Samuel Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes imitates, as its subtitle states, Juvenal’s tenth satire. The 368 lines of iambic pentameter in rhymed couplets do not claim to provide an exact translation but rather to apply the poem to eighteenth century England. While Johnson therefore feels free to modernize the allusions, he follows his model closely. The poem opens with the proposition that people ask for the wrong things and points out the folly of the first common request, riches. An interlude follows during which the poet invokes Democritus, known as the “laughing philosopher” because of his amusement at human folly. Here Johnson repeats the poem’s central idea, the absurdity of people’s prayers.

The poem then resumes its catalog of vain desires. Many seek political power, but no one can remain supreme for long (lines 73-90). As proof of this general proposition, Johnson, after attacking parliamentary corruption (lines 91-98), offers the example of Thomas Cardinal Wolsey, the great favorite of Henry VIII. Wolsey enjoyed preeminence in church and state but fell from power and died, abandoned, in a monastery (lines 99-120). Johnson then offers several other, shorter examples of powerful men who have lost their positions, even their lives, in the vain pursuit of political success (lines 129-134).

Wisdom, though one of the four pagan virtues, also yields no joy (lines 135-173). The beginning student confronts many obstacles and distractions: doubts, praise, difficulty, novelty, sloth, beauty, disease, melancholy. Nor does learning guarantee happiness. On the contrary, the rewards awaiting the scholar are “Toil, envy, want, the garret [later changed to “patron”], and the jail.” Again Johnson offers concrete examples to illustrate his point: Thomas Lydiat, an Oxford scholar who died in poverty; Galileo, imprisoned and forced to recant; William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, executed in 1645.

Greeks, Romans, and Britons have sought military glory; it, too, proves hollow. Johnson’s aversion to war informs the opening passage of this section (lines 185-190). The chief emblem of the futility of “the warrior’s pride” (line 191) is Charles XII of Sweden, who conquered Denmark in 1700 and Poland in 1704, and sought to place the Swedish flag on the walls of Moscow. At Pultowa (in 1709), Peter the Great, aided by the Russian winter, defeated Charles, who died nine years later by an unknown hand in his attempt to seize Norway. This section concludes with shorter treatments of Xerxes and Charles Albert, Elector of Bavaria, whose ends were equally inglorious.

Like Juvenal, Johnson concludes his list of vain requests with long life (lines 255-318) and beauty (lines 319-342). Those seeking the former discover “That life protracted is protracted woe” (line 258). Even the few who enjoy health in age lose friends and relatives to the grave and see the familiar world disappear, so that death provides welcome release. Anne Vane and Catherine Sedley, mistresses to royalty, demonstrate that beauty betrays its possessors.

Is nothing worth having, then? Here Johnson parts company with Juvenal, offering a Christian response to this question and urging his audience to wish for those qualities that can bring happiness: faith, hope, and love. Armed with these, the mind can rest content in a tragic world.

In this philosophical poem, Johnson often relies on that “grandeur of generality” that he said he missed in the poetry of Abraham Cowley. Even in his portraits, where he might detail particulars (as Juvenal does), he prefers to let the reader imagine the specifics. He does, however, employ a number of image patterns—of battles, disease, animals, the flux of time, and fire—to develop his argument. Often, the metaphors are implied; when he writes, “Time hovers...