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

while they compel assent. Hence the best writing is that which most
successfully resolves the paradox of combining the sharpest surprise
with the widest recognition. Such an 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