strategies use 111
Table 6.2 Descriptive statistics of four categories of vocabulary
learning strategies 111
Table 6.3 Descriptive statistics of participants’ cognitive strategies use 112
Table 6.4 Descriptive statistics of participants’ memory strategies use 113
Table 6.5 Descriptive statistics of participants’ determination
strategies use 113
Table 6.6 Descriptive statistics of participants’ social strategies use 114
Table 6.7 The most useful vocabulary learning strategies 116
Table 7.1 Cognitive and metacognitive strategies identified in learner
diaries130
Table 8.1 Descriptive statistics of lexical errors according to their
categories152
Table 8.2 Taxonomy of lexical errors 153
Table 8.3 Findings on words most prone to errors 155
Table 8.4 Number of lexical errors according to the source of their
cause155
Table 10.1 Topics and descriptors for the classification of cultural words 191
Table 11.1 Kinds of linguistic analyses 211
Table 11.2 Wordlist statistics for a DIY corpus compared with the BNC 215
Table 11.3 Top 15 KWs for a DIY Corpus with manual categories
created by a student 217
Table 11.4 Corpus methods used by students in the second task 218
 1
Introduction to Vocabulary-Based Needs
Analysis
Marina Dodigovic and María Pilar Agustín-Llach

Understanding the needs of second or foreign language (L2) learners is

essential in the process of both planning and delivering L2 lessons. This
volume is dedicated to a particular variable which can be successfully
used to gauge learner needs, namely vocabulary. This variable might turn
out to be the single most important variable in language learning, as
Wilkins points out that “without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed”
(cited in Thornbury, 2002).
Vocabulary is one of the often underestimated factors in L2 classrooms.
It seems to be particularly underrepresented in needs analysis. According
to Basturkmen (2005), needs analysis is the kind of investigation “cur-
riculum developers use to identify the gap between what learners already
know and what they need to know in order to study or work in their

M. Dodigovic (*)
University of La Rioja, Logrono, Spain
M. P. Agustín-Llach
Department of Modern Philologies, University of La Rioja, Logrono, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Dodigovic, M. P. Agustín-Llach (eds.), Vocabulary in Curriculum Planning,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-48663-1_1
2 M. Dodigovic and M. P. Agustín-Llach

specific target environments” (p. 15). Failing to determine which vocabu-

lary the students already know and what might be the realistic vocabulary
targets for their classes is likely to result in failure to make progress in the
target language, an outcome unfortunately too often observed in foreign
language settings. Similarly, failing to examine the extent to which text-
book vocabulary addresses the needs of students, more often than not,
results in the absence of learning. Finally, vocabulary learning strategies
are frequently taken for granted, leaving the students ill-equipped for the
task. Hence it is the intention of this volume to support language teach-
ers, administrators and a broad range of stakeholders in the language
teaching process with ideas and examples of vocabulary-related needs
analysis.
Needs analysis is often done particularly in language centres specialised
in teaching L2. This is usually done by means of administering the kind
of test that is called placement test in language assessment literature
(Hughes, 2003). This type of test is a kind of “sorting hat”, designed to
facilitate adequate placement of students across classes and levels. Another
type of test which is used to determine the individual strengths and weak-
nesses of a learner’s L2 is called diagnostic test (Hughes, 2003). This is
usually far more detailed than a placement test. Other means of conduct-
ing aspects of needs analysis are surveys and interviews with a variety of
stakeholders, including learners themselves, their employers, families and
the community at large. This is especially the case in the arena of English
for Specific Purposes (ESP) (Basturkmen, 2010), where the leaners are
meant to use L2 within the confines of a particular academic discipline or
profession. This kind of needs analysis often entails identifying the vocab-
ulary, discourse and genres (Basturkmen, 2010) the leaners would be
expected to use. It then ideally attempts to gauge to what extent the stu-
dents are or are not familiar with the identified items, in order to facili-
tate setting achievable goals.
Apart from specialised vocabulary, the choice of vocabulary has gener-
ally received quite moderate attention in terms of needs analysis. Research
(e.g. Dodigovic, 2005; Wei, this volume) has identified a perplexing non-
chalance toward the choice of general vocabulary, be it for the develop-
ment of teaching materials or language classes. This is surprising, since it
is clear from the available and convincing body of research that learning
 1 Introduction to Vocabulary-Based Needs Analysis 3

approximately two thousand of the most frequent words is a prerequisite

for learning other, less frequent words (Nation, 2006; Schmitt, 2000).
Yet, in a sweeping attempt to catch up with the agenda of communicative
language teaching, students are often pushed to read or listen to texts in
which they do not understand enough vocabulary in order to make sense
of the text itself (Dodigovic, 2005). Other times, they are made to mem-
orise a large number of rare and complex words before they can confi-
dently remember the small number of frequent and most useful words
(Dodigovic, 2009). Rather than stretching the student’s minds or boost-
ing their critical thinking skills, this approach is tantamount to an exer-
cise in futility, since, as Nation (2006) points out, such infrequent words
will not be followed up by contextualised encounters, and will hence
inevitably fall prey to attrition. Sadly, the time invested in trying to
achieve the unattainable will be lost where it would have been needed
most, i.e. in learning such words that would enable reading and listening
comprehension.
Any lexically driven needs analysis should therefore seek to establish
how many words the students know, especially of the most frequent vari-
ety, and how well they already know these words (Schmitt, 2000). The
next step would be to analyse the texts intended for teaching for the evi-
dence of containing the words the students need and finally matching
texts with students. Also, clear goals for vocabulary acquisition must be
set, enabling the students to benefit most from learning within the time
at their disposal.
Understanding how leaners approach learning vocabulary is another
step that can and should be taken to improve the outcome of L2 learning
(Schmitt, 2000). A number of vocabulary learning strategies have been
identified in research. In fact, part two of this volume is devoted to choos-
ing or devising an appropriate taxonomy of such strategies and identify-
ing the ones that the students are using. It is also believed that teachers
can and should coach students in the use of vocabulary learning strategies
that could prove more fruitful than the ones used by them
(Thornbury, 2002).
Finally, familiarity with learner lexical errors paired with an under-
standing of the reasons for these errors is another prerequisite for design-
ing the lexical component of the language curriculum. Thus, there is
4 M. Dodigovic and M. P. Agustín-Llach

much room for vocabulary-based needs analysis in any language class or

learning situation. This volume has attempted to provide a blueprint for
this and to model some of the steps that can be taken to improve not just
vocabulary learning but overall L2 performance. The following briefly
describes the contents of the volume, in which we have selected four
salient foci of interest.
First, the theoretical underpinnings of vocabulary needs analysis are
presented. Thus, Milton and Alexiou (Chap. 2) draw attention to the
importance of vocabulary size assessment and how it can be related to the
goals set by the CEFR levels. Identifying what and how many words cor-
respond to the different proficiency levels is crucial for the EFL class-
room, and in this line, Chap. 2 introduces a variety of assessment methods
conducive to the said identification. The notions of productive and recep-
tive vocabulary are the main concern of Chap. 3 by Amin. Examining
both vocabulary sets and their sizes, as well as establishing the difference
between both, becomes central to determine the lexical items that learn-
ers need to know. Furthermore, Amin relates the size of Afghan tertiary
students’ productive and receptive vocabulary sets with the context of
language acquisition and the impact of it on vocabulary development.
Wei’s chapter (Chap. 4) closes this first section by addressing the relation-
ship between lexical knowledge and reading comprehension. The reading
comprehension performance of Chinese learners is evaluated against the
framework of their vocabulary size and breadth. The pedagogical implica-
tions of the relationship are also explored.
The second main focus of interest of the present volume spins around
the importance of learners’ strategic behaviour when learning vocabulary
in the foreign language. Accordingly, in Chap. 5, Dodigovic et al. raise
the question of the connection between vocabulary learning strategies
and effective vocabulary acquisition. By determining which strategies are
used by and useful for advanced language learners in the Armenian con-
text, but also for learners at lower stages of acquisition, teachers can
develop pedagogical plans that adapt the effective vocabulary strategies to
the specific learning needs of the students at the different stages. In the
very same line, Manoukyan, Chap. 6, expands the discussion of which
vocabulary learning strategies are most frequently used by Armenian stu-
dents, with special emphasis on the students’ perceptions of the
 1 Introduction to Vocabulary-Based Needs Analysis 5

usefulness and effectiveness of the strategies they use. Cognitive and

metacognitive self-regulated strategies in an English for Specific Purposes
(ESP) course are the main issue of Bošnjak Terzić and Pavičić Takač in
Chap. 7. The use of diary records to explore the effectiveness of these
strategies in vocabulary acquisition presents an interesting and far-­
reaching methodological novelty in the analysis of learners’ strategic
behaviour.
The examination of learners’ lexical errors and inconsistencies and
what they tell research about the processes of vocabulary acquisition are
the topic of the third section of the present volume. In Chap. 8,
Harutyunyan and Dodigovic devote special attention to the lexical errors
of advanced English learners in Armenia and provide insightful didactic
implications derived from their findings. Following the same argumenta-
tive line, Agustín-Llach, Chap. 9 addresses how the native language and
culture of the learners affects their semantic and conceptual renderings in
the FL. By using a lexical availability task, she identifies examples of L1
conceptual influence in learners’ lexical production and traces that trans-
fer back to the conceptual representations in learners’ minds, and the
impact of their native culture. Learners seem to successfully suppress L1
formal influence, but mostly carry conceptual information in L1-shape.
Finally, the urge to develop needs analysis based procedures and tools
to support vocabulary learning makes up the last focus of interest in sec-
tion four. Canga Alonso, in Chap. 10, reviews research related to vocabu-
lary and cultural knowledge and their scarce presence in English as a
Foreign Language (EFL) curricula despite their crucial importance in
foreign language, especially vocabulary, development. Additionally, he
presents a framework for the teaching of cultural vocabulary at the A1-A2
CEFR levels with the intention of providing teachers with the necessary
tools to enhance cultural vocabulary instruction. Corpus tools as effective
methods in vocabulary needs analysis is the main focus of the last chapter,
Chap. 11 by Jeaco. He presents several of these methods and provides
suggestions on how they can be used to detect vocabulary needs. He,
finally, introduces The Prime Machine, a free and user-friendly English
corpus tool for learners to explore their own vocabulary needs.
This collection intends to offer a snapshot of needs analysis within
vocabulary studies. Our intention is to contribute to the academic
6 M. Dodigovic and M. P. Agustín-Llach

advancement of this discipline and to the improvement of vocabulary

teaching in EFL. This edited volume intends to be a timely review of the
current trends within vocabulary needs analysis by bringing together dif-
ferent perspectives concerning the most important and relevant aspects
that play a role in identifying what and how lexical items need to be
addressed when learning and teaching English as a foreign language.

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Routledge.
Basturkmen, H. (2010). Developing courses in English for specific purposes.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Dodigovic, M. (2005). Vocabulary profiling with electronic corpora: A case
study in computer assisted needs analysis. CALL Journal, 18(5), 443–455.
Dodigovic, M. (2009). English for pre-medical studies: A needs analysis chal-
lenge, 4th Qatar TESOL International Conference: Language and Content/
Content and Language, College of the North Atlantic, Doha, Qatar,
April 10–11.
Hughes, A. (2003). Testing for language teachers. Cambridge language teaching
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Nation, I. S. P. (2006). Language education – Vocabulary. In K. Brown (Ed.),
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 It has been allowed that this bold and admirable challenge of the
whole province—for “discourse” is soon seen to include “writing”—is
not always so well supported. After an interesting introduction
(vindicating the challenge, and noting Kames more especially as one
who, though in a different way, had made it before him), Campbell for
a time, either because he is rather afraid of his own boldness, or to
conciliate received opinions on the matter (or, it has been suggested,
because the book was written at different times, and with perhaps
slightly different ends), proceeds to discuss various matters which
have very little to do with his general subject. Sometimes, as in the
Chapter, before referred to, on “The Nature and Use of the
Scholastic Art of Syllogising,” he wrecks himself in a galley which he
had not the slightest need to enter. The longer discourse on
Evidence which precedes this is, of course, fully justified on the old
conception of Rhetoric, but digressory, or at least excursory, on his
own. The above-mentioned sections on Ridicule, and on the
æsthetic pleasure derivable from painful subjects, are excursions
into the debatable kinds between literature and Ethics, though much
less extravagant than those of Kames, and perhaps, as excursions,
not absolutely to be barred or banned; while chapters vii.-x., which
deal with the “Consideration of Hearers,” &c., &c., are once more
Aristotelian relapses, pardonable if not strictly necessary. But not
quite a third part of the whole treatise is occupied by this First Book
of the three into which it is divided; and not a little of this third is,
strictly or by a little allowance, to the point. The remaining two-thirds
are to that point without exception or digression of any kind, so that
the Aristotelian distribution is exactly reversed.
The titles of the two Books, “The Foundations and Essential
Properties of Elocution,” and “The Discriminating Properties of
Elocution,” must be taken with due regard to Campbell’s use of the
last word.[617] But they require hardly any other proviso or allowance.
He first, with that mixture of boldness and straight-hitting which is his
great merit, attacks the general principles of the use of Language,
and proceeds to lay down nine Canons of Verbal Criticism, which are
in the main so sound and so acute that they are not obsolete to the
present day. There is more that is arbitrary elsewhere, and Campbell
seems sometimes to retrograde over the line which separates
Rhetoric and Composition. But it must be remembered that this line
has never been very exactly drawn, and has, both in Scotland and in
America, if not also in England, been often treated as almost non-
existent up to the present day. In his subsequent distinction of five
rhetorical Qualities of Style—Perspicuity, Vivacity, Elegance,
Animation, and Music—Campbell may be thought to be not wholly
happy. For the three middle qualities are practically one, and it is
even questionable whether Music would not be best included with
them in some general term, designating whatever is added by style
proper to Perspicuity, or the sufficient but unadorned conveyance of
meaning. As, however, is very common, if not universal, with him, his
treatment is in advance of his nomenclature, for the rest of the book
—nearly a full half of it—is in fact devoted to the two heads of
Perspicuity and Vivacity, the latter tacitly subsuming all the three
minor qualities. And there is new and good method in the treatment
of Vivacity, as shown first by the choice of words, secondly by their
number, and thirdly by their arrangement, while a section under the
first head on “words considered as sounds” comes very near to the
truth. That there should be a considerable section on Tropes was to
be expected, and, as Campbell treats it, it is in no way objectionable.
His iconoclasm as to logical Forms becomes much more in place,
and much more effective, in regard to rhetorical Figures.
One, however, of the best features of the work has hardly yet been
noticed; and that is the abundance of examples, and the thorough
way in which they are discussed. To a reader turning the book over
without much care it may seem inferior as a thesaurus to Kames,
because the passages quoted are as a rule embedded in the text,
and not given separately, in the fashion which makes of large parts
of the Elements of Criticism a sort of anthology, a collection of
beauties or deformities, as the case may be. But this is in
accordance with the singularly businesslike character of Campbell’s
work throughout. And if it also seem that he does not launch out
enough in appreciation of books or authors as wholes, let it be
remembered that English criticism was still in a rather rudimentary
condition, and that the state of taste in academic circles was not very
satisfactory. It would not, of course, be impossible to produce from
him examples of those obsessions of the time which we have
noticed in his two compatriots, as we shall notice them in the far
greater Johnson. But he could not well escape these obsessions,
and he suffers from them in a very mild form.
James Harris,[618] author of Hermes (and of the house of
Malmesbury, which was ennobled in the next generation), is perhaps
the chief writer whom England, in the narrower sense, has to set
against Blair, Kames, and Campbell in mid-eighteenth century. But
Harris. he is disappointing. It would not be reasonable to quarrel
with the Hermes itself for not being literary, because it
does not pretend to be anything but grammatical; and the
Philosophical Arrangements, though they do sometimes approach
literature, may plead benefit of title for not doing so oftener. But the
Discourse on Music, Painting, and Poetry, and the Philological
Enquiries—in which Philology is expressly intimated to mean “love of
letters” in the higher sense—hold out some prospects. The
performance is but little. Readers of Boswell will remember that
Johnson, though the author of Hermes was very polite to him, both
personally and with the pen, used, to his henchman’s surprise and
grief, to speak very roughly of Harris, applying to him on one
occasion the famous and damning phrase, “a prig, and a bad prig,”
and elsewhere hinting doubts as to his competency in Greek. That
the reproach of priggishness was deserved (whether with the
aggravation or not) nobody can read half-a-dozen pages of Harris
without allowing,—his would-be complimentary observation on
Fielding[619] would determine by itself. But the principal note of Harris,
as a critic, is not so much priggishness as confused superficiality.
These qualities are less visible in the Dialogue (which is an
extremely short, not contemptible, but also not unimportant,
exercitation in the direction of Æsthetic proper) than in the Enquiries,
which were written late in life, and which, no doubt, owe something
of their extraordinary garrulity to “the irreparable outrage.”
This book begins, with almost the highest possible promise for us,
in a Discussion of the Rise of Criticism, its various species,
The Philosophical, Historical, and Corrective, &c. It goes
Philological on hardly less promisingly, if the mere chapter-
Enquiries. headings are taken, with discourses on Numbers,
Composition, Quantity, Alliteration, &c.; the Drama, its Fable and its
Manners, Diction, and, at the end of the second part, an
impassioned defence of Rules. But the Third, which promises a
discussion of “the taste and literature of the Middle Age,” raises the
expectation almost to agony-point. Here is what we have been
waiting for so long: here is the great gap going to be filled. At last a
critic not merely takes a philosophic-historic view of criticism, but
actually proposes to supplement it with an inquiry into those regions
of literature on which his predecessors have turned an obstinately
blind eye. As is the exaltation of the promise, so is the aggravation of
the disappointment. Harris’s first part, though by no means ill-
planned, is very insufficiently carried out, and the hope of goodness
in the third is cruelly dashed beforehand by the sentence, “At length,
after a long and barbarous period, when the shades of monkery
began to retire,” &c. The writer’s mere enumeration of Renaissance
critics is very haphazard, and his remarks, both on them and their
successors, perfunctory in the extreme. He hardly dilates on
anybody or anything except—following the tradition from Pope and
Swift—on Bentley and his mania for correction and conjecture.
In the second part he gives himself more room, and is better worth
reading, but the sense of disappointment continues. In fact, Harris is
positively irritating. He lays it down, for instance, that “nothing
excellent in a literary way happens merely by chance,” a thesis from
the discussion of which much might come. But he simply goes off
into a loose discussion of the effects and causes of literary pleasure,
with a good many examples in which the excellence of his precept,
“seek the cause,” is more apparent than the success of his own
researches. The rest is extremely discursive, and seldom very
satisfactory, being occupied in great part with such tenth-rate stuff as
Lillo’s Fatal Curiosity. As for Harris’s defence of the Rules, he does
not, in fact, defend them at all; but, as is so common with
controversialists, frames an indictment, which no sensible antagonist
would ever bring, in order to refute it. He says that “he never knew
any genius cramped by rules, and had known great geniuses
miserably err by neglecting them.” A single example of this last
would have been worth the whole treatise. But Harris does not give
it. Finally, “the Taste and Literature of the Middle Age” seem to him to
be satisfactorily discussed by ridiculing the Judgment of God, talking
at some length about Byzantine writers, giving a rather long account
of Greek philosophy in its ancient stages, quoting freely from
travellers to Athens and Constantinople, introducing “the Arabians,”
with anecdotes of divers caliphs, saying something of the
Schoolmen, a little about the Provençal poets, something (to do him
justice) of the rise of accentual prosody,[620] and a very, very little
about Chaucer, Petrarch, Mandeville, Marco Polo, Sir John
Fortescue, and—Sannazar! “And now having done with the Middle
Age,” he concludes—having, that is to say, shown that, except a pot-
pourri of mainly historical anecdote, he knew nothing whatever about
it; or, if this seem harsh, that his knowledge was not of any kind that
could possibly condition his judgment of literature favourably. In fact,
no one shows that curious eighteenth-century confusion of mind,
which we shall notice frequently in other countries, better than
Harris. He is, as we have seen, a fervent devotee of the Rules—he
believes[621] that, before any examples of poetry, there was an
abstract schedule of Epic, Tragedy, and everything else down to
Epigram, which you cannot follow but to your good, and cannot
neglect but to your peril. Yet, on the one hand, he feels the
philosophic impulse, and on the other, the literary and historical
curiosity, before which these rules were bound to vanish.
“Estimate” A few allusions,[622] in contemporaries of abiding
Brown: his fame, have kept half alive the name—though very
History of few, save specialists, are likely to be otherwise than
Poetry.
accidentally acquainted with the work—of John
Brown of Newcastle, author of the once famous Estimate of the
Manners and Principles of the Times,[623] and afterwards, when he
had gained reputation by this, of a Dissertation on the Rise of Poetry
and Music,[624] later still slightly altered, and re-christened History of
the Rise and Progress of Poetry.[625] The Estimate itself is one of
those possibly half-unconscious pieces of quackery which from time
to time put (in a manner which somehow or other tickles the longer
ears among their contemporaries) the old cry that everything is
rotten in the state of Denmark. There is not much in it that is directly
literary; the chief point of the kind is an attack on the Universities: it
may be noted that quacks generally do attack Universities. The
Dissertation-History is a much less claptrap piece, but far more
amusing to read. Brown is one of those rash but frank persons who
attempt creation as well as criticism; and those who will may hear
how

“Peace on Nature’s lap reposes [why not vice versa?]

Pleasure strews her guiltless roses,”

and so forth. The difference of the two forms is not important. In the
second, Brown simply left out Music, so far as he could, as
appealing to a special public only. He believes in Ossian, then quite
new. He thinks it contains “Pictures which no civilised modern could
ever imbibe in their strength, nor consequently could ever throw
out”—an image so excessively Georgian (putting aside the difficulty
of imbibing a picture) that one has to abbreviate comment on it. For
the rest, Brown rejoices and wallows in the naturalistic generalisation
of his century. He begins, of course, with the Savage State, lays it
down that, at religious and other festivals, men danced and sang,
that then organised professional effort supplemented unorganised,
and so poets arose. Then comes about a sort of Established Choir,
whence the various kinds are developed. And we have the Chinese
—the inevitable Chinese—Fow-hi, and Chao-hao, and all their
trumpery. Negligible as an authority, Brown perhaps deserves to rank
as a symptom.
But we must leave minorities, and come to him who is here ὁ
μέγας.
There is no reason to doubt that Johnson’s critical opinions were
formed quite early in life, and by that mixture of natural bent and
influence of environment which, as a rule, forms all such opinions.
Johnson: his There has been a tendency to regard, as the highest
preparation mental attitude, that of considering everything as an
for criticism. open question, of being ready to reverse any
opinion at a moment’s notice. As a matter of fact, we have record of
not many men who have proceeded in this way; and it may be
doubted whether among them is a single person of first-rate genius,
or even talent. Generally speaking, the men whose genius or talent
has a “stalk of carle hemp” in it find, in certain of the great primeval
creeds of the world, political, ecclesiastical, literary, or other,
something which suits their bent. The bent of their time may assist
them in fastening on to this by attraction or repulsion—it really does
not much matter which it is. In either case they will insensibly, from
an early period, choose their line and shape their course accordingly.
They will give a certain independence to it; they will rarely be found
merely “swallowing formulas.” It is the other class which does this,
with leave reserved to get rid of the said formulas by a mental emetic
and swallow another set, which will very likely be subjected to the
same fate. But the hero will be in the main Qualis ab incepto.
Johnson was in most things a Tory by nature, his Toryism being
conditioned, first by that very strong bent towards a sort of
transcendental scepticism which many great Tories have shown;
secondly, by the usual peculiarities of social circumstance and
mental constitution; and lastly, by the state of England in his time—a
state to discuss which were here impertinent, but which, it may be
humbly suggested, will not be quite appreciated by accepting any, or
all, of the more ordinary views of the eighteenth century.
His view of literature was in part determined by these general
influences, in part—perhaps chiefly—by special impinging currents.
His mere birth-time had not very much to do with it—Thomson, Dyer,
Lady Winchelsea, who consciously or unconsciously worked against
it, were older, in the lady’s case much older, than he was; Gray and
Shenstone, who consciously worked against it in different degrees,
were not much younger.[626] The view was determined in his case,
mainly no doubt by that natural bent which is quite inexplicable, but
also by other things explicable enough. Johnson, partly though
probably not wholly in consequence of his near sight, was entirely
insensible to the beauties of nature; he made fun of “prospects”; he
held that “one blade of grass is like another” (which it most certainly
is not, even in itself, let alone its surroundings); he liked human
society in its most artificial form—that provided by towns, clubs,
parties. In the second place, his ear was only less deficient than his
eye. That he did not care for music, in the scientific sense, is not of
much importance; but it is quite clear that, in poetry, only an
extremely regular and almost mathematical beat of verse had any
chance with him. Thirdly, he was widely read in the Latin Classics,
less widely in Greek, still more widely in the artificial revived Latin of
the Renaissance and the seventeenth century.[627] Fourthly, he was,
for a man so much given to reading—for one who ranged from
Macrobius in youth to Parismus and Parismenus in age, and from
Travels in Abyssinia to Prince Titi—not very widely read either in
mediæval Latin or in the earlier divisions of the modern languages;
indeed, of these last he probably knew little or nothing. Fifthly, the
greatest poet in English immediately before his time, and the
greatest poet in English during his youth and early manhood, had
been exponents, the one mainly, the other wholly, of a certain limited
theory of English verse. Sixthly, the critical school in which he had
been brought up was strictly neo-classic. Seventhly, and to conclude,
such rebels to convention as appeared in his time were chiefly men
whom he regarded with unfriendly dislike, or with friendly contempt.
Nor can it be said that any one of the contemporary partisans of “the
Gothick” was likely to convince a sturdy adversary. Walpole was a
spiteful fribble with a thin vein of genius; Gray a sort of Mr Facing-
Both-Ways in literature, who had “classical” mannerisms worse than
any of Johnson’s own, and whose dilettante shyness and scanty
production invited ridicule. Both were Cambridge men (and Johnson
did not love Cambridge men, nor they him), and both were Whigs.
Percy and Warton were certainly not very strong as originals, and
had foibles enough even as scholars. But whether these reasons go
far enough, or do not so go, Johnson’s general critical attitude never
varies in the least.[628] It was, as has been said, probably formed
quite early; it no doubt appeared in those but dimly known
contributions to periodical literature which defrayed so ill the expense
of his still more dimly known first twenty years in London. We have
from him no single treatise, as in the cases of Dante and Longinus,
no pair of treatises, as in the case of Aristotle, to go upon. But in the
four great documents of The Rambler, Rasselas, the Shakespeare
Preface, and the Lives, we see it in the two first rigid, peremptory, in
the Preface, curiously and representatively uncertain, in the last
conditioned by differences which allow it somewhat freer play, and at
some times making a few concessions, but at others more
pugnacious and arbitrary than before.
The critical element in The Rambler is necessarily large; but a
great deal of it is general and out of our way.[629] Directly concerning
The Rambler us are the papers on the aspects (chiefly formal) of
on Milton. Milton’s poetry—especially versification—on which
Addison had not spoken, with some smaller papers on lesser
subjects. The Miltonic examen begins at No. 86. Johnson is as
uncompromising as the great Bysshe himself on the nature of
English prosody. “The heroick measures of the English language
may be properly considered as pure or mixed.” They are pure when
“the accent rests on every second syllable through the whole line.” In
other words, “purity” is refused to anything but the strict iambic
decasyllable. Nay, he goes further; this is not only “purity” and “the
completest harmony possible,” but it ought to be “exactly kept in
distichs” and in the last line of a (verse) paragraph.
Nevertheless, for variety’s sake, the “mixed” measure is allowed;
“though it always injures the harmony of the line considered by
itself,” it makes us appreciate the “harmonious” lines better. And we
soon perceive that even this exceedingly grudging, and in strictness
illogical, licence is limited merely to substitution of other dissyllabic
feet for the pure iamb. In

“Thus at their shady lodge arrived, both stood,

Both turned,”

the rigid Johnson insists on the spondaic character, “the accent is on

two syllables together and both strong”; while he would seem to
regard “And when,” in the line

“And when we seek as now the gift of sleep,”

as a pyrrhic (“both syllables are weak”). A trochee (“deviation or

inversion of accent”) is allowed as a “mixture” in the first place, but
elsewhere is “remarkably inharmonious,” as, for instance, in
Cowley’s beautiful line,

“And the soft wings of peace cover him round.”

The next paper (88) passes, after touching other matters, to

“elision,” by which he means (evidently not even taking tri-syllabic
possibility into consideration) such a case as
 “Wisdom to folly as nourishment to wind.”

This licence, he says, is now disused in English poetry; and adds

some severe remarks on those who would revive or commend it. He
even objects to the redundant ending in heroic poetry.
In the third paper (90) he comes to Pauses; and once more plays
the rigour of the game. The English poet, in connecting one line with
another, is never to make a full pause at less than three syllables
from the beginning or end of a verse; and in all lines pause at the
fourth or sixth syllable is best. He gives a whole paper to Milton’s
accommodation of the sound to the sense, and winds up his Miltonic
exercitations, after a very considerable interval, with a set critique
(139) of Samson Agonistes, partly on its general character as an
Aristotelian tragedy (he decides that it has a beginning and end, but
no middle, poor thing!) and partly on details. These papers show no
animus against Milton. There are even expressions of admiration for
him, which may be called enthusiastic. But they do show that the
critic was not in range with his author. Almost every one of his
axioms and postulates is questionable.
Of the remaining critical papers in the Rambler it is very important
to notice No. 121, “On the Dangers of Imitation, and the Impropriety
On Spenser. of imitating Spenser.” Johnson’s acuteness was not
at fault in distrusting, from his point of view, the
consequences of such things as the Castle of Indolence or even the
Schoolmistress; and he addresses a direct rebuke to “the men of
learning and genius” who have introduced the fashion.[630] In so far
as his condemnation of “echoes” goes he is undoubtedly not wrong,
and he speaks of the idol of Neo-Classicism, Virgil, with an irreverent
parrhesia[631] which, like many other things in him, shows his true
critical power. But on Spenser himself the other idols—the idola
specus rather than fori—blind him. In following his namesake in the
condemnation of Spenser’s language he is, we may think, wrong; yet
this at least is an arguable point. But in regard to the Spenserian
stanza things are different. Johnson calls it “at once difficult and
unpleasing; tiresome to the ear from its uniformity, and to the
attention by its length,” while he subsequently goes off into the usual
error about imitating the Italians. No truce is here possible. That the
Spenserian is not easy may be granted at once, but Johnson was
certainly scholar enough to anticipate the riposte that, not here only,
it is “hard to be good.” As for “unpleasing,” so much the worse for the
ear which is not pleased by the most exquisite harmonic symphony
in the long and glorious list of stanza-combinations. As for monotony,
it is just as monotonous as flowing water. While as for the Italian
parallel, nothing can probably be more to the glory of Spenser than
this; just as nothing can be more different than the pretty, but cloying,
rhyme even of Tasso, nay, sometimes even of Ariosto, and the
endless unlaboured beauty of Spenser’s rhyme-sound. It is no valid
retort that this is simply a difference of taste. If a man, as some men
have done, says that Spenser is pleasing and Dryden and Pope are
not, then the retort is valid. When the position is taken that both
rhythms are pleasing, both really poetical, but poetical in a different
way, the defender of it may laugh at all assailants.
The criticism of the English historians which immediately follows
has an interest chiefly of curiosity, because it was written just at the
opening of the great age of the department with which it deals.
On History Prejudices of different kinds would always have
and Letter- prevented Johnson from doing full justice to
writing. Robertson, to Hume, and, most of all, to Gibbon;
but, as it is, he deals with nobody later than Clarendon, and merely
throws back to Raleigh and Knolles. Very much the same drawback
attends the criticism on Epistolary writing: for here also it was the lot
of Johnson’s own contemporaries, in work mostly not written, and
hardly in a single case published, at the date of the Rambler, to
remove the reproach of England. But the paper on Tragi-Comedy
(156) is much more important.
For here, as in other places, we see that Johnson, but for the
combination of influences above referred to, might have taken high,
if not the highest, degrees in a very different school of criticism. He
On Tragi- puts the great rule Nec quarta loqui into the dustbin,
comedy. with a nonchalance exhibiting some slight shortness
of sight; for the very argument he uses will sweep with this a good
many other rules to which he still adheres. “We violate it,” he says
coolly, “without scruple and without inconvenience.” He is equally
iconoclastic about the Five Acts, about the Unity of Time, while he
blows rather hot and cold about tragi-comedy in the sense of the
mixing of tragic and comic scenes. But the close of the paper is the
most remarkable, for it is in effect the death-knell of the neo-classic
system, sounded by its last really great prophet. “It ought to be the
first endeavour of a writer to distinguish nature from custom, or that
which is established because it is right from that which is right only
because it is established; that he may neither violate essential
principles by a desire of novelty, nor debar himself from the
attainment of beauties within his view by a needless fear of breaking
rules which no literary dictator had authority to enact.”
“Oh! the lands of Milnwood, the bonny lands of Milnwood, that
have been in the name of Morton twa hundred years; they are
barking and fleeing, infield and outfield, haugh and holme!” With this
utterance, this single utterance, all the ruling doctrines of sixteenth,
seventeenth, and eighteenth century criticism receive notice to quit.
[632]

The well-known “Dick Minim” papers in the Idler (60, 61) are
excellent fun, and perhaps Johnson’s chief accomplishment in the
“Dick Minim.” direction of humour. The growth of criticism in Dick,
his gradual proficiency in all the critical
commonplaces of his day (it is to be observed that Johnson, like all
true humourists, does not spare himself, and makes one of Minim’s
secrets de Polichinelle a censure of Spenser’s stanza), his addiction
to Johnson’s pet aversion, “suiting the sound to the sense,” and his
idolatry of Milton, are all capitally done. Indeed, like all good
caricatures, the piece is a standing piece to consult for the fashions
and creeds which it caricatures. But it neither contains nor suggests
any points of critical doctrine that we cannot find elsewhere, and it is
only indirectly serious.[633]
The Dissertation upon Poetry of Imlac in Rasselas (chap. x.) may
be less amusing; but it is of course much more serious. There can
Rasselas. be no reasonable doubt that Imlac gives as much of
Johnson’s self as he chose to put, and could put, in
character: while it is at least possible that his sentiments are
determined in some degree by the menacing appearances of
Romanticism. Imlac finds “with wonder that in almost all countries
the most ancient poets are reputed the best”; that “early writers are
in possession of nature and their successors of art”; that “no man
was ever great by imitation”; that he must observe everything and
observe for himself, but that he must do it on the principle of
examining, “not the individual, but the species.” He is to remark
“general properties and large appearances. He does not number the
streaks of the tulip or describe the different shapes in the verdure of
the forest,” but must “exhibit prominent and striking features,”
neglecting “minuter discriminations.” In the same way his criticism of
life must be abstracted and generalised; he must be “a being
superior to time and place”; must know many languages and
sciences; must by incessant practice of style “familiarise to himself
every delicacy of speech and grace of harmony.”
Surely a high calling and election! yet with some questionable
points in it. If the poet must not count the streaks of the tulip, if he
must merely generalise and sweep; if he must consult the laziness
and dulness of his readers by merely portraying prominent and
striking features, characteristics alike obvious to vigilance and
carelessness—then even Dryden will not do, for he is too recondite
and conceited. Pope alone must bear the bell. Lady Winchelsea’s
horse in twilight, the best part of a century earlier; Tennyson’s
ashbuds in the front of March, the best part of a century later, are
equally “streaks of the tulip,” superfluous if not even bad.
Habington’s picture of the pitiless northern sunshine on the ice-
bound pilot, and Keats’s of the perilous seas through the magic
casements, must be rejected, as too unfamiliar and individual. The
poetic strangeness and height are barred en bloc. Convention,
familiarity, generalisation—these are the keys to the poetical
kingdom of heaven. The tenant of Milnwood has a fresh enfeoffment!
The Shakespeare Preface is a specially interesting document,
because of its illustration, not merely of Johnson’s native critical
vigour, not merely of his imbibed eighteenth-century prejudices, but
of that peculiar position of compromise and reservation which, as we
have said and shall say, is at once the condemnation and the
The salvation of the English critical position at this time.
Shakespeare Of the first there are many instances, though
Preface. perhaps none in the Preface itself quite equal to the
famous note on the character of Polonius, which has been generally
and justly taken as showing what a triumph this failure of an edition
might have been. Yet even here there is not a little which follows in
the wake of Dryden’s great eulogy, and some scattered observations
of the highest acuteness, more particularly two famous sentences
which, though Johnson’s quotation is directed to a minor matter—
Shakespeare’s learning—settle beforehand, with the prophetic
tendency of genius, the whole monstrous absurdity of the Bacon-
Shakespeare theory.[634] The rest, however, is, if not exactly a zigzag
of contradiction, at least the contrasted utterance of two distinct
voices. Shakespeare has this and that merit of nature, of passion;
but “his set speeches are commonly cold and weak.” “What he does
best he soon ceases to do.” Johnson, here also, has no superstitious
reverence for the Unities, and even speaks slightly of dramatic rules;
nay, he suggests “the recall of the principles of the drama to a new
examination,” the very examination which Lessing was to give it. But
he apologises for the period when “The Death of Arthur was the
favourite volume,” and hints a doubt whether much of our and his
own praise of Shakespeare is not “given by custom and veneration.”
“He has corrupted language by every mode of depravation,” yet
Johnson echoes Dryden “when he describes anything you more than
see it, you feel it too.” A singular triumph of “depraved language.” In
short, throughout the piece it is now Johnson himself who is
speaking, now some one with a certain bundle of principles or
prejudices which Johnson chooses to adopt for the time.
It was with these opinions on the formal and substantial nature of
poetry and of criticism that Johnson, late in life, sat down to the Lives
of the Poets,[635] one of the most fortunate books in English literature.
The Lives of In very few cases have task and artist been so
the Poets. happily associated. For almost all his authors, he
had biographical knowledge such as no other living man had, and
the access to which has long been closed. If, now and then, his
criticism was not in touch with his subjects, this was rare: and the
fact gave a certain value even to the assertions that result—for we,
do what we will, cannot see Milton quite as Johnson saw him, and so
his view is valuable as a corrective. By far the greater part of these
subjects belonged to one school and system of English poetry, a
school and system with which the critic was at once thoroughly
familiar and thoroughly in sympathy. And, lastly, the form of the work,
with its subdivision into a large number of practically independent
and not individually burdensome sections, was well suited to coax a
man who suffered from constitutional indolence, and who for many
years had been relieved from that pressure of necessity which had
conquered his indolence occasionally, and only occasionally, earlier.
No other man, it is true, has had quite such a chance: but he must
indeed have a sublime confidence, both in the strength of his
principles and in the competence of his talents, who thinks that, if he
had the chance, he could do the task better than Johnson did his.
The work, of course, is by no means equal throughout: and it could
Their general not be expected to be. Some was merely old work,
merits. dating from a much less mature period of the
writer’s genius, and made to serve again. Some was on subjects so
trivial that good nature, or simple indolence, or, if any one pleases,
an artistic reluctance to break butterflies on so huge a wheel, made
the criticisms almost as insignificant as the criticised. Here and there
extra-literary prejudice—political-ecclesiastical, as in the case of
Milton; partly moral, partly religious, and, it is to be feared, a little
personal, as in that of Swift—distorted the presentation. And it is
quite possible that a similar distortion, due to the same causes or
others, was in the case of Gray intensified by a half-unconscious
conviction that Gray’s aims and spirit, if not his actual poetical
accomplishments, were fatal to the school of poetry to which the
critic himself held.
But make allowance for all this, and with how great a thing do the
Lives still provide us! In that combination of biography and criticism,
which is so natural that it is wonderful it should be so late,[636] they
are all but the originals, and are still almost the standard. They are
full of anecdote, agreeably and crisply told, yet they never descend
to mere gossip: their criticism of life is almost always just and sound,
grave without being precise, animated by the same melancholy as
that of the Vanity of Human Wishes, but in milder mood and with
touches of brightness. Their criticism of literature is all the more
valuable for being the criticism of their time. When we read
Johnson’s remarks on Milton’s minor poems it is foolish to rave, and
it is ignoble to sneer. The wise will rejoice in the opportunity to
understand. So when Johnson bestows what seems to us
extraordinary and unintelligible praise on John Pomfret’s Choice,[637]
he is really praising a moral tract couched in verse not unpleasing in
itself, and specially pleasing to his ear. When he speaks less
favourably of Grongar Hill, he is speaking of a piece of nature-poetry,
not arranged on his principle of neglecting the streak of the tulip, and
availing itself of those Miltonic licences of prosody which he
disapproved. But we shall never find that, when the poetry is of the
stamp which he recognises, he makes any mistake about its relative
excellence: and we shall find that, in not a few cases, he is able to
recognise excellence which belongs to classes and schools not
exactly such as he approves. And, lastly, it has to be added that for
diffused brilliancy of critical expression, subject to the allowances
and conditions just given, the Lives are hardly to be excelled in any
language. It is not safe to neglect one of them, though no doubt
there are some six or seven which, for this reason or that, take
precedence of the rest.
The “Cowley” has especial interest, because it is Johnson’s only
considerable attempt at that very important part of criticism, the
historical summary of the characteristics of a poetical period or
The Cowley. school. And, though far from faultless, it is so
important and so interesting in its kind that it ranks
with his greatest Essays. Only that singular impatience of literary
history, as such, which characterised the late Mr Matthew Arnold,
and which not infrequently marred his own critical work, can have
prevented him from including, in his Johnsonian points de repère,
the Essay which launched, and endeavoured to make watertight, the
famous definition of the “Metaphysical” School—of the school
represented earlier by Donne, and later by Cowley himself.
The phrase itself[638] has been both too readily adopted and too
indiscriminately attacked. Taken with the ordinary meaning of
“metaphysical,” it may indeed seem partly meaningless and partly
misleading. Taken as Johnson meant it, it has a meaning defensible
at least from the point of view of the framer, and very important in
critical history. Johnson (it is too often forgotten) was a scholar; and
he used “metaphysical” in its proper sense—of that which “comes
after” the physical or natural. Now, it was, as we have seen, the
whole principle of his school of criticism—their whole critical
contention—that they were “following nature.” The main objection to
the poetry of what Dryden calls the “last Age”—what we call, loosely
but conveniently, “Elizabethan” poetry—was that its ideas, and still
more its expressions, went beyond and behind nature, substituted
afterthoughts and unreal refinements for fact. It would be delightful to
the present writer to defend the Metaphysicals here—but it would not
be to the question.
Political and religious prejudice accounts, as has been said, for
The Milton. much in the Milton. But it will not fully account for the
facts. The at first sight astonishing, and already
often referred to, criticisms on the minor poems show a perfectly
honest and genuine dislike to the form as well as to the matter, to the
manner as well as to the man. If Johnson calls Lycidas “harsh,” it is
because he simply does not hear its music; he can even call the
songs in Comus “not very musical in their numbers.” When of the, no
doubt unequal but often splendid, sonnets he can write, “of the best
it can only be said that they are not bad,” he gives us the real value
of his criticism immediately afterwards by laying it down that “the
fabric of a sonnet, however adapted to the Italian language, has
never succeeded in ours.” And when he has earlier stated that “all
that short compositions can commonly attain is sweetness and
elegance,” we see in this the whole thing. Milton is condemned
under statute (though the statute is hopelessly unconstitutional and
unjust) on certain counts; on others his judge, though capable and
perfectly honest, does not know the part of the code which justifies
the accused. Johnson is listening for couplet-music or stanzas with
regular recurrence of rhyme, for lines constituted entirely on a
dissyllabic, or entirely on a trisyllabic, basis. He does not find these
things: and he has no organ to judge what he does find.
With the lives of Dryden and Pope we are clear of all difficulties,
and the critic is in his element. The poets whom he is criticising
occupy the same platform as he does; they have in fact been
The Dryden themselves the architects of that platform. There is
and Pope. no fear of the initial incompatibilities which, when
aggravated by accident, lead to the apparent enormities of the Milton
Essay, and which, even when not so aggravated, condition the
usefulness, though they may positively increase the interest, of the
Cowley. But there is more than this. In no instance, perhaps, was
Johnson so well in case to apply his biographical and critical
treatment as in regard to Dryden and Pope. With the latter he had
himself been contemporary; and when he first came to London the
traditions even of the former were still fresh, while there were many
still living (Southerne the chief of them) who had known glorious
John well. Further, Johnson’s peculiar habits of living, his delight in
conversation and society, his excellent memory, and his propensity
to the study of human nature, as well as of letters, furnished him
abundantly with opportunities. Yet, again, his sympathy with both, on
general literary sides, was not unhappily mixed and tempered by a
slight, but not uncharitable or Puritanic, disapproval of their moral
characters, by regret at Dryden’s desertion of the Anglican Church,
and at the half-Romanist half-freethinking attitude of Pope to religion.
The result of all this is a pair of the best critical Essays in the
English language. Individual expressions will of course renew for us
the sense of difference in the point of view. We shall not agree that
Dryden “found English poetry brick and left it marble,” and we shall
be only too apt to take up the challenge, “If Pope be not a poet,
where is poetry to be found?” even if we think the implied denial, to
which the challenge was a reply, an absurdity. And we may find
special interest as well as special difference in the condemnation
even of these masters for attempting Pindarics, because Pindarics
“want the essential constituent of metrical compositions, the stated
recurrence of settled numbers,” seeing in it a fresh instance of that
Procrustean tyranny of suiting the form to the bed, not the bed to the
form, which distinguishes all neo-classic criticism. But these points
occur rarely. The criticism, as a whole, is not merely perfectly just on
its own scheme, but requires very little allowance on others; nor, in
the difficult and dangerous art of comparative censorship, will any
example be found much surpassing Johnson’s parallel of the two
poets.
In the Milton and the Cowley we find Johnson dealing with schools
of poetry which he regards as out of date and imperfect; in the
Dryden and the Pope, with subjects which are not to him subjects of
any general controversy, but which he can afford to treat almost
The Collins entirely on their merits. In the Collins and the Gray
and Gray. we find a new relation between poet and critic—the
relation of decided, though not yet wholly declared, innovation on the
part of the poets, and of conscious, though not yet quite wide-eyed
and irreconcilable, hostility on the part of the critic. The expression of
this is further differentiated by the fact that Johnson regarded Collins
with the affection of a personal friend, and the generous sympathy of
one who, with all his roughness, had a mind as nearly touched by
mortal sorrows as that of any sentimentalist; while it is pretty clear,
though we have no positive evidence for it, that he reciprocated the
personal and political dislike which Gray certainly felt for him.
The result was, in the case of Collins, a criticism rather inadequate
than unjust, and not seldom acute in its indication of faults, if
somewhat blind to merits; in that of Gray, one which cannot be quite
so favourably spoken of, though the censure which has been heaped
upon it—notably by Lord Macaulay and Mr Arnold—seems to me
very far to surpass its own injustice. Johnson’s general summing up
—that Gray’s “mind had a large grasp; his curiosity[639] was unlimited,
and his judgment cultivated; he was likely to love much where he
loved at all, but fastidious and hard to please”—is acute, just, and far
from ungenerous. That on the Elegy—“The four stanzas beginning,
‘Yet even these bones,’ are to me original; I have never seen the
notions in any other place. Yet he that reads them here persuades
himself that he has always felt them. Had Gray written often thus, it
had been vain to blame and useless to praise him”—is a magnificent
and monumental compliment, said as simply as “Good morning.” He
is absolutely right when he says that in all Gray’s Odes “there is a
kind of cumbrous splendour that we wish away,” for there never was
such an abuser of “poetic diction” (to be a poet) as Gray was. Yet
undoubtedly the Essay is not satisfactory; it has not merely, as the
Collins has, blindness, but, what the Collins has not, that obvious
denigration, that determination to pick holes, which always vitiates a
critique, no matter what learning and genius be bestowed on it. And
the probable reasons of this are interesting. It has been said that
they were possibly personal in part. We know that Gray spoke rudely
of Johnson; and there were many reasons why Johnson might rather
despise Gray, though he certainly should not have called him “dull.”
 On the whole, however, I have little doubt—and it is this which
gives the essay its real interest for me—that one main reason of
Johnson’s antipathy to Gray’s poetry was the same as that for which
we like it. He suspected, if he did not fully perceive, the romantic
snake in Gray’s classically waving grass. And he had on his own
grounds good reason for suspecting it. Gray might use Greek and
Latin tags almost extravagantly. But he sedulously eschewed the
couplet; and, while preferring lyric, he chose lyrical forms which,
though Johnson was too much of a scholar to dare to call them
irregular, violated his own theories of the prompt and orderly
recurrence of rhyme, and the duty of maintaining a length of line as
even as possible. The sense of nature, the love of the despised
“prospect,” was everywhere; even the forbidden “streak of the tulip”
might be detected. And, lastly, Gray had too obvious leanings to
classes of subject and literature which lay outside of the consecrated
range—early English and French, Welsh, Norse, and the like. It is no
real evidence of critical incapacity, but of something quite the
reverse, that Johnson should have disliked Gray. He spied the great
Romantic beard under the Pindaric and Horatian muffler—and he did
not like it.
On the whole, it may be safely said that, however widely a man
may differ from Johnson’s critical theory, he will, provided that he
possesses some real tincture of the critical spirit himself, think more
and more highly of the Lives of the Poets the more he reads them,
and the more he compares them with the greater classics of critical
The critical literature. As a book, they have not missed their due
greatness of meed of praise; as a critical book, one may think
the Lives and that they have. The peculiarity of their position as a
of Johnson.
body of direct critical appraisement of the poetical
work of England for a long period should escape no one. But the
discussion of them, which possesses, and is long likely to possess,
prerogative authority as coming from one who was both himself a
master of the craft and a master of English, admirable and delightful
as it is and always will be, is not, critically speaking, quite
satisfactory. Mr Arnold speaks of the Six Lives which he selected in
very high terms: but he rather pooh-poohs the others, and, even in
regard to the chosen Six, he puts upon himself—and in his amiable,