The affirmation of Johnson's distinction as a poet has renewed interest in London (1738), his first major poem and the first work that brought him literary reputation. The Juvenalian texts that he used have been meticulously traced; much of the poem's political background and satiric and rhetorical techniques have been discovered; and its successes and failures have become the object of lively, if not always enlightened, controversy. This last issue has an importance beyond that of simple evaluation, for in the case of London that evaluation is linked to the larger question of how to read an imitation. We have learned that knowledge of the parent-poem is necessary for understanding of the imitation; but historical reclamation often surrenders to modern impressionism, the Loeb text replaces that of Heinsius or Casaubon, and we read Horace or Juvenal as if they were our rather than Pope's or Johnson's “contemporaries.” The reader of London needs to know both how Johnson would have read Juvenal's third satire and how to acquire such information. The assumption that Johnson read Juvenal as we do leads to inappropriate methodology and mistaken literary criticism. Specifically, according to several recent critics, Johnson failed to see that in Juvenal's third satire the poet was ironic and not serious in praising the country, missed part of his point, some of his resonance and, it would seem, some of his greatness as well.