‘Prior Is Never Low, Nor Very Often Sublime’

‘Prior is never low, nor very often sublime’: Prior, Johnson, and the idea of hard work versus inspiration. Johnson’s Life of Prior is one of the most controversial of Johnson’s Lives. William Cowper was almost as distressed by it as by Johnson’s Life of Milton . Although Johnson concedes Prior’s significant talent and admirable versatility, he finds much of Prior’s work unconvincing and unsympathetic. Johnson asserts that Prior’s versification is assured but his learning is not worn lightly enough. For much of the eighteenth century, Prior is cited as an exponent of the easy writing that disavows conspicuous literary pretension. Johnson is suspicious both of the taste for easy writing and of Prior’s claim to represent it. Johnson’s own essay has a distinctive antithetic rhythm to it, constantly giving with one hand and taking from the other. This chapter treats the question of whether Johnson is ‘fair’ to Prior as secondary to a discussion of more fundamental and structuring desiderata of critical approach. As so often with Johnson, any organisation of poetic principles needs to be flexible and accommodating enough to admit the sincerity of instinctive response. Prior presents problems for Johnson and these problems involve the very nature of literary pleasure.