Johnson draws on personal experience as well as a variety of historical sources in order to illustrate "the helpless vulnerability of the individual

before the social context" and the "inevitable self-deception by which human beings are led astray".[17] Both themes are explored in one of the most famous passages in the poem, Johnson's outline of the career of Charles XII of Sweden. As Howard D. Weinbrot notes, "The passage skillfully includes many of Johnson's familiar themes - repulsion with slaughter that aggrandizes one man and kills and impoverishes thousands, understanding of the human need to glorify heroes, and subtle contrast with the classical parent-poem and its inadequate moral vision."[18] Johnson depicts Charles as a "Soul of Fire", the "Unconquer'd Lord of Pleasure and of Pain", who refuses to accept that his pursuit of military conquest may end in disaster: 'Think Nothing gain'd, he cries, till nought remain, On Moscow's Walls till Gothic Standards fly, And all be Mine beneath the Polar Sky.' (Lines 202-204)[19] In a famous passage, Johnson reduces the king's glorious military career to a cautionary example in a poem: His Fall was destin'd to a barren Strand, A petty Fortress, and a dubious Hand; He left the Name, at which the World grew pale, To point a Moral, or adorn a Tale. (Lines 219-222)[19] In a passage dealing with the life of a writer, Johnson drew on his own personal experience. In the original manuscript of the poem, lines 159-160 read: There mark what ill the Scholar's life assail Toil Envy Want an the Garret and the Jayl [sic][20] The word "Garret" was retained in the first published edition of the poem. However, after the failure in 1755 of Lord Chesterfield to provide financial support for Johnson's Dictionary, Johnson included a mordant definition of "patron" in the Dictionary ( "Patron: Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery")[21] and revised line 160 to reflect his disillusionment: There mark what Ills the Scholar's Life assail, Toil, Envy, Want, the Patron, and the Jail.[22] Imitation Howard D. Weinbrot notes that The Vanity of Human Wishes "follows the outline of Juvenal's tenth satire, embraces some of what Johnson thought of as its 'sublimity,' but also uses it as a touchstone rather than an argument on authority." In particular, Johnson and Juvenal differ on their treatment of their topics: both of them discuss conquering generals (Charles and Hannibal respectively), but Johnson's poem invokes pity for Charles, whereas Juvenal mocks Hannibal's death.[23] Using Juvenal as a model did cause some problems, especially when Johnson emphasized Christianity as "the only true and lasting source of hope". Juvenal's poem contains none of the faith in Christian redemption that informed Johnson's personal philosophy. In order not to violate his prototype, Johnson had to accommodate his views to the Roman model and focus on the human world, approaching religion "by a negative path" and ignoring the "positive motives of faith, such as the love of Christ".[24] Critical response Although Walter Scott and T. S. Eliot enjoyed Johnson's earlier poem London, they both considered The Vanity of Human Wishes to be Johnson's greatest poem.[25] Later critics followed the same trend: Howard D. Weinbrot says

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that "London is well worth reading, but The Vanity of Human Wishes is one of the great poems in the English language."[26] Likewise, Robert Folkenflik says, "[London] is not Johnson's greatest poem, only because The Vanity of Human Wishes is better".[27] Robert Demaria, Jr. declared the work as "Johnson's greatest poem".[4] Samuel Beckett was a devoted admirer of Johnson and at one point filled three notebooks with material for a play about him, entitled Human Wishes after Johnson's poem

The Vanity of Human Wishes is a highly political poem showing a deep concern with the processes of history. It explores two ways in which a state might suddenly change or be changed: the fall of a Favourite or a revolution brought about by military invasion. Johnson employs the literary mode of oblique allusion, practised by Dryden and Pope, to reflect on the British experience of the 1740s. The Vanity of Human Wishes is not a poem of generality in the sense that it excluded recent historical events, but is comprehensive in assimilating them to famous examples of the past. The long view thus constructed displays not least the vanity of human wishes as the tragedy of political hope. It is a vision of the world from which one may turn either to Stoic or Christian doctrine to find a faith with which to live. Johnson's text turns to the Christian religion, though he has at least in common with Juvenal the rejection of chance and the advocacy of virtue.

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