<P> The first edition was published on 9 January 1749 . It was the first publication by Johnson to feature his name on the title page . It was not a financial success and only earned Johnson fifteen guineas . A revised version was published in the 1755 edition of Dodsley's anthology A collection of Poems by Several Hands . A third version was published posthumously in the 1787 edition of his Works, evidently working from a copy of the 1749 edition . However, no independent version of the poem was published during Johnson's life beyond the initial publication . </P> <P> The Vanity of Human Wishes is a poem of 368 lines, written in closed heroic couplets . Johnson loosely adapts Juvenal's original satire to demonstrate "the complete inability of the world and of worldly life to offer genuine or permanent satisfaction ." </P> <P> The opening lines announce the universal scope of the poem, as well as its central theme that "the antidote to vain human wishes is non-vain spiritual wishes": </P> <P> Let Observation with extensive View, Survey Mankind from China to Peru; Remark each anxious Toil, each eager Strife, And watch the busy scenes of crouded Life; Then say how Hope and Fear, Desire and Hate, O'erspread with Snares the clouded Maze of Fate, Where Wav'ring Man, betray'd by vent'rous Pride, To tread the dreary Paths without a Guide; As treach'rous Phantoms in the Mist delude, Shuns fancied Ills, or chases airy Good . (Lines 1--10) </P>

The vanity of human wishes samuel johnson sparknotes