7th Earl of Barrymore

The two poems today are To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age, by Samuel Johnson, and When I Was One-and-Twenty, by A.E. Housman.The two poems presented talk about two young men who are 21 years old. They both talk about money but in two profoundly different ways. The first poem, To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age, talks about a young man who has just turned 21 and inherited his grandfather’s fortune. We know this from lines 11 and 12 “Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,/Show the spirit of

The age of 21 holds great significance to a person's life. It is the start of adulthood and the gateway to new freedoms. Within the poems To Sir John Lade, on His Coming of Age by Samuel Johnson, and When I Was One-and- Twenty by A.E Housman, we see both authors discuss the qualities and importance of being 21, but they come from different perspectives with Housman’s poem coming from the point of view of someone who has already surpassed being 21 and is now 22, whereas Johnson’s poem is written for