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

In Johnson’s poem, the city of London symbolizes a loss of morality, religion, virtue, and order. Despite being the capital of England, London is a foreign entity: “the needy villain’s gen’ral home, / The common shore of Paris and of Rome” (Lines 94-95). Johnson intended the word “shore” as a pun on “sewer,” implying that London was home to figurative filth and sewage of these corrupt lands. The reference to Paris and Rome is significant—Johnson worries that London could become “a French metropolis” (Line 98), an insult that combines two threats: foreignness and an uncontrollably large size. A French metropolis is inherently inorganic and alien. Johnson’s poem teems with specific vices associated with London, as well as general dangers posed by any city. Because the city is a place where old connections are lost and new money reigns, it is a space of dislocation and disorder. All institutions except commerce dissolve in a city, which poisons religion, marriage, justice, and patriotism. To the moralist Johnson, such a prospect is against Christian order, a fatal disruption of values embodied by a talkative “female atheist” (Line 18). Johnson believes in traditional ideals for women—virtue and humility—so a freethinking woman, who participates in public life and abandons religion, illustrates the destructive potential of the modern city. Johnson is echoing a popular joke here, as female preachers were often the subject of mockery during his time. Johnson’s dislike of the city also must be placed in context of his recent migration to London. A country-bred gentleman whose family had fallen on hard times, Johnson moved to London in 1737 at the age of 29 in search of a livelihood. In the unfamiliar city, he found a hard life, astronomical rents, and deadening anonymity. The concerns about poverty, high rents, and unfair taxes that recur throughout the poem are thus at least partially autobiographical.

If the city drains and consumes people, the countryside is where they flourish. Thales, the chief character of the satire, plans to go to Wales so he can be his natural, virtuous self, much like uncorrupted Adam in the prelapsarian Garden of Eden. Just as London is associated with foreignness and corruption, the countryside embodies true Englishness and purity. Both the speaker and Thales constantly long for the country, described as a “peaceful vale” (Line 46) full of “Cambrian shade” (Line 261), suggesting the cool, comforting shadows of trees. In this idyllic place, “honesty and sense are no disgrace” (Line 44). The country’s beauty is perfect because it promotes morality, bringing out the best in human beings.

Critics questioned the poem’s neat binary between city and country, calling it overly simplistic. Even Johnson himself, in a later phase of his career, remarked that the portrayals of the country in “London” were too idealized. In his Life of Savage (1744), Johnson jokes that his poet friend had “planned out a Scheme of Life for the Country, of which he had no Knowledge but from Pastorals and Songs.” This comic note is an oblique swipe at the portrayal of the countryside in “London.”

The poem is better understood as a proto-modern work exploring the anxieties produced by a rapidly changing world. In this reading, the countryside is not a literal but a figurative space, safe from the challenges of industrialization and the fall of religious and monarchical systems. The city is the reality, while the country a fantasy for that which has already been lost.