(May 1738) was Samuel Johnson’s first major publication and is one of the eighteenth century’s foremost verse satires. Johnson had moved to the capital from his native Lichfield a year earlier and was working for Edward Cave’s
Gentleman’s Magazine. Progress on his tragedy,
Irene, was slow, so Johnson turned to an “imitation” of the Roman poet Juvenal’s Third Satire, a virulent attack on second-century Rome. The “imitation” – a genre popularised by Oldham, Dryden, and Pope – required the poet to translate a classical source, but also to update its topical references. As Johnson later wrote: “This mode of imitation, in which the ancients are familiarised, by adapting their sentiments to modern topicks, … is a kind of middle composition between translation…
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Citation: Seager, Nicholas. "London". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 September 2015 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3905, accessed 26 November 2024.]
