years which he passed in the drudgery of penning definitions and
making quotations for transcription, he sought for relaxation in
literary labour of a more agreeable kind. In 1749 he published
the Vanity of Human Wishes, an excellent imitation of the Tenth
Satire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to say whether the
palm belongs to the ancient or to the modern poet. The couplets
in which the fall of Wolsey is described, though lofty and
sonorous, are feeble when compared with the wonderful lines which
bring before us all Rome in tumult on the day of the fall of
Sejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, the white bull stalking
towards the Capitol, the statues rolling down from their
pedestals, the flatterers of the disgraced minister running to
see him dragged with a hook through the streets, and to have a
kick at his carcase before it is hurled into the Tiber. It must
be owned too that in the concluding passage the Christian
moralist has not made the most of his advantages, and has fallen
decidedly short of the sublimity of his Pagan model. On the
other hand, Juvenal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles;
and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of the miseries
of a literary life must be allowed to be superior to Juvenal's
lamentation over the fate of Demosthenes and Cicero.

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes Johnson received
only fifteen guineas.

A few days after the publication of this poem, his tragedy, begun
many years before, was brought on the stage. His pupil, David
Garrick, had, in 1741, made his appearance on a humble stage in
Goodman's Fields, had at once risen to the first place among
actors, and was now, after several years of almost uninterrupted