Samuel's Johnson poem, "To Sir John Lade, On His Coming of
Age" can be more easily understood when broken down stanza by
stanza.
In
poetry, [a] stanza refers to a grouping of lines, set off by a space, that usually has a
set pattern of meter and
rhyme.
The meter is a pattern
of stressed and unstressed syllables; this particular poem is written in a trochaic
meter, where stress is placed on the first syllable of each
pair.
Johnson's work is an example of lyric
poetry.
...a short poem with one speaker (not
necessarily the poet) who expresses thought and
feeling.
The first
stanza is addressed to Sir John Lade, and has been written to "celebrate" his
twenty-first birthday which has followed a long and "lingering" year of anticipation on
Lade's part.
The second stanza relates that Lade is no
longer a minor (under twenty-one); he is now legally eligible to mortgage and sell his
land, may live as wildly as he wants, and no longer must be thrifty (frugal) with his
money, which he probably had to do before turning
twenty-one.
In the third stanza, Johnson notes that Lade
may call upon the company of any number of different women (anyone who chooses to live
as carefree as he), to spend without thought the inheritance (seemingly a sizable one)
that he has finally received, left to him by his grandfather. The line "...show the
spirit of an heir" may simply refer to the way an heir might casually spend that which
he did not have to work hard to earn and/or
protect.
The fourth stanza is about things in life that
"prey" on "vice and folly" (immoral behavior and foolishness), which are joyful to see
money flying around. And while the "gamester" (gambler) is having a wonderful time, the
moneylender sits quietly by, waiting for the foolish gambler to lose all his
money.
Johnson, in stanza five, observes that money was
made to "be spread around," and encourages Lade to do so. He should
spend money on horse racing (jockey) and prostitutes ("pander" meaning "pimp"), allowing
them to take their share of his wealth.
Stanza six explains
that when a blade ("jaunty young man") goes out "partying," with a full wallet and high
spirits, land and houses are nothing more than piles of dirt—of little importance
whether wet or dry. (The inference is that a wiser man would see the value of houses and
land, as investments, worth a great deal more a piece of
ground.)
Samuel Johnson's seventh and final stanza notes
that the young heir may have a guardian or mother who will try to point out the danger
of wasting his money, but that Lade should scorn their advice. Johnson ends his poem by
stating that the young man will drown or hang in the end. This is a dire note:
essentially, once the young man has spent all his money and sold all his holdings
(including land and houses) in order to pay his gambling debts, he will probably commit
suicide by hanging or drowning. (This was not an uncommon occurrence for members of the
aristocracy when confronted by the inevitability of living not only beneath the means to
which they were accustomed, but most likely in
poverty.)
Samuel Johnson is writing with a sense of irony
here. He does not support Lade's lifestyle, though I doubt this was
written as a warning—most likely Lade would have ignored it. However, perhaps Johnson
hoped to catch the attention of another young man in a similar situation; certainly
Lade's behavior would not have been unusual at that time.
No comments:
Post a Comment