The purpose of this paper is to substantiate the importance of the distance between the satirist and his object of satire in guaranteeing the corrective function of satire. In criticizing Samuel Johnson`s London, this paper argues that London has a twofold purpose: that is, to attack the corruption of London on the one hand and, on the other hand, to express covertly the desire to achieve worldly success in London, the very object of satire. Johnson achieves this complex purpose by creating the fictive persona Thales who is distinguishable from himself and then by manipulating the distance between himself and Thales which in turn ensures distance between himself and the primary object of his satire, London. In the interpretation of another satire of Johnson`s, The Vanity of Human Wishes, this paper argues that, unlike London, this poem fails to achieve its goal, whether that goal is a qualified attack on the vanity of human wishes or the expression of compassion on the painful condition of human existence. This paper construes the reason of the failure as Johnson`s inability to maintain the proper distance between himself and some objects of his consideration, as he occasionally collapses the distance between himself and the objects and then identifies himself with them. In so comparing the success of London with the failure of The Vanity of Human Wishes as satires, this paper emphasizes the crucial importance of the concept of the persona that secures the distance between the satirist and his victims of satire.