London (Samuel Johnson poem)
[1] The poem in 263 lines imitates Juvenal's Third Satire, expressed by the character of Thales as he decides to leave London for Wales.
[6] According to Walter Jackson Bate, his work for the magazine and other publishers "is almost unparalleled in range and variety", and "so numerous, so varied and scattered" that "Johnson himself could not make a complete list".
[11] The work was based on Juvenal's Third Satire which describes Umbricius leaving Rome to live in Cumae in order to escape from the vices and dangers of the capital city.
[15] The poem begins: Though grief and fondness in my breast rebel, When injur'd Thales bids the town farewell, Yet still my calmer thoughts his choice commend, (I praise the hermit, but regret the friend) Resolv'd at length, from vice and London far, To breathe in distant fields a purer air, And, fix'd on Cambria's[16] solitary shore, Give to St. David[17] one true Briton[18] more.
[14] The poem is forced to cut short, and the narrator concludes: Much could I add, but see the boat at hand, The tide retiring calls me from the land: Farewell!—When youth, and health, and fortune spent Thou fly'st for refuge to the Wilds of Kent; And tir'd like me with follies and with crimes, In angry numbers warn'st succeeding times; Then shall thy friend, nor thou refuse his aid, Still foe to vice, forsake his Cambrian shade; In virtue's cause once more exert his rage, Thy satire point, and animate thy page.
[20] Not until the end of the poem does the narrator directly address the government when he says: Propose your schemes, ye senatorian band, Whose ways and means support the sinking land: Lest ropes be wanting in the tempting spring, To rig another convoy for the king.
[23] Part of the attack included, as Brean Hammond puts it, "a nostalgic glorification of English history that went hand-in-hand with the representation of the present as in the grip of forms of corruption never previously encountered".
[24] This "nostalgic glorification" includes multiple references to Queen Elizabeth and her defeat of the Spanish invaders while simultaneously claiming that Walpole is seeking to allow Spain to conquer England's trade investments.
[22] Johnson was not to receive recognition as a major literary figure until a few years later when he began to work on his A Dictionary of the English Language.
[30] Later, London would be rated as his second greatest poem, as The Vanity of Human Wishes would replace it in the eyes of Walter Scott and T. S.
[14] The later critic Howard Weinbrot agreed with Scott's and Eliot's assessment, and says "London is well worth reading, but The Vanity of Human Wishes is one of the great poems in the English language.
