London: A Poem in Imitation of the Third Satire of Juvenal

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1738

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical context: Walpole, Whigs, and Tories

In the 17th century, the English political landscape became split between the parliamentarians and the royalists. This was a period of great social and political upheaval: King Charles I was executed after refusing to share power with the elected members of Parliament, and the monarchy was dispelled and then restored. After William II of Holland took over as King of England in 1688, a new constitution was drafted, making the crown accountable to Parliament. As the 18th century dawned, parliamentarian Whigs were ascendant. At the time Johnson wrote “London,” Robert Walpole, the leader of the Whigs, became the de facto Prime Minister of England. Not everyone was happy with constitutional monarchy. The royalist Tories, sidelined as Whig power grew, began accusing the Whigs of promoting foreign interests over those of England, since they had helped a Dutch king ascend the English throne. Additionally, the Whigs were seen as partisan opportunists, promoting sycophants and in league with new money and the urban elite, buoyed by the first stirrings of the Industrial Revolution. While increased parliamentary involvement did theoretically mean more participatory rule, in practice the system lent itself to corruption. The Tories, including the deeply conservative Johnson and consisting primarily of landowning old-money nobility, touted their connection to the countryside and cast themselves as patriots supporting British values.

This tension between parliamentarian Whigs and royalist Tories informs “London.” The poem’s speaker’s anxiety about the corrupting influences of France, Italy, and Spain are a response to the Whig association with foreign powers; his laments about the city’s excesses are juxtaposed with his the grief at losing an old way of life in the countryside. Johnson, a dyed-in-the-wool Tory, despairs at the present and the city, and turns to an imagined past golden age for hope.

Literary context: Neoclassicism, the Augustan Age, and Juvenal’s Third Satire

The first half of the 18th century in England is called the Augustan Age, after an era of Latin literary history also called Augustan. The classical Augustan Age—named for Roman Emperor Caesar Augustus—spanned the period between 43 and 18 BC and is recognized as the apex of literature in Latin. 18th-century English writers like Alexander Pope closely modelled themselves after this classical tradition, eager to bring about a second Augustan Age. The English Augustan Age falls under the broader literary and aesthetic movement called Neoclassicism, which flourished between 1660 and 1798. Neoclassicism was inspired by the order, elegance, and beauty of ancient Greece and Roman literature and art (as interpreted by 18th-century scholars, who were often wrong about the details of Greco-Roman art), but sought to interpret that in a new, contemporary idiom.

In the early 18th century, aspiring poets were encouraged to closely follow Latin classics to refine their poetic voice. Satire was considered an exalted and imitable literary form because of its social function and public role. Acutely aware of the time of momentous change in which they lived, writers of the Neoclassical period felt that literature could not exist in a vacuum, but needed to present an ideal and engage with sociopolitical realities. “London” follows these precepts: It is an imitation that follows the structure of a classical work, but refashions its content to contemporary concerns. “London” is an updated version of ancient Roman poet’s Juvenal’s Third Satire, which describes a man named Umbricius leaving Rome for Cumae to escape the city’s blight. Johnson replaces Umbricius with Thales and Cumae with Wales. He also updates Juvenal’s largely social satire to include political commentary as well. Johnson includes references to Juvenal in his poem, including the direct quotation of the epigraph and translated lines such as “Let such raise palaces, and manors buy” (Line 57). “London” is now regarded as Johnson’s first major published work, but Johnson had mixed feelings about the poem, which he criticized and revised after publication, aware of what he considered its simplistic city versus country binary. Later, Johnson had second thoughts about the literary form of classical imitation. In his Life of Pope (1781), Johnson calls the form imperfect because “between Roman images and English manners there will be an irreconcilable dissimilitude, and the work will be […] neither original nor translated, neither ancient no modern.” Johnson’s precise and sharp estimation of his own work shows his critical skills, which made “London” the lively satire it is.