[2] However, he did complete one poem, the first of his tutorial exercises, on which he spent comparably significant time (that of two rereads), and which provoked surprise and applause.
[4] The poem was finished quickly because Johnson was hoping for patronage that would help him overcome the financial difficulties that he was experiencing while at Pembroke.
[4] It was later included in a collection of work by the Pembroke tutor John Husbands titled Miscellany of Poems (1731).
[4] However, John Taylor, his friend, dismissed this incident as "praise" by claiming that "Pope said it was very finely done, but that he had seen it before, and said nothing more either of it or its Authour.
[6] 20th-century criticism focused on the poem as a model of Johnson's ability to write; Walter Jackson Bate praised the work and called it a "major effort".