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If we could see the full effects of the good we do, and if we took them in the right way, I think we’d be abashed, because God can draw wonders even from our feeble and fitful efforts. Perhaps it’s best not to dwell too much on the full effects of the bad we do, lest we despair, though they may be among those things hidden in darkness that will be brought to light — I don’t know. But because our vision is limited, we don’t even know what we should want or what we should pray for. I’m not talking here about wicked things, but about the ordinary run of human desires. More than 1900 years ago, the shrewd Latin poet Juvenal, in his famous Tenth Satire, took each one of the common things people pray to the gods for, and showed how they can be sources of unhappiness: wealth, long life, honor, power, pleasure, even children. Juvenal was a Stoic to the core, he was. Leave such things in the hands of the gods, he says, but if you do pray for something, pray for mens sana in corpore sano: “A sound mind in a sound body.” Yes, that’s where that saying comes from.
Our Poem of the Week doesn’t come from a pagan Stoic, though. It comes from one of the men I admire most, as an intellect, as a courageous and compassionate human being, and as a man of faith, Samuel Johnson. Dr. Johnson, as we call him, was the best-read man in England of his time, blessed with a keen and cutting wit; not somebody you’d want to wrestle with on matters literary, moral, or philosophical. Yet he had no university degree. Indeed he spent much of his youth in dire poverty, and even after he had acquired fame throughout England, his flat in London (which you can still visit, since it’s a small museum now) was quite modest. All through his life he was afflicted with periods of deep depression, to the point of incapacity, but he kept the demons at bay, says his biographer and friend James Boswell, as a sole gladiator in an amphitheater, fighting off the wild beasts. Johnson kept one manservant, Francis, a black man from Jamaica whom he educated, whom he helped to provide for his family, and who was a prime beneficiary in his will. Johnson, with characteristic sympathy for the downtrodden, and also his characteristic Tory favor for the rights of the King, had no patience for the American revolutionaries, asking, “Why is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negro slaves?”
Why am I speaking about Samuel Johnson? It’s because of his most famous poem, The Vanity of Human Wishes, which is the eighteenth century English reworking — not a translation, but an entirely new poem — of Juvenal’s tenth satire. And the focus is on what we see and do not see, which makes us wish for things that we would be better off without. That irony, says Johnson, is something you can see if you take a broad view of things: so the poem begins by asking us to assume that vantage: “Let observation with extensive view / Survey mankind from China to Peru.” Unlike Juvenal, though, Johnson was a devout Christian, who thus had more to hope for than the old Stoic could have conceived. But if he had hope, it was the real deal, a gift from above, because by his own temper he had none. Why, one time when he was reading this very poem at a friend’s home, she says that he “burst into a passion of tears.” A sight that would have been; for Johnson was a formidable mountain of a man.
So then, after he has commented on how none of what we busy ourselves about will fulfill our hearts, and how instead the things we gain at such great expense of effort and time and wealth often disappoint us or betray us, what is left to pray for? He knew what Juvenal said: a sound mind in a sound body. But Johnson is in a different world; one filled with divine promises, and grace. We do not see, but God does: it is His providence that governs the world, not just in the general case, but in every moment, every tiniest creature, every impulse of the human heart. “Every one of your hairs is numbered,” says Jesus. Then we can rest in God’s providential care. But if we do petition the Almighty, we can pray for quite a list of spiritual goods, including Love that is too great even for all of mankind to fill as objects of its devotion; for patience, which is how Johnson experienced hope, and for Faith, accepting even death as a gift. “Human life,” says the sage Imlac in Johnson’s Rasselas, “is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured, and little to be enjoyed.” We might disagree about those last four words, but it is hard to disagree with the rest. What we need then, says Johnson, is that “celestial wisdom” that makes happiness here even when otherwise it isn’t to be found.
The form of The Vanity of Human Wishes is the heroic couplet, in long meditative passages. A heroic couplet is a pair of rhyming verses in iambic pentameter, the favorite meter for English poets during the 1700’s. It lends itself to the memory and to quotation, as I hope you will find in this powerful and solemn conclusion.
Where then shall Hope and Fear their Objects find? Must dull Suspense corrupt the stagnant Mind? Must helpless Man, in Ignorance sedate, Roll darkling down the torrent of his Fate? Must no Dislike alarm, no Wishes rise, No Cries attempt the Mercies of the Skies? Enquirer, cease, Petitions yet remain, Which Heaven may hear, nor deem Religion vain. Still raise for Good the supplicating Voice, But leave to Heaven the Measure and the Choice, Safe in his Power, whose Eyes discern afar The secret Ambush of a specious Prayer. Implore his Aid, in his Decisions rest, Secure whate'er he gives, he gives the best. Yet when the Sense of sacred Presence fires, And strong Devotion to the skies aspires, Pour forth thy Fervors for a healthful Mind, Obedient Passions, and a Will resigned; For Love, which scarce collective Man can fill; For Patience sovereign 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 Heaven ordain, These Goods he grants, who grants the Power to gain; With these celestial Wisdom calms the Mind, And makes the Happiness she does not find.
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