The Life of Samuel Johnson

The Life of Johnson reflects an important period in British literature, commonly known as the Augustan age. The Augustan age is variously described as running through the first half of the 18th century and sometimes as lasting until the 1780s. Writers in this period, like Johnson, were shaped by their classical education. Steeped in the Greco-Roman literary classics and learned in the original languages, they sought to imitate them in English prose and verse. For this reason, this period is commonly described as neoclassical; the term “Augustan” originally referred to a period in Roman literature during the reign of the emperor Augustus Caesar. British writers of the 18th century saw themselves as emulating this period of Roman literature, using many of its forms and styles of expression as adapted into English. Alexander Pope was the major poet of this period, and Jonathan Swift and Samuel Johnson represented its aesthetics in the prose essay. 

For Augustan writers, originality was less important that the sense of participating in and emulating a great literary tradition. For example, Johnson’s first published poems are direct imitations of the satires of Juvenal, and he also writes original poetry in Latin. Among the ancient authors most revered by the Augustans were Virgil, Ovid, and Horace. Like the ancient authors, British Augustans sought to engage with the great philosophical and political ideas of their day in an urbane and often satirical tone (poetryfoundation.org). In his poem London, Johnson uses a Roman satirical style to comment on the current situation in London, thus applying classical tradition to contemporary concerns.

Augustan writers valued reason, clarity, and moderation and believed that literature should reflect the decorum of polite society. Johnson reflects some of these values in his personal philosophy (see Themes). Also typical of Augustan thought is Johnson’s and Boswell’s preference for the bustle of London over country living; neoclassicism was predominantly urban in character. Johnson could be seen as representing the end of the Augustan age, since after his death there was a reaction to neoclassical aesthetics in the form of Romanticism.