སྒྲ་། །ཁྱག་ I M THE IDLER. tions so disguised that they cannot be known. | Every other kind of eloquence is the dress of sense; but this is the mask by which a true master of his art will so effectually conceal it, that a man will as easily mistake his own positions, if he meets them thus transformed, as he may pass in a masquerade his nearest acquaintance. 39! where to be found; and that not only its prc per ore is copiously treasured in the caverns, the earth, but that its particles are disperser throughout all other bodies. prehend the whole frame of the universe, I believe it would be found invariably true, that If the extent of the human view could com. This style may be called the terrific, for its which the condition of life makes of greatest chief intention is to terrify and amaze; it may use; and that nothing is penuriously imparted Providence has given that in greatest plenty. be termed the repulsive, for its natural effect is to drive away the reader; or it may be distin-a more liberal distribution, or more easy ac guished, in plain English, by the denomination quisition, would increase real and rational or placed far from the reach of man, of which of the bugbear style, for it has more terror than felicity. danger, and will appear less formidable as it is more nearly approached. that its use constitutes much of the difference Iron is common, and gold is rare. between savage and polished life, between the tributes so much to supply the wants of nature, Iron constate of him that slumbers in European palaces, and him that shelters himself in the cavities of a rock from the chillness of the night, or the violence of the storm. Gold can never be har dened into saws or axes; it can neither furnish instruments of manufacture, utensils of agriculture, nor weapons of defence; its only quality is to shine, and the value of its lustre arises from its scarcity. A mother tells her infant that two and two make four; the child remembers the proposition, and is able to count four to all the purposes of life, till the course of his education brings him among philosophers who fright him from his former knowledge, by telling him, that four is a certain aggregate of units; that all numbers being only the repetition of an unit, which, though not a number itself, is the parent, root, or original of all number, four is the denomination assigned to a certain number of such repetitions. The only danger is, lest, when he first hears these dreadful sounds, the pupil should run away; if he has but the courage to stay till the conclusion, he will find that when speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four. An illustrious example of this species of eloquence may be found in Letters concerning Mind. The author begins by declaring, that "the sorts of things are things that now are, have been, and shall be, and the things that strictly are." In this position, except the last clause, in which he uses something of the scholastic language, there is nothing but what every man has heard and imagines himself to know. But who would not believe that some wonderful novelty is presented to his intellect when he is afterwards told, in the true bugbear style, that "the ares, in the former sense, are things that lie between the have-beens and the shall-bes. The have-beens are things that are past; 'the shall-bes are things that are to come; and the things that are, in the latter sense, are things that have not been, nor shall be, nor stand in the midst of such as are before them, or shall be after them. The things that have been, and shall be, have respect to present, past, and future. have moreover place; that, for instance, which Those likewise that now are is here, that which is to the east, that which is to the west." All this, my dear reader, is very strange; but though it be strange, it is not new; survey these wonderful sentences again, and they will be found to contain nothing more, than very plain truths, which till this author arose had always been delivered in plain language. No. 37.] SATURDAY, DEC. 30, 1758. THOSE who are skilled in the extraction and preparation of metals, declare, that iron is every and moral life, necessaries are as iron, and superfluities as gold. What we really need we Throughout the whole circle, both of natural may readily obtain; so readily that far the greater part of mankind has, in the wanton artificial desires, and invented necessities for the sake of employment, because the mind is ness of abundance, confounded natural with impatient of inaction, and life is sustained with so little labour, that the tediousness of idle time cannot otherwise be supported. our needs; and even the poverty, which is so and ornaments, he cried out, How many things dress food for the stomach is easy, the art is to which are generally necessary. The intercourse of language. Figures, criticisms, and refine-mence: we live in an age of commerce and comments, are the work of those whom idleness putation; let us therefore coolly inquire what is makes weary of themselves. The commerce of the sum of evil which the imprisonment of the world is carried on by easy methods of com- debtors brings upon our country. patation. Subtility and study are required only when questions are invented merely to puzzle, and calculations are extended to show the skill of the calculator. The light of the sun is equally beneficial to him whose eyes tell him that it moves, and to him whose reason persuades him that it stands still; and plants grow with the same luxuriance, whether we suppose earth or water the parent of vegeta tion. If we raise our thoughts to nobler inquiries, we shall still find facility concurring with usefulness. No man needs stay to be virtuous till the moralists have determined the essence of virtue; our duty is made apparent by its proximate consequences, though the general and ultimate reason should never be discovered. Religion may regulate the life of him to whom the Scotists and Thomists are alike unknown; and the assertors of fate and free-will, however different in their talk, agree to act in the same manner. It is not my intention to depreciate the politer arts or abstruser studies. That curiosity which always succeeds ease and plenty, was undoubtedly given us as a proof of capacity which our present state is not able to fill, as a preparative for some better mode of existence, which shall furnish employment for the whole soul, and where pleasure shall be adequate to our powers of fruition. In the mean time let us gratefully acknowledge that Goodness which grants us ease at a cheap rate, which changes the seasons where the nature of heat and cold has not been yet examined, and gives the vicissitudes of day and night to those who never marked the tropics, or numbered the constellations. No. 38.] SATurday, Jan. 6, 1759. SINCE the publication of the letter concerning the condition of those who are confined in goals by their creditors, an inquiry is said to have been made, by which it appears that more than twenty thousand* are at this time prisoners for debt. We often look with indifference on the successive parts of that, which, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion. A debtor is dragged to prison, pitied for a moment, and then forgotten; another follows him, and is lost alike in the caverns of oblivion; but when the whole mass of calamity rises up at once, when twenty thousand reasonable beings, are heard all groaning in unnecessary misery, not by the infirmity of nature, but the mistake or negligence of policy, who can forbear to pity and lament, to wonder and abhor! There is here no need of declamatory vehe It seems to be the opinion of the later compo tists, that the inhabitants of England do not exceed six millions, of which twenty thousand is the three hundredth part. What shall we say of the humanity or the wisdom of a nation, that voluntarily sacrifices one in every three hun dred to lingering destruction! The misfortunes of an individual do not extend their influence to many; yet if we consider the effects of consanguinity and friendship, and the general reciprocation of wants and benefits, which make one man dear or necessary to another, it may reasonably be supposed, that every man languishing in prison gives tronble of some kind to two others who love or need him. By this multiplication of misery we see distress extended to the hundredth part of the whole society. If we estimate at a shilling a day what is lost by the inaction and consumed in the sup port of each man thus chained down to inve luntary idleness, the public loss will rise in one year to three hundred thousand pounds; in ten years to more than a sixth part of our circulating coin. I am afraid that those who are best acquainted with the state of our prisons will confess that my conjecture is too near the truth, when I suppose that the corrosion of resentment, the heaviness of sorrow, the corruption of confined air, the want of exercise, and sometimes of food, the contagion of diseases, from which there is no retreat, and the severity of tyrants, against whom there can be no resistance, and all the complicated horrors of a prison, put an end every year to the life of one in four of those that are shut up from the cexmon comforts of human life. Thus perish yearly five thousand men, overborne with sorrow, consumed by famine, or putrified by filth: many of them in the most vigorous and useful part of life; for the thoughtless and imprudent are commonly young, and the active and busy are seldom old According to the rule generally received, which supposes that one in thirty dies yearly, the race of man may be said to be renewed at the end of thirty years. Who would have be lieved till now, that of every English genera tion, a hundred and fifty thousand perish in our gaols! that in every century, a nation eminent for science, studious of commerce, ambitious of empire, should willingly lose, in noisome dungeons, five hundred thousand of its inhabitants; a number greater than has ever been destroyed in the same time by the pestilence and sword! A very late occurrence may show us the value of the number which we thus condemn to be useless; in the re-establishment of the trained bands, thirty thousand are considered as a force sufficient against all exigencies. While, therefore, we detain twenty thousand in prison, we shut up in darkness and useless• This number was at that time confidently published, but the author has since found reason to question theness two-thirds of an army which ourselves judge equal to the defence of our country. calculation. SIR, TO THE IDLER. The monastic institutions have been often | No. 39.] SATURDAY, JAN. 18, 1759. blamed as tending to retard the increase of mankind. And perhaps retirement ought rarely to be permitted, except to those whose employment is consistent with abstraction, and who, though solitary, will not be idle: to those whom infirmity makes useless to the commonwealth, or to those who have paid their due proportion to society, and who, having lived for others, may be honourably dismissed to live for themselves. But whatever be the evil or the folly of these retreats, those have no right to censure them whose prisons contain greater numbers than the monasteries of other countries. It is, surely, less foolish and less criminal to permit inaction than compel it; to comply with doubtful opinions of happiness. than condemn to certain and apparent misery; to indulge the extravagances of erroneous piety, than to multiply and enforce temptations to wickedness. As none look more diligently about them than those who have nothing to do, or who do no thing, I suppose it has not escaped your obser vation, that the bracelet, an ornament of great antiquity, has been for some years revived among the English ladies. The misery of gaols is not half their evil they are filled with every corruption which poverty and wickedness can generate between them; with all the shameless and profligate enormities that can be produced by the impudence of ignominy, the rage of want, and the malignity of despair. In a prison, the awe of the public eye is lost, and the power of the law is spent; there are few fears, there are no blushes. The lewd inflame the lewd, the audacious harden the audacious. Every one fortifies himself as he can against his own sensibility, endeavours to practise on others the arts which are practised on himself; and gains the kindness of his associates by similitude of manners. Thus some sink amidst their misery, and others survive only to propagate villany. It may be hoped, that our lawgivers will at length take away from us this power of starving and depraving one another; but, if there be any reason why this inveterate evil should not be removed in our age, which true policy has enlightened beyond any former time, let those, whose writings from the opinions and the practices of their contemporaries, endeavour to transfer the reproach of such imprisonment from the debtor to the creditor, till universal infamy shall pursue the wretch whose wantonness of power, or revenge of disappointment, condemns another to torture and to ruin; till he shall be hunted through the world as an enemy to man, and find in riches no shelter from contempt. Surely, he whose debtor has perished in prison, although he may acquit himself of deliberate murder, must at least have his mind clouded with discontent, when he considers how much another has suffered from him; when he thinks on the wife bewailing her husband, or the children begging the bread which their father would have earned. If there are any made so obdurate by avarice or cruelty, as to revolve these consequences without dread or pity, I must leave them to be awakened by some other power, for I write only to human beings. The genius of our nation is said, I know not for what reason, to appear rather an improvement than invention. The bracelet was known in the earliest ages; but it was formerly only a hoop of gold, or a cluster of jewels, and showed nothing but the wealth or vanity of the wearer; till our ladies, by carrying pictures on their wrists, made their ornaments works of fancy and exercises of judgment. This addition of art to luxury is one of the innumerable proofs that might be given of the late increase of female erudition; and I have often congratulated myself that my life has happened at a time when those, on whom so much of human felicity depends, have learned to think as well as speak, and when respect takes possession of the ear, while love is entering at the eye. I have observed, that even by the suffrages of their own sex, those ladies are accounted wisest who do not yet disdain to be taught ; and therefore, I shall offer a few hints for the completion of the bracelet, without any dread of the fate of Orpheus. To the ladies who wear the pictures of their husbands or children, or any other relations, I can offer nothing more decent or more proper. It is reasonable to believe that she intends at least to perform her duty, who carries a perpetual excitement to recollection and caution, whose own ornaments must upbraid her with every failure, and who, by an open violation of her engagements, must for ever forfeit her bracelet. Yet I know not whether it is the interest of the husband to solicit very earnestly a place on the bracelet. If his image be not in the heart, it is of small avail to hang it on the hand. A husband encircled with diamonds and rubies may gain some esteem, but will never excite love. He that thinks himself most secure of his wife, should be fearful of persecuting her continually with his presence. The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence; and fidelity herself will be wearied with transferring her eye only from the same man to the same picture. In many countries the condition of every woman is known by her dress. Marriage is rewarded with some honourable distinction which celibacy is forbidden to usurp. Some such information a bracelet might afford. The ladies might enrol themselves in distinct classes, and carry in open view the emblems of their order. The bracelet of the authoress may exhibit the muses in a grove of laurel; the housewife may show Penelope with her web; the votaress of a single life may carry Ursula with her troop of virgins; the gamester mav have Fortune with her wheel; and those women that have no character at all, may display a field of white enamel, as imploring help to fill up the vacuity. No.40.] SATURDAY, Jan. 20, 1759. THE practice of appending to the narratives of public transactions more minute and comestic intelligence, and filling the newspapers with advertisements, has grown up by slow degrees to its present state. There is a set of ladies who have outlived most animal pleasures, and having nothing rational to put in their place, solace with cards the loss of what time has taken away, and the Genius is shown only by invention. The want of what wisdom, having never been man who first took advantage of the general courted, has never given. For these, I know curiosity that was excited by a siege or battle, 'not now to provide a proper decoration. They to betray the readers of news into the knowcannot be numbered among the gamesters: ledge of the shop where the best puffs and for though they are always at play, they play powder were to be sold, was undoubtedly a for nothing, and never rise to the dignity of man of great sagacity and profound skill in hazard or the reputation of skill. They neither the nature of man. But when he had once love nor are loved, and cannot be supposed to shown the way, it was easy to follow him; and 'contemplate any human image with delight.every man now knows a ready method of inYet though they despair to please, they always forming the public of all that he desires to bay wish to be fine, and therefore cannot be with- or sell, whether his wares be material or intelout a bracelet. To this sisterhood I can recom-lectual; whether he makes clothes, or teaches mend nothing more likely to please them than the mathematics; whether he be a tutor that the king of clubs, a personage very comely wants a pupil, or a pupil that wants a tutor. and majestic, who will never meet their eyes without reviving the thought of some past or future party, and who may be displayed in the act of dealing with grace and propriety. Whatever is common is despised. Adver tisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magni ficence of promises, and by eloquences some times sublime and soinetimes pathetic. But the bracelet which might be most easily introduced into general use is a small convex mirror, is which the lady may see herself when- Promise, large promise, is the soul of an adever she shall lift her hand. This will be a per-vertisement. I remember a wash-ball that had petual source of delight. Other ornaments a quality truly wonderful-it gave an exquisite are of use only in public, but this will furnishedge to the razor. And there are now to be gratifications to solitude. This will show a face that must always please; she who is followed by admirers will carry about her a perpetual iustification of the public voice; and she who passes without notice may appeal from prejudice to her own eyes. But I know not why the privilege of the bracelet should be confined to women; it was in former ages worn by heroes in battle; and as modern soldiers are always distinguished by splendour of dress, I should rejoice to see the bracelet added to the cockade. sold, "for ready money only, some duvets for bed coverings, of down, beyond comparison, superior to what is called otter-down, and indeed such, that its many excellences cannot be here set forth." With one excellence we are made acquainted—“it is warmer than four of five blankets, and lighter than one. " There are some, however, that know the prejudice of mankind in favour of modest sincerity. The vender of the beautifying fluid sells a lotion that repels pimples, washes away freckles, smooths the skin, and plumps the flesh and yet, with a generous abhorrence of ostentation, confesses, that it will not “restore the bloom of fifteen to a lady of fifty." The true pathos of advertisements must have sunk deep into the heart of every man that remembers the zeal shown by the seller of the anodyne necklace, for the ease and safety of poor toothing infants, and the affection with which he warned every mother, that "she would never forgive herself" if her infant should perish without a necklace. In hope of this ornamental innovation, I have spent some thoughts upon military bracelets. There is no passion more heroic than love; and therefore I should be glad to see the sons of England marching in the field, every man with the picture of a woman of honour bound upon his hand. But since in the army, as every where else, there will always be men who love nobody but themselves, or whom no woman of honour will permit to love her, there is a necessity of some other distinctions and devices. I have read of a prince who, having lost a I cannot but remark to the celebrated author ́town, ordered the name of it to be every morning who gave, in his notifications of the camel and shouted in his ear till it should be recovered. For dromedary, so many specimens of the genuine the same purpose I think the prospect of Minor-sublime, that there is now arrived another subca might be properly worn on the hands of some ject yet more worthy of his pen, “A famous of our generals: others might delight their coun-Mohawk Indian warrior, who took Dieskaw trymen, and dignify themselves with a view of the French general prisoner, dressed in the Rochefort as it appeared to them at sea: and same manner with the native Indians when those that shall return from the conquest of they go to war, with his face and body painted, America, may exhibit the warehouse of Fron- with his scalping-knife, tom-ax and all other tenac, with an inscription denoting that it was implements of war! a sight worthy the curiosi taken in less than three years by less than ty of every true Briton!" This is a very wenty thousand men. powerful description: but a critic of great reI am, Sir, &c. finement would say, that it conveys rather Tom Tox. horror than terror. An Indian, dressed as he No. 41.] THE IDLER. At tu quisquis eris, miseri qui crude poeta goes to war, may bring company together; public; but I could not persuade myself to but if he carries the scalping knife, and tom-suppress it, because I think I know the senax, there are many true Britons that will never ttments to be sincere, and I feel no disposition to provide for this day any other enter be persuaded to see him but through a grate. It has been remarked by the severer judges, tainnment. that the salutary sorrow of tragic scenes is too soon effaced by the merriment of the epilogue; the same inconvenience arises from the improper disposition of advertisements. The noblest objects may be so associated as to be made ridiculous. The camel and dromedary themselves might have lost much of their dignity between "the true flower of mustard and the original Daffy's elixir ;" and I could not but feel some indignation, when I found this illustrious Indian warrior immediately succeeded by "a fresh parcel of Dublin but ter. " MR. IDLER, NOTWITHSTANDING the warnings of philosophers, and the daily examples of losses and misfortunes which life forces upon our observation, such is the absorption of our thoughts in the business of the present day, such the resignation of our reason to empty hopes of future felicity, or such our unwillingness to foresee what we dread, that every calamity comes The trade of advertising is now so near to perfection, that it is not easy to propose any suddenly upon us, and not only presses us as improvement. But as every art ought to be a burden, but crushes as a blow. exercised in due subordination to the public good, I cannot but propose it as a moral question to these masters of the public ear, Whether they do not sometimes play too wantonly with our passions, as when the registrar of lottery tickets invites us to his shop by an account of the prizes which he sold last year; and whether the advertising controvertists do not indulge asperity of language without any adequate provocation; as in the dispute about straps for razors, now happily subsided, and in the altercation which at present subsists concerning eau de luce? In an advertisement it is allowed to every man to speak well of himself, but I know not why he should assume the privilege of censurng his neighbour. He may proclaim his own. virtue or skill, but ought not to exclude others from the same pretensions. There are evils which happen out of the common course of nature, against which it is no reproach not to be provided. A flash of lightning intercepts the traveller in his way. The But other concussion of an earthquake heaps the ruins of cities upon their inhabitants. miseries time brings, though silently, yet vi sibly, forward by its even lapse, which yet approach us unseen, because we turn our eyes, away, and seize us unresisted, because we could not arm ourselves. against them but by setting them before us. That it is vain to shrink from what cannot be avoided, and to hide that from ourselves which must sometime be found, is a truth which we all know, but which all neglect, and perhaps none more than the speculative reasoner, whose thoughts are always from home, whose eye wanders over life, whose fancy dances Every man that advertises his own excel-after meteors of happiness kindled by itself, lence should write with some consciousness and who examines every thing rather than of character which dares to call the attention his own state. of the public. He should remember that his name is to stand in the same paper with those of the king of Prussia and the emperor of Germany, and endeavour to make himself worthy of such association. Some regard is likewise to be paid to posterity. There are men of diligence and curiosity who treasure up the papers of the day merely because others neglect them, and in When these coltime they will be scarce. lections shall be read in another century, how will numberless contradictions be reconciled; and how shall fame be possibly distributed among the tailors and boddice-makers of the present age? Surely these things deserve consideration. It is enough for me to have hinted my desire that these abuses may be rectified; but such is the state of nature, that what all have the right of doing, many will attempt without sufficient care or due qualifications. No. 41.] SATURDAY, JAN. 27, 1759. THE following letter relates to an affliction perhaps not necessary to be imparted to the Nothing is more evident than that the decays of age must terminate in death; yet there is no man, says Tully, who does not believe that he may yet live another year; and there is none who does not, upon the same principle, hope another year for his parent or his friend; but the fallacy will be in time detected; the last year, the last day, must come. It has come, and is past. The life which made my own life pleasant is at an end, and the gates of death are shut upon my prospects. The loss of a friend upon whom the heart was fixed, to whom every wish and endeavour tended, is a state of dreary desolation, in which the mind looks abroad impatient of it. self, and finds nothing but emptiness and horThe blameless life, the artless tenderror. ness, the pious simplicity, the modest resignation, the patient sickness, and the quiet death, are remembered only to add value to the loss, to aggravate regret for what cannot be amended, to deepen sorrow for what cannot be recalled. These are the calamities by which Providence gradually disengages us from the love of life. Other evils fortitude may repel, or hope may mitigate; but irreparable privation leaves no |