The pieces reproduced in this little volume are now beginning to bid for
notice from their third century of readers. At the time they were written,
although Johnson had already done enough miscellaneous literary work to
fill several substantial volumes, his name, far from identifying an "Age",
was virtually unknown to the general public. _The Vanity of Human Wishes_
was the first of his writings to bear his name on its face. There were
some who knew him to be the author of the vigorous satire, _London_, and
of the still more remarkable biographical study, _An Account of the Life
of Mr. Richard Savage_; and a few interested persons were aware that he
was engaged in compiling an English Dictionary, and intended to edit
Shakespeare. He was also, at the moment, attracting brief but not
over-favorable attention as the author of one of the season's new crop of
tragedies at Drury Lane. But _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ and _The
Rambler_ were a potent force in establishing Johnson's claim to a
permanent place in English letters. _The Vanity_ appeared early in
January, 1749; _The Rambler_ ran from March 20, 1749/50 to March 14, 1752.
With the exception of five numbers and two quoted letters, the periodical
was written entirely by Johnson.

As moral essays, the Ramblers deeply stirred some readers and bored
others. Young Boswell, not unduly saturnine in temperament, was profoundly
impressed by them and determined on their account to seek out the author.
Taine, a century later, discovered that he already knew by heart all they
had to teach and warned his readers away from them. Generally speaking,
they were valued as they deserved by the eighteenth century and
undervalued by the nineteenth. The first half of the twentieth has shown a
marked impulse to restore them, as a series, to a place of honor second
only to the work of Addison and Steele in the same form. Raleigh, in 1907,
paid discriminating tribute to their humanity. If read, he observed,
against a knowledge of their author's life, "the pages of _The Rambler_