'A Curious Examiner of the Human Mind'

On June, 25, 1763, Boswell and Dr. Johnson dined at the Mitre Tavern on Fleet Street. The friends had met for the first time just a month earlier at Thomas Davies’ bookshop on Russell Street. Johnson starts the conversation with a dismissal of Thomas Gray (1716-71). In the Life, Boswell reports Johnson saying: 

“‘Sir, I do not think Gray a first-rate poet. He has not a bold imagination, nor much command of words. The obscurity in which he has involved himself will not persuade us that he is sublime. His Elegy in a Church-yard has a happy selection of images, but I don't like what are called his great things.’”

 

Almost twenty years later in his “Life of Gray,” Johnson again expresses disappointment in most of Gray’s poetry, making a partial exception of the “Elegy”:

 

“In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours. The Church-yard abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.”

 

Some works of literature we love and respect without qualification. Our appreciation is natural and unforced. That’s how I feel, for instance, about Tristram Shandy and the poems of Edgar Bowers. Other works engender not dismissal but qualified admiration and enjoyment. That’s how I would characterize my understanding of Gray’s “Elegy.” The creakiness of some of the language gets in the way and the poem includes so many well-known phrases that it can read like Bartlett’s Quotations: ““The paths of glory lead but to the grave,” “Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,” et al. (Which can also be said of Johnson, not to mention Shakespeare.) All of which substantiates Johnson’s point about the “common reader.”

 

Boswell, age twenty-two, expresses mild disagreement with Johnson, who was fifty-three: “Here let it be observed, that although his opinion of Gray’s poetry was widely different from mine, and I believe from that of most men of taste, by whom it is with justice highly admired, there is certainly much absurdity in the clamour which has been raised, as if he had been culpably injurious to the merit of that bard, and had been actuated by envy. “

 

Call it civility, mutual respect or simple good manners. We all know people who cannot be disagreed with, who judge an alternative opinion as a personal assault or betrayal. The conversation between the friends turns theological and Boswell reports: “Being at all times a curious examiner of the human mind, and pleased with an undisguised display of what had passed in it, he called to me with warmth, ‘Give me your hand; I have taken a liking to you.’”