The Vanity of Human Wishes: The Tenth Satire of Juvenal Imitated is a poem by the English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 author Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

. Written in 1749 (see 1749 in poetry

1749 in poetry

Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-United Kingdom:* John Brown, On Liberty* William Collins:** Ode Occasion'd by the Death of Mr...

), it was completed while Johnson was busy writing A Dictionary of the English Language

A Dictionary of the English Language

Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language....

 and it was the first published work to include Johnson's name on the title page.

As the subtitle suggests, it is an imitation of Satire X by the Latin poet Juvenal

Juvenal

The Satires are a collection of satirical poems by the Latin author Juvenal written in the late 1st and early 2nd centuries AD.Juvenal is credited with sixteen known poems divided among five books; all are in the Roman genre of satire, which, at its most basic in the time of the author, comprised a...

. Unlike Juvenal, Johnson attempts to sympathize with his poetic subjects. Also, the poem focuses on human futility and humanity's quest after greatness like Juvenal but concludes that Christian values are important to living properly. It was Johnson's second imitation of Juvenal (the first being his 1738 poem London

London (1738 poem)

London is a poem by Samuel Johnson, produced shortly after he moved to London. Written in 1738, it was his first major published work. The poem in 263 lines imitates Juvenal's Third Satire, expressed by the character of Thales as he decides to leave London for Wales...

). Unlike London, The Vanity of Human Wishes emphasizes philosophy over politics. The poem was not a financial success, but later critics, including Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

 and T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

, considered it to be Johnson's greatest poem.

Background

In 1738 Johnson composed London, his first imitation of Juvenal's poetry, because imitations were popularized by those like Pope

Alexander Pope

Alexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...

 during the 18th century. When Johnson replaced Edward Cave

Edward Cave

Edward Cave was an English printer, editor and publisher. In The Gentleman's Magazine he created the first general-interest "magazine" in the modern sense....

 with Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley

Robert Dodsley was an English bookseller and miscellaneous writer.-Life:He was born near Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, where his father was master of the free school....

 as his publisher, he agreed with Dodsley that he would need to change the focus of his poetry. Johnson's London is concerned primarily with political issues, especially those surrounding the Walpole administration, but The Vanity of Human Wishes focuses on overarching philosophical concepts.

In a conversation with George Steevens, Johnson recounted that he wrote the first seventy lines "in the course of one morning, in that small house behind the church". Johnson claimed that "The whole number was composed before I committed a single couplet to writing". In order to accomplish this feat, Johnson relied on a "nearly oral form of composition" which was only possible "because of his extraordinary memory". Johnson told Boswell that when he was writing poetry, he often "from laziness" only wrote down the first half of each line. This remark is borne out by the manuscript of The Vanity of Human Wishes, in which the first half of each line is written in a different ink to the second half; "evidently Johnson knew that the rime words would keep the second halves in mind." Although Johnson was busy after 1746 working on his Dictionary, he found time to further work on The Vanity of Human Wishes and complete his play, Irene

Irene (play)

Irene is a Neoclassical tragedy written between 1726 and 1749 by Samuel Johnson. It has the distinction of being the work Johnson considered his greatest failure. Since his death, the critical consensus has been that he was right to think so....

.

The first edition was published on 9 January 1749. It was the first publication by Johnson to feature his name on the title page. It was not a financial success and only earned Johnson fifteen guineas. A revised version was published in the 1755 edition of Dodsley's anthology A collection of Poems by Several Hands. A third version was published posthumously in the 1787 edition of his Works, evidently working from a copy of the 1749 edition. However, no independent version of the poem was published during Johnson's life beyond the initial publication.

Poem

The Vanity of Human Wishes is a poem of 368 lines, written in closed heroic couplet

Heroic couplet

A heroic couplet is a traditional form for English poetry, commonly used for epic and narrative poetry; it refers to poems constructed from a sequence of rhyming pairs of iambic pentameter lines. The rhyme is always masculine. Use of the heroic couplet was first pioneered by Geoffrey Chaucer in...

s. Johnson loosely adapts Juvenal's original satire in order to demonstrate "the complete inability of the world and of worldly life to offer genuine or permanent satisfaction."

The opening lines announce the universal scope of the poem, as well as its central theme that "the antidote to vain human wishes is non-vain spiritual wishes":

Let 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 vent'rous Pride,
To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide;
As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude,
Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good.
(Lines 1-10)

Later, Johnson describes the life of a scholar:

Should Beauty blunt on fops her fatal dart,
Nor claim the triumph of a letter'd heart;
Should no Disease thy torpid veins invade,
Nor Melancholy's phantoms haunt thy Shade;
Yet hope not Life from Grief or Danger free,
Nor think the doom of Man revrs'd for thee:
Deign on the passing world to turn thine eyes,
And pause awhile from Letters, to be wise;
There mark what ills the Scholar's life assail,
Toil, envy, Want, the Patron and the Jayl
(Lines 151-160)

Sources

Johnson draws on personal experience as well as a variety of historical sources in order to illustrate "the helpless vulnerability of the individual before the social context" and the "inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray". Both themes are explored in one of the most famous passages in the poem, Johnson's outline of the career of Charles XII of Sweden

Charles XII of Sweden

Charles XII also Carl of Sweden, , Latinized to Carolus Rex, Turkish: Demirbaş Şarl, also known as Charles the Habitué was the King of the Swedish Empire from 1697 to 1718...

. As Howard D. Weinbrot notes, "The passage skillfully includes many of Johnson's familiar themes - repulsion with slaughter that aggrandizes one man and kills and impoverishes thousands, understanding of the human need to glorify heroes, and subtle contrast with the classical parent-poem and its inadequate moral vision." Johnson depicts Charles as a "Soul of Fire", the "Unconquer'd Lord of Pleasure and of Pain", who refuses to accept that his pursuit of military conquest may end in disaster:

'Think Nothing gain'd, he cries, till nought remain,
On Moscows Walls till Gothic Standards fly,
And all be Mine beneath the Polar Sky.'
(Lines 202-204)

In a famous passage, Johnson reduces the king's glorious military career to a cautionary example in a poem:

His Fall was destin'd to a barren Strand,
A petty Fortress, and a dubious Hand;
He left the Name, at which the World grew pale,
To point a Moral, or adorn a Tale.
(Lines 219-222)

In a passage dealing with the life of a writer, Johnson drew on his own personal experience. In the original manuscript of the poem, lines 159-160 read:

There mark what ill the Scholar's life assail
Toil Envy Want an the Garret and the Jayl [sic]

The word "Garret" was retained in the first published edition of the poem. However, after the failure in 1755 of Lord Chesterfield

Philip Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield PC KG was a British statesman and man of letters.A Whig, Lord Stanhope, as he was known until his father's death in 1726, was born in London. After being educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, he went on the Grand Tour of the continent...

 to provide financial support for Johnson's Dictionary

A Dictionary of the English Language

Published on 15 April 1755 and written by Samuel Johnson, A Dictionary of the English Language, sometimes published as Johnson's Dictionary, is among the most influential dictionaries in the history of the English language....

, Johnson included a mordant definition of "patron" in the Dictionary ( "Patron: Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery") and revised line 160 to reflect his disillusionment:

There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail,
Toil, Envy, Want, the Patron, and the Jail.

Imitation

Howard D. Weinbrot notes that The Vanity of Human Wishes "follows the outline of Juvenal's tenth satire, embraces some of what Johnson thought of as its 'sublimity,' but also uses it as a touchstone rather than an argument on authority." In particular, Johnson and Juvenal differ on their treatment of their topics: both of them discuss conquering generals (Charles and Hannibal respectively), but Johnson's poem invokes pity for Charles, whereas Juvenal mocks Hannibal's death.

Using Juvenal as a model did cause some problems, especially when Johnson emphasized Christianity as "the only true and lasting source of hope". Juvenal's poem contains none of the faith in Christian redemption

Salvation

Within religion salvation is the phenomenon of being saved from the undesirable condition of bondage or suffering experienced by the psyche or soul that has arisen as a result of unskillful or immoral actions generically referred to as sins. Salvation may also be called "deliverance" or...

 that informed Johnson's personal philosophy. In order not to violate his prototype, Johnson had to accommodate his views to the Roman model and focus on the human world, approaching religion "by a negative path" and ignoring the "positive motives of faith, such as the love of Christ".

Critical response

Although Walter Scott

Walter Scott

Sir Walter Scott, 1st Baronet was a Scottish historical novelist, playwright, and poet, popular throughout much of the world during his time....

 and T. S. Eliot

T. S. Eliot

Thomas Stearns "T. S." Eliot OM was a playwright, literary critic, and arguably the most important English-language poet of the 20th century. Although he was born an American he moved to the United Kingdom in 1914 and was naturalised as a British subject in 1927 at age 39.The poem that made his...

 enjoyed Johnson's earlier poem London, they both considered The Vanity of Human Wishes to be Johnson's greatest poem. Later critics followed the same trend: Howard D. Weinbrot says that "London is well worth reading, but The Vanity of Human Wishes is one of the great poems in the English language." Likewise, Robert Folkenflik says, "[London] is not Johnson's greatest poem, only because The Vanity of Human Wishes is better". Robert Demaria, Jr. declared the work as "Johnson's greatest poem". Samuel Beckett

Samuel Beckett

Samuel Barclay Beckett was an Irish avant-garde novelist, playwright, theatre director, and poet. He wrote both in English and French. His work offers a bleak, tragicomic outlook on human nature, often coupled with black comedy and gallows humour.Beckett is widely regarded as among the most...

was a devoted admirer of Johnson and at one point filled three notebooks with material for a play about him, entitled Human Wishes after Johnson's poem.