On a Feb.11, 2011 LRB article, by C.Burrow, about a new edition
of Johnson's lives... Extract: "The first life in the
collection, that of Abraham Cowley, includes Johnson's classic excursus on
'a race of writers that may be termed the metaphysical poets', which describes a
tradition and then relentlessly anatomises its faults: '...nature and art are
ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning
instructs..." Johnson's affection for 'nature' and for direct expression
meant that he hated poems that were encrusted with allusions to pagan deities or
rehearsed second-hand pastoral conventions..."
JM:
In "Ada" several poets who were adept to "second-hand pastoral
conventions" and "metaphysical tastes" were satirized, but they were not those
Johnson had itn mind*. However, I only found one rather vague mention to a
certain Captain Cowley, and it doesn't seem to indicate
this Abraham Cowley at all: "In his bedroom he
found a somewhat belated invitation to the Captain's table for
dinner. He...remembered Captain Cowley as a bore and an ignoramus."
In "Pale Fire" Shade mentions that Sybil translated Marvel and
Donne into French. In his commentary (to line 678), Kinbote is severely and
minuciously critical of her achivements. If, as C. Burrow points out,
"Johnson saw in Swift's mental decline a parallel to his own battles with
'vile melancholy'.[...].Never extenuating but never carping at faults, Johnson
describes the slippage of a mind into catastrophe...in such a way that you could
imagine it happening to anyone, including the author."
Shade's reference to Swift could be
considered sympathetically close to Johnson's: "And minds that died before arriving there:/ Poor old man Swift,
poor —, poor Baudelaire" (a variant, revealed by Kinbote on his note to
line 231:"how ludicrous", to which he adds, rather surprisingly: "was there something else — some obscure intuition, some prophetic
scruple that prevented him from spelling out the name of an eminent man who
happened to be an intimate friend of his?")
On his commentary to line 230, Kinbote shows that he doesn't partake
of Johnson's moral view of human fortitute fighting off self-indulgence. He
projected his trust in God's ways: "the scientific and
the supernatural, the miracle of the muscle and the miracle of the mind, are
both inexplicable as are all the ways of Our Lord."
In "TOOL" (at least once) there's a direct reference to the English
nature poets and .. to the.contemporary descriptions of intercourse ("because newborn and thus generalized ....in the sense of primitive
organisms of art as opposed to the personal achievements of great English poets
dealing with an evening in the country, a bit of sky in a river, the nostalgia
of remote sounds - things utterly beyond the reach of Homer or
Horace."
................................................................................
* wiki on S. Johnson's coinage: "This does not necessarily imply that
he intended metaphysical to be used in its true sense, in that he was probably
referring to a witticism of John Dryden, who said of John Donne: "He affects
the metaphysics, not only in his satires, but in his amorous verses, where
nature only should reign; and perplexes the minds of the fair sex with nice
speculations of philosophy, when he should engage their hearts, and entertain
them with the softnesses of love. In this . . . Mr. Cowley has copied him to a
fault."