Apollo and the Muses Inflicting Penance on Dr Pomposo

This is the second of two prints by Gillray featuring Dr. Samuel Johnson (1709-1784), the eminent poet, playwright, novelist, essayist, critic, and lexicographer. The first was Old Wisdom, Blinking at the Stars (March 10, 1782), which, with its ambiguous combination of praise and blame, may have been comissioned by George Kearsley, the publisher of The Beauties of Johnson as a sly bit of advertising.

Apollo and the Muses Inflicting Penance on Dr Pomposo

Apollo and the Muses Inflicting Penance on Dr Pomposo [July 29, 1783]
© Yale University Library

The distinctly odd and more apparently critical, Apollo and the Muses may have been prompted by any number of publications relating to Johnson in 1782-83,including The Deformities of Dr. Samuel Johnson by James Thomson Callendar in 1782, the new four volume edition of The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets in February of 1783, the 7th edition of Johnson's A Dictionary of the English Language in May of 1783, or by An Enquiry into some Passages in Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets by Robert Potter later that month. The point is that his works were frequently reprinted and Johnson remained a prominent and controversial figure, even in 1783 as his health declined and after his productive life was over.

The print casts Johnson as Doctor Pomposo, the name given to him in 1761 by Charles Churchill (1732–1764) in his verse satire The Ghost. By that time Johnson was already well known for his own distinguished poems such as London (1738), and The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), the innovative biography, The Life of Mr. Richard Savage (1744), the classical tragedy, Irene (1749), and approximately three hundred essays on a wide range of moral, literary, and political topics for The Rambler (1750-1752) and The Idler (1758-1760). According to Boswell, Johnson had "talked very contemptuously of Churchill's poetry observing that 'it had a temporary currency only from his audacity of abuse.'" So Churchill audaciously retaliated with the following verse portrait of Johnson as Doctor Pomposo.

Pomposo (insolent and loud),
Vain idol of a scribbling crowd,
Whose very name inspires an awe,
Whose ev'ry word is sense and law,
For what his greatness hath decreed,
Like laws of Persia and of Mede,
Sacred thro' all the realm of wit,
Must never of repeal admit;
Who, cursing flatt'ry, is the tool
Of ev'ry fawning, flatt'ring fool;
Who wit with jealous eye surveys,
And sickens at another's praise;
Who, proudly seiz'd of learning's throne,
Now damns all learning but his own;
Who scorns those common wares to trade in,
Reas'ning, convincing, and persuading,
But makes each sentence current pass
With "Puppy," "Coxcomb," "Scoundrel," "Ass";
For 'tis with him a certain rule,
The folly's prov'd when he calls fool;

But the work of Johnson most relevant to this 1783 print is The Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets. First published in 1779 and revised and expanded several times by 1783, it included brief biographies and critical assessments of over 50 poets, most of whom lived in the 18th century. Not suprisingly, some people complained that their favorite poet was not included in the list or, perhaps, even worse, included but disparaged. Even Johnson's friend, John Scott of Amwell was moved by objections to Johnson's assessments to write his own Critical Essays on Several English Poets to provide a corrective view.

So here in Apollo and the Muses, Pomposo/Johnson is shown wearing a Dunce's cap, stripped to the waist, with a tear in his eye, publicaly submitting to punishment from Apollo and the Muses at the foot of Mount Parnassus, their mythological home. Quoting from Psalm 51:3 where a penitent David takes responsibility for his actions and asks to be cleansed from his sin, Pomposo/Johnson acknowledges "my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me." Those "transgressions" are listed on the placard he carries over his shoulder:

"For defaming that Genius I could never emulate by criticism without Judgment;—and endeavouring to cast the Beauties of British Poetry into the hideous shade of oblivion."

The dunce cap on his head lists tbe poets he has puportedly defamed, including 'Milton,' 'Otway,' 'Waller,' 'Gray,' 'Shenstone,' 'Lyttelton,' 'Gay,' 'Denham,' 'Collins, &c. &c. &c.' But, in fact, as Walter Jackson Bate, argues in his biography of Johnson, the quality and memorability of Johnson's prose probably rescued from obscurity many of the 50 plus poets who were already then fading from view. And now, in the 21st century, probably more than half of them are only known because Johnson wrote about them.

Following Johnson and holding him by a rope is the Greek god Apollo associated with both the sun (hence the halo behind his head) and the poetic arts. He is accompanied by the Muses, who were representative of specific arts such as Comedy (Thalia), Tragedy (Melpomene), and Euterpe (Music). All of them are carrying either birch rods or whips to punish Pomposo.

The sheer oddity of this image of the great Doctor Johnson being humiliated by classical goddesses wielding rods and whips reminds one that the print was published by William Holland, the same publisher who later combined with Gillray to produce the decidedly kinky Lady Termagant Flaybum Going to Give her Step Son a Taste of her Desert after Dinner. . . (1786). Holland shared a business address (66 Drury Lane) with George Peacock, who specialized in erotic and flagellatory volumes including including Voltaire's La Pucelle d'Orleans, Crebillon's Le Sopha: Conte Moral, the best-selling Fanny Hill, and the now more obscure Exhibition of Female Flagellants and Madame Birchini's Dance.. All of these are alluded to in another Gillray/Holland production—A Sale of English Beauties in the East-Indies also published in 1786.

So Apollo and the Muses Inflicting Penance on Dr Pomposo may have been targeted at two audiences who frequented Holland's shop in Drury Lane: one who wanted to see a corrective to the mostly adulatory views of the learned Dr. Johnson and the other who simply enjoyed scenes of humiliation and correction.

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