Poetry Codex

Restoration & Augustan

Samuel Johnson

1709–1784

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) — lexicographer, essayist, critic, and the dominant literary figure of mid-18th-century England — also wrote poetry of severe, weighty moral force.

London and The Vanity of Human Wishes, both close imitations of Juvenal’s satires, and his plain elegy for his friend Robert Levet, show the same unflinching realism that marks his prose.

Poems (49)

  1. London: A Poem, in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal
  2. The Vanity of Human Wishes: In Imitation of the Tenth Satire of Juvenal
  3. On the Death of Mr. Robert Levet
  4. Prologue Spoken by Mr Garrick at the Opening of the Theatre-Royal, Drury-Lane, 1747
  5. Prologue Spoken by Mr Garrick before the Masque of Comus
  6. Prologue to Goldsmith's Comedy The Good-Natured Man
  7. Prologue to the Comedy A Word to the Wise
  8. Spring
  9. Midsummer
  10. Autumn
  11. Epigram on George II. and Colley Cibber, Esq.
  12. Stella in Mourning
  13. To Stella
  14. Verses Written at the Bequest of a Gentleman to Whom a Lady Had Given a Sprig of Myrtle
  15. To Lady Firebrace, at Bury Assizes
  16. To Lyce, an Elderly Lady
  17. Epitaph on Claude Phillips, an Itinerant Musician
  18. Epitaph on Sir Thomas Hanmer, Bart.
  19. On the Death of Stephen Grey, F.R.S., the Electrician
  20. To Miss Hickman, Playing on the Spinnet
  21. Paraphrase of Proverbs, Chap. IV. Verses 6-11
  22. Horace, Lib. IV. Ode VII. Translated
  23. On Seeing a Bust of Mrs Montague
  24. Anacreon, Ode Ninth
  25. Lines Written in Ridicule of Certain Poems Published in 1777
  26. Parody of a Translation from the Medea of Euripides
  27. Burlesque on the Modern Versification of Ancient Legendary Tales: An Impromptu
  28. Epitaph for Mr Hogarth
  29. Translation of the Two First Stanzas of the Song 'Rio Verde, Rio Verde'
  30. To Mrs Thrale, on Her Completing Her Thirty-Fifth Year
  31. Impromptu Translation of an Air in the Clemenza di Tito of Metastasio
  32. Lines Written under a Print Representing Persons Skaiting
  33. Translation of a Speech of Aquileio in the Adriano of Metastasio
  34. Impromptu on Hearing Miss Thrale Consulting with a Friend about a Gown and Hat
  35. Translation of Virgil: Pastoral I
  36. Translation of Horace: Book I, Ode XXII
  37. Translation of Horace: Book II, Ode IX
  38. Translation of Part of the Dialogue between Hector and Andromache
  39. To Miss *** on Her Playing upon a Harpsichord in a Room Hung with Flower-Pieces of Her Own Painting
  40. Evening: An Ode
  41. To the Same
  42. To a Friend
  43. To a Young Lady on Her Birthday
  44. Epilogue Intended to Have Been Spoken by a Lady Who Was to Personate the Ghost of Hermione
  45. The Young Author
  46. Friendship: An Ode
  47. Imitation of the Style of ***
  48. One and Twenty
  49. On Some Lines of Lopez De Vega

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