Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just; To buried Merit raise the tardy Bust.”
- Date
- 1749
Meaning of “See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just; To…”
Johnson depicts public recognition and collective wisdom as delayed and imperfect, suggesting that societies may honor merit only after the person who deserved it is gone.
Where does it come from?
The Vanity of Human Wishes (1749), first-edition scholar / public-recognition passage, Wikisource scan leaf 28. “See Nations slowly wise, and meanly just” leads directly into the tardy-bust image of posthumous recognition. The first-edition transcription uses a comma after “just”; this collection’s semicolon is a retained punctuation normalization. This is Johnson’s historical-satirical judgment, not an empirical law of social progress.
