Johnson on Novelty and Originality

Johnson felt surprised to find Edward Young, in Conjectures on Original Composition, "receive as novelties what he thought very common maxims."''1 He was taking it for granted that most readers want to be pleased quickly2 and naturally favor those works which present a new or unusual aspect. But he also recognized that only a thin line separates pleasantly familiar accounts from hackneyed ones and concluded that good writing is fresh; that is, it challenges our willingness to believe without itself degenerating into something unbelievable. The first requirement of a writer, if he is to have a chance to display other virtues, is to capture and hold interest. Johnson praises Dryden's Aeneid because it allures, then keeps thoughts in "pleasing captivity" (1:454). But Prior's 2,500-line Solomon, though considerably shorter, drags in comparison. The story lacks developed characters and action. Its conclusion is never in doubt and infects the poem with tediousness, "the most fatal of all faults" (2:206), fatal especially when it occurs in long imaginative works. We may read to the end of a boring lyric or sonnet, but only because it is so brief. Shorter works should excite, sharpen, and intensify perception or reflection. Johnson summarizes his dislike of Gray's Prospect of Eton College with the terse verdict that it "suggests nothing to Gray which every beholder does not equally think and feel" (3:434). The key word here is "equally," for Johnson does not object so much to the poem's commonly felt nostalgia and sense of lost youth as he does to the mundane quality of Gray's expression. We cannot ask of poets that they give us nothing but new thoughts, morals, or ideas; for, even assuming they could, such totally unfamiliar brilliance would put them out of touch with nearly all readers. But, on the other hand, it seems natural to look at poetry-at writing in generalfor new images and stories, fresh and magnetic language, or an unprecedented arrangement of parts, any one of which can restore lively force to "unoriginal" conceptions and "ancient" wisdom. It is a bonus if the poet also communicates genuinely new thought or observations. Writers must forever be escaping the conventions they have created. This is the essence of Rambler 154, where Johnson says, "Whatever hopes for the veneration of mankind must have invention in the design or the execution; either the effect itself must be new or the means by which it is produced . . . That which hopes to resist the blast of malignity, and stand firm against the attacks of time, must contain in itself some original principle of growth" (5:59).