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    The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750)
    The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750)
    The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750)
    Ebook64 pages1 hour

    The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750)

    By Bertrand Harris Bronson and Samuel Johnson

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateNov 15, 2013
    The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750)

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      Book preview

      The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750) - Bertrand Harris Bronson

      The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750), by Samuel Johnson

      This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

      Title: The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749) and Two Rambler papers (1750)

      Author: Samuel Johnson

      Release Date: September 2, 2004 [EBook #13350]

      Language: English

      *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES ***

      Produced by David Starner, Charles Bidwell and PG Distributed Proofreaders

      The Augustan Reprint Society

      SAMUEL JOHNSON

      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

      GENERAL EDITORS

      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

      ASSISTANT EDITORS

      W. EARL BRITTON, University of Michigan

      JOHN LOFTIS, University of California, Los Angeles

      ADVISORY EDITORS

      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

      INTRODUCTION

      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

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