do not yield their full intention to the running reader. One line, indeed,--the eighth from the end (361)--has perhaps never been satisfactorily explained by any commentator. (The eighteenth paragraph of Johnson's first sermon might go far to clarify it.) But such difficulties are worth the effort they demand, because there is always a rational and unesoteric solution to be gained. The work as a whole has form, is shapely, even dramatic; but it is discontinuous and episodic in its conduct, and is most memorable in its separate parts. No one can forget the magnificent "set pieces" of Wolsey and Charles XII; but hardly less noteworthy are the two parallel invocations interspersed, the one addressed to the young scholar, the other to young beauties "of rosy lips and radiant eyes",--superb admonitions both, each containing such felicities of grave, compacted statement as will hardly be surpassed. The assuaging, marmoreal majesty of the concluding lines of the poem are a final demonstration of the virtue of this formal dignity in poetry. If it did not appear invidious, one would like to quote by way of contrast some lines oddly parallel, but on a pitch deliberately subdued to a less rhetorical level, from what is indubitably one of the very greatest poems written in our own century, Mr. Eliot's _Four Quartets_: I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought: So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing. From _The Vanity of Human Wishes_: Still raise for good the supplicating voice, But leave to heav'n the measure and the choice, Safe in his pow'r, whose eyes discern afar The secret ambush of a specious pray'r. Implore his aid, in his decisions rest, Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best.... Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind, Obedient passions, and a will resign'd; For love, which scarce collective man can fill; For patience sov'reign o'er transmuted ill; For faith, that panting for a happier seat, Counts death kind Nature's signal of retreat: These goods for man the laws of heav'n ordain, These goods he grants, who grants the pow'r to gain; With these celestial wisdom calms the mind, And makes the happiness she does not find. _The Vanity of Human Wishes_ is reproduced from a copy in the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; the _Rambler_ papers from copies in possession of Professor E.N. Hooker. The lines from T.S. Eliot's _Four Quartets_ are quoted with the permission of Harcourt, Brace and Company. _Bertrand H. Bronson University of California Berkeley_ THE VANITY OF HUMAN WISHES. THE Tenth Satire of _Juvenal_, IMITATED By _SAMUEL JOHNSON_. LONDON: