The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) | Page 3

ideal is so difficult of attainment that, inevitably, many who subscribed to it succeeded only in unleavened platitude and others rejected it for the easier goal of novelty.
In this most difficult class The Vanity of Human Wishes has won a respectable place. It is freighted with a double cargo, the wisdom of two great civilizations, pagan and Christian. Although based upon Juvenal's tenth Satire, it is so free a paraphrase as to be an original poem. The English reader who sets it against Dryden's closer version will sense immediately its greater weight. It is informed with Johnson's own sombre and most deeply rooted emotional responses to the meaning of experience. These, although emanating from a devout practising Christian and certainly not inconsistent with Christianity, neither reflect the specific articles of Christian doctrine nor are lightened by the happiness of Christian faith: they are strongly infused with classical resignation.
The poem is difficult as well as weighty. At times its expression is so condensed that the meaning must be wrestled for. Statements so packed as, for example,
Fate wings with ev'ry wish th' afflictive dart,?Each gift of nature, and each grace of art,
do not yield their full intention to the running reader. One line, indeed,--the eighth from the end (361)--has perhaps never been satisfactorily explained by any commentator. (The eighteenth paragraph of Johnson's first sermon might go far to clarify it.) But such difficulties are worth the effort they demand, because there is always a rational and unesoteric solution to be gained.
The work as a whole has form, is shapely, even dramatic; but it is discontinuous and episodic in its conduct, and is most memorable in its separate parts. No one can forget the magnificent "set pieces" of Wolsey and Charles XII; but hardly less noteworthy are the two parallel invocations interspersed, the one addressed to the young scholar, the other to young beauties "of rosy lips and radiant eyes",--superb admonitions both, each containing such felicities of grave, compacted statement as will hardly be surpassed. The assuaging, marmoreal majesty of the concluding lines of the poem are a final demonstration of the virtue of this formal dignity in poetry. If it did not appear invidious, one would like to quote by way of contrast some lines oddly parallel, but on a pitch deliberately subdued to a less rhetorical level, from what is indubitably one of the very greatest poems written in our own century, Mr. Eliot's Four Quartets:
I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope?For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:?So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
From The Vanity of Human Wishes:
Still raise for good the supplicating voice,?But leave to heav'n the measure and the choice,?Safe in his pow'r, whose eyes discern afar?The secret ambush of a specious pray'r.?Implore his aid, in his decisions rest,?Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best....?Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind,?Obedient passions, and a will resign'd;?For love, which scarce collective man can fill;?For patience sov'reign o'er transmuted ill;?For faith, that panting for a happier seat,?Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat:?These goods for man the laws of heav'n ordain,?These goods he grants, who grants the pow'r to gain;?With these celestial wisdom calms the mind,?And makes the happiness she does not find.
The Vanity of Human Wishes is reproduced from a copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; the Rambler papers from copies in possession of Professor E.N. Hooker. The lines from T.S. Eliot's _Four Quartets_ are quoted with the permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company.
_Bertrand H. Bronson?University of California?Berkeley_
THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES.
THE?Tenth Satire of Juvenal,?IMITATED?By SAMUEL JOHNSON.
LONDON:
Printed for R. DODSLEY at Tully's Head in Pall-Mall,?and Sold by M. COOPER in Pater-noster Row.
M.DCC.XLIX.
THE?TENTH SATIRE?OF?JUVENAL.
Let[a] Observation with extensive View,?Survey Mankind, from China_ to _Peru;?Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife,?And watch the busy Scenes of crouded Life;?Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate,?O'erspread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate,?Where wav'ring Man, betray'd by venturous Pride,?To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;?As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,?Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.?How rarely Reason guides the stubborn Choice,?Rules the bold Hand, or prompts the suppliant Voice,?How Nations sink, by darling Schemes oppress'd,?When Vengeance listens to the Fool's Request.?Fate wings with ev'ry Wish th' afflictive Dart,?Each Gift of Nature, and each Grace of Art,?With fatal Heat impetuous Courage glows,?With fatal Sweetness Elocution flows,?Impeachment stops the Speaker's pow'rful Breath,?And restless Fire precipitates on Death.?[Footnote a: Ver. 1-11.]
[b]But scarce observ'd the Knowing and the Bold,?Fall in the general Massacre of Gold;?Wide-wasting Pest! that rages