The Dangers of Politics
Throughout his volumes, Johnson continually addresses the politics of the poets. They were men deeply invested in the current events of their day, to which they continually lent the popularity of their poetic platform. Because many of them belonged to turbulent political climates, their political leanings often landed them in trouble. For Cowley, for example, his royalist sympathies both served and penalized him at various points. The same occurred in Milton's life. These men chose a stance, embedded the politics into their writings, and paid the price when the public swayed from the influence of powerful leaders. In Cowley's case, this resulted in his ending his life in exile from England after the Civil War. At some points even the poet's very life was threatened because of his political sensibilities.
The Value of Education
In part due to the eras about which he's writing and it seems in part because of his own preoccupation, Johnson writes extensively about the poets' educations. He places great personal emphasis upon their classical educations and upon the impetus which they received in school. Because men like Milton and Dryden received such privileged educations at boarding schools like Trinity College they were well-prepared to entertain the idea of writing, which was an elite activity. Only those trained in Latin and other classical languages were allowed to be published because the influence of the greater public was considered a significant act, of which a person needed to be worthy. In large part, the education of these poets was the reason they were published, rather than the content of their poems, although laudable.
English as the Language of the People
This particular theme becomes increasingly apparent in later volumes of Johnson's work as poets begin to prefer English to Latin. For centuries, Latin was the language of the educated. In order to reach their target audience of the privileged, many poets were content with this status quo, but along came Milton and his generation. They desired to reach the common people rather than the rich, in order to persuade the populace to take their government and religion more seriously. Milton was greatly influential in bringing English into the realm of academy as an acceptable mode of communication because it was born out of the mouths of the people and thus the most ready way to communicate with them. His Areopagitica, an essay upon censorship and free speech, revolves largely in defense of this topic.
