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The Vanity of Human Wishes(1749)
and
Two Rambler papers(1750)
With an Introduction by
Bertrand H. Bronson
Publication Number 22
(Series VI, No. 2)
Los Angeles
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
University of California
1950
H. RICHARD ARCHER, Clark Memorial Library
RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles
H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles
W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan
JOHN LOFTIS, University of California, Los Angeles
EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington
BENJAMIN BOYCE, University of Nebraska
LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan
CLEANTH BROOKS, Yale University
JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago
SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota
ERNEST MOSSNER, University of Texas
JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen Mary College, London
The pieces reproduced in this little volume are now beginning to bid fornotice from their third century of readers. At the time they were written,although Johnson had already done enough miscellaneous literary work tofill several substantial volumes, his name, far from identifying an "Age",was virtually unknown to the general public. The Vanity of Human Wisheswas the first of his writings to bear his name on its face. There weresome who knew him to be the author of the vigorous satire, London, andof the still more remarkable biographical study, An Account of the Lifeof Mr. Richard Savage; and a few interested persons were aware that hewas engaged in compiling an English Dictionary, and intended to editShakespeare. He was also, at the moment, attracting brief but notover-favorable attention as the author of one of the season's new crop oftragedies at Drury Lane. But The Vanity of Human Wishes and TheRambler were a potent force in establishing Johnson's claim to apermanent place in English letters. The Vanity appeared early inJanuary, 1749; The Rambler ran from March 20, 1749/50 to March 14, 1752.With the exception of five numbers and two quoted letters, the periodicalwas written entirely by Johnson.
As moral essays, the Ramblers deeply stirred some readers and boredothers. Young Boswell, not unduly saturnine in temperament, was profoundlyimpressed by them and determined on their account to seek out the author.Taine, a century later, discovered that he already knew by heart all theyhad to teach and warned his readers away from them. Generally speaking,they were valued as they deserved by the eighteenth century andundervalued by the nineteenth. The first half of the twentieth has shown amarked impulse to restore them, as a series, to a place of honor secondonly to the work of Addison and Steele in the same form. Raleigh, in 1907,paid discriminating tri