SOURCE: "'The Most Fatal of All Faults': Samuel Johnson on Prior's Solomon and the Need for Variety," in Papers on Language & Literature, Vol. 33, No. 4, Fall, 1997, pp. 422-37.

In the following essay, Davis examines the negative aspects of Samuel Johnson 's The Life of Prior, in particular focusing on Johnson's assessment that much of Prior's work is tedious. Although the piece focuses on Johnson, it provides insightful analyses of his views on Prior's works.

As literary critics we are always tempted to blur the categories of instruction and pleasure, to conclude that a work of literature is aesthetically excellent simply because we find it ideologically excellent. Perhaps no literary critic has ever managed to keep these two categories completely separate: our aesthetic judg-ments are always partially informed by our ideological beliefs. But the influence of ideological beliefs on aesthetic judgment is a matter of degree. Some critics are virtually...