1758 in Poetry - Oliver Goldsmith's "poetical Scale"

Oliver Goldsmith's "poetical Scale"

In the January 1758 edition of the Literary Magazine, an anonymous writer widely believed to be English poet and author Oliver Goldsmith presented a table comparing 29 English poets, rating them on a scale in each of four aspects of literary greatness. A score of 20 was literary perfection. Some of his estimations:

	Genius	Judgement	Learning	Versification
Geoffrey Chaucer	16	12	10	14
Edmund Spenser	18	12	14	18
William Shakespeare	19	14	14	19
Ben Jonson	16	18	17	8
Abraham Cowley	17	17	15	17
Edmund Waller	12	12	10	16
John Milton	18	16	17	18
John Dryden	18	16	17	18
Joseph Addison	16	18	17	17
Matthew Prior	16	16	15	17
Alexander Pope	18	18	15	19

Some other poets Goldsmith placed on the scale: Michael Drayton, Lee, Aaron Hill, Nicholas Rowe, Garth, Southern and Hughes. John Donne was not listed, because, wrote Goldsmith, "Dr Donne was a man of wit, but he seems to have been at pains not to pass for a poet." (See also Mark Akenside's "Balance of Poets" of 1746.)

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