ration to those who abstained from the delights | fixed, beyond which, if he passes he will not

of life, even when they did not censure those who enjoy them.

The general voice of mankind, civil and barbarous, confesses that the mind and body are at variance, and that neither can be made happy by its proper gratifications but at the expense of the other; that a pampered body will darken the mind, and an enlightened mind will macerate the body. And none have failed to confer their esteem on those who prefer intellect to sense, who control their lower by their higher faculties, and forget the wants and desires of animal life for rational disquisitions or pious contemplations.

The earth has scarcely a country so far advanced towards political regularity as to divide the inhabitants into classes, where some orders of men or women are not distinguished by voluntary severities, and where the reputation of their sanctity is not increased in proportion to the rigour of their rules, and the exactness of their performance.

easily return. It is certainly most wise, as it is most safe, to stop before he touches the ut most limit, since every step of advance will more and more entice him to go forward, till he shall at last enter into the recesses of voluptuousness, and sloth and despondency close the passage behind them.

To deny early and inflexibly, is the only art of checking the importunity of desire, and of preserving quiet and innocence. Innocent gratifications must be sometimes withheld; he that complies with all lawful desires will certainly lose his empire over himself, and in time either submit his reason to his wishes, and think all his desires lawful, or dismiss his reason as troublesome and intrusive and resolve to snatch what he may happen to wish, without inquiring about right and wrong.

No man whose appetites are his masters, can perform the duties of his nature with strictness and regularity; he that would be superior to external influences must first become superior his own passions.

When an opinion to which there is no temp-to tation of interest spreads wide and continues long, it may reasonably be presumed to have been issued by nature or dictated by reason. It has been often observed that the fictions of imposture, and illusions of fancy soon give way to time and experience; and that nothing keeps its ground but truth, which gains every day new influence by new confirmation.

But truth, when it is reduced to practice, easily becomes subject to caprice and imagination; and many particular acts will be wrong, though their general principal be right. It cannot be denied that a just conviction of the restraint necessary to be laid upon the appetites has produced extravagant and unnatural modes of mortification, and institutions, which, however favourably considered, will be found to violate nature without promoting piety.

When the Roman general, sitting at supper with a plate of turnips before him, was solicited by large presents to betray his trust, he asked the messengers whether he that could sup on turnips was a man likely to sell his own country. Upon him who has reduced his senses to obedience, temptation has lost its power; he is able to attend impartially to virtue, and execute her commands without hesitation.

To set the mind above the appetites is the end of abstinence, which one of the fathers observes to be not a virtue, but the ground-work of virtue. By forbearing to do what may innocently be done, we may add hourly new vigour or resolution, and secure the power of resistance when pleasure or interest shall lend their charms to guilt.

But the doctrine of self-denial is not weaken- No. 53.] SATURDAY, April 21, 1759. ed in itself by the errors of those who misinterpret or misapply it; the encroachment of the appetites upon the understanding is hourly perceived; and the state of those, whom sensuality has enslaved, is known to be in the highest degree despicable and wretched.

The dread of such shameful captivity may justly raise alarms, and wisdom will endeavour to keep danger at a distance. By timely caution and suspicious vigilance those desires may be repressed, to which indulgence would soon give absolute dominion; those enemies may be overcome, which, when they have been a while accustomed to victory, can no longer be

resisted.

Nothing is more fatal to happiness or virtue, than that confidence which flatters us with an opinion of cur own strength, and by assuring us of the power of retreat, precipitates us into hazard. Some may safely venture farther than others into the regions of delight, lay themselves more open to the golden shafts of pleasure, and advance nearer to the residence of the Sirens ; but he that is best armed with constancy and reason is yet vulnerable in one part or other, and to every man there is a point

SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

I HAVE a wife that keeps good company. You know that the word good varies its meaning according to the value set upon different qualities in different places. To be a good man in a college, is to be learned; in a camp, to be brave; and in the city, to be rich. By good company in the place which I have the misfortune to inhabit, we understand not always those from whom any good can be learned, whether wisdom or virtue; or by whom any good can be conferred, whether profit or reputation. Good company is the company of those whose birth is high, and whose riches are great; or of those whom the rich and noble admit to familiarity.

I am a gentleman of fortune by no means exuberant, but more than equal to the wants of my family, and for some years equal to our desires. My wife, who had never been accustomed to splendour, joined her endeavours to mine in the superintendence of our economy;

we lived in decent plenty, and were not ex- | languor of weariness. To dress and to uncluded from moderate pleasures.

But slight causes produce great effects. All my happiness has been destroyed by change of place; virtue is too often merely local: in some situations the air diseases the body, and in others poisons the mind. Being obliged to remove my habitation, I was led by my evil genius to a convenient house in a street where many of the nobility reside. We had scarcely ranged our furniture, and aired our rooms, when my wife began to grow discontented, and to wonder what the neighbours would think when they saw so few chairs and chariots at her door.

dress is almost her whole business in private, and the servants take advantage of her negligence to increase expense. But I can supply her omission by my own diligence, and should not much regret this new course of life, if it did nothing more than transfer me to the care of our accounts. The changes which it has made are more vexatious. My wife has no longer the use of her understanding. She has no rule of action but the fashion. She has no opinion but that of the people of quality. She has no language but the dialect of her own set of company. She hates and admires in humble imitation; and echoes the words charming and detestable without consulting her own preceptions.

If for a few minutes we sit down together, she entertains me with the repartees of lady Cackle, or the conversation of lord Whiffler, and Miss Quick, and wonder to find me receiving with indifference sayings which put all the company into laughter.

Her acquaintance, who came to see her from the quarter that we had left, mortified her with out design, by continual inquiries about the ladies whose houses they viewed from our windows. She was ashamed to confess that she had no intercourse with them, and sheltered her distress under general answers, which always tended to raise suspicion that she knew more than she would tell; but she was often reduced to difficulties, when the course of talking to be seen, but she must not rid herself of introduced questions about the furniture or ornaments of their houses, which, when she could get no intelligence, she was forced to pass slightly over, as things which she saw so often that she never minded them.

By her old friends she is no longer very will

them all at once: and is sometimes surprised by her best visitants in company which she would not show and cannot hide; but from the moment that a countess enters, she takes care neither to hear nor see them; they soon find themselves neglected, and retire; and she tells her ladyship that they are somehow related at a great distance, and that as they are good sort of people she cannot be rude to them.

To all these vexations she was resolved to put an end, and redoubled her visits to those few of her friends who visited those who kept good company; and, if ever she met a lady of quality, forced herself into notice by respect and assiduity. Her advances were generally As by this ambitious union with those that rejected; and she heard them, as they went are above her, she is always forced upon disaddown stairs talk how some creatures put them-vantageous comparisons of her condition with selves forward.

She was not discouraged, but crept forward from one to another; and as perseverance will do great things, sapped her way unperceived, till, unexpectedly, she appeared at the card table of lady Biddy Porpoise, a lethargic virgin, of seventy-six, whom all the families in the next square visited very punctually when she

was not at home.

This was the first step of that elevation to which my wife has since ascended. For five months she had no name in her mouth but that of lady Biddy, who, let the world say what it would, had a fine understanding, and such a command of her temper, that whether she won or lost, she slept over her cards.

theirs, she has a constant source of misery within; and never returns from glittering assemblies and magnificent apartments but she growls out her discontent, and wonders why she was doomed to so indigent a state. When she attends the dutchess to a sale, she always sees something she cannot buy; and, that she may not seem wholly insignificant, she will sometimes venture to bid, and often make acquisitions which she did not want, at prices which she cannot afford.

What adds to all this uneasiness is that this expense is without use, and this vanity without honour; she forsakes houses where she might be courted, for those where she is only suffered; her equals are daily made her enemies, and her superiors will never be her

At lady Biddy's she met with lady Tawdry, whose favour she gained by estimating her ear-friends. rings, which were counterfeit, at twice the value of real diamonds. When she once entered two houses of distinction, she was easily admitted into more, and in ten weeks had all her No.54.] time anticipated by parties and engagements. Every morning she is bespoke, in the summer, for the gardens; in the winter, for a sale; every afternoon she has visits to pay, and every night brings an inviolable appointment, or an assembly in which the best company in the town were to appear.

You will easily imagine that much of my domestic comfort is withdrawn. I never see my wife but in the hurry of preparation or the

SIR,

I am, Sir, yours &c.

SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1759.

TO THE IDLER.

You have lately entertained your admirers with the case of an unfortunate husband, and thereby given a demonstrative proof you are not averse even to hear appeals and terminate differences between man and wife; I therefore take the liberty to present you with the

mine.

case of an injured lady, which, as it chiefly | by Hymen in his saffron robes, retired to a relates to what I think the lawyers call a point country-seat of my husband's, where the honey. of law, I shall do in as juridical a manner as I moon flew over our heads ere we had time to ream capable, and submit it to the consideration collect ourselves, or think of our engagements of the learned gentlemen of that profession. in town. Well, to town we came, and you Imprimis. In the style of my marriage arti- may be sure, Sir, I expected to step into my cles, a marriage was "had and solemnized," coach on my arrival here; but what was my about six months ago, between me and Mr. surprise and disappointment, when, instead of Savecharges, a gentleman possessed of a plen- this, he began to sound in my ears, "That the tiful fortune of his own, and one who, I was interest of money was low, very low; and persuaded, would improve, and not spend, what a terrible thing it was to be incumbered with a little regiment of servants in these hard times!" I could easily perceive what all this tended to, but would not seem to understand him; which made it highly necessary for Mr. Savecharges to explain himself more intelligibly; to harp upon and protest he dreaded the expense of keeping a coach. And truly, for his part, he could not, conceive how the plea sure resulting from such a convenience could be any way adequate to the heavy expense attending it. I now thought it high time to speak with equal plainness, and told him, as the fortune I brought fairly entitled me to ride in my own coach, and as I was sensible his circumstances would very well afford it, he must pardon me if I insisted on a performance of his agreement.

Before our marriage, Mr. Savecharges had all along preferred the salutary exercise of walking on foot to the distempered ease, as he terms it, of lolling in a chariot; but, notwithstanding his fine panegyrics on walking, the great advantages the infantry were in the sole possession of, and the many dreadful dangers they escaped, he found I had very different notions of an equipage, and was not easily to be converted, or gained over to his party.

An equipage I was determined to have, whenever I married. I too well knew the disposition of my intended consort to leave the providing one entirely to his honour, and flatter myself Mr. Savecharges has, in the articles made previous to our marriage, agreed to keep me a coach; but lest I should be mistaken, or the attorney should not have done me justice in methodising or legalising these half dozen words, I will set about and transcribe that part of the agreement, which will explain the matter to you much better than can be done by one who is so deeply interested in the event; and show on what foundation I build my hopes of being soon under the trans-sisted upon having an article of pin-money, porting, delightful denomination of a fashionable lady, who enjoys the exalted and muchenvied felicity of bowling about in her own coach.

I appeal to you, Mr. Idler, whether any thing could be more civil, more complaisant, than this? And, would you believe it, the crea ture in return a few days after, accosted me, in an offended tone, with "Madam, I can now tell you your coach is ready; and since you are so passionately fond of one I intend you the honour of keeping a pair of horses.-You in

and horses are no part of my agreement." Base, designing wretch !-I beg your pardon, Mr. Idler, the very recital of such mean, ungentleman-like behaviour fires my blood, and lights up a flame within me. But hence, thou worst of monsters, ill-timed Rage, and let me not spoil my cause for want of temper.

"And further the said Solomon Savecharges, for divers good causes and considerations him hereunto moving, hath agreed, and doth hereby agree, that the said Solomon Savecharges Now, though I am convinced I might make shall and will, so soon as conveniently may be a worse use of part of my pin-money, than by after the solemnization of the said intended extending my bounty towards the support o marriage, at his own proper cost and charges, so useful a part of the brute creation; yet find and provide a certain vehicle or four-like a true-born Englishwoman, I am so tena wheel carriage; commonly called or known by cious of my rights and privileges, and more. the name of a coach; which said vehicle or wheel carriage, so called or known by the name of a coach, shall be used and enjoyed by the said Sukey Modish, his intended wife, (pray mind that, Mr. Idler,) "at such times and in such manner as she the said Sukey Modish shall think fit and convenient. "

Such, Mr. Idler, is the agreement my passionate admirer entered into; and what the dear frugal husband calls a performance of it remains to be described. Soon after the ceremony of signing and sealing was over, our wedding-clothes being sent home, and, in short, every thing in readiness except the coach, my own shadow was scarcely more constant than my passionate lover in his attendance on me: wearied by his perpetual importunities for what he called a completion of his bliss, I consented to make him happy; in a few days I gave him my hand, and, attended|

over so good a friend to the gentlemen of the law, that I protest, Mr. Idler, sooner than tame ly give up the point, and be quibbled out of my right, I will receive my pin-money, as it were with one hand, and pay it to them with the other; provided they will give me, or, which is the same thing, my trustees, encouragement to commence a suit against this dear, frugal husband of mine.

And of this I can't have the least shadow of doubt, inasmuch as I have been told by very good authority, it is some way or other laid down as a rule, "That whenever the law doth give any thing to one, it giveth impliedly whatever is necessary for the taking and enjoying the same."* Now, I would gladly know what

*Coke on Lyttelton.

enjoyment I, or any lady in the kingdom, can have of a coach without horses? The answer is obvics-None at all! For as Serjeant Catlyne very wisely observes, "Though a coach has wheels, to the end it may thereby and by virtue thereof be enabled to move; yet in point of utility it may as well have none, if they are not put in motion by means of its vital parts, that is, the horses."

And therefore, Sir, I humbly hope you and the learned in the law will be of opinion, that two certain animals, or quadruped creatures, commonly called or known by the name of horses, ought to be annexed to, and go along with the coach.

SUCKEY SAVECHARGES.

No. 55.] SATURDAY, MAY 5, 1759.

MR. IDLER,

I HAVE taken the liberty of laying before you my complaint, and desiring advice or consolation with the greater confidence, because I believe many other writers have suffered the same indignities with myself, and hope my quarrel will be regarded by you and your readers as the common cause of literature.

write on, for by consultation I only perplexed my thoughts and retarded my work.

The book was at last finished, and I did not doubt but my labour would be repaid by profit and my ambition satisfied with honours. I considered that natural history is neither temporary nor local, and that though I limited my inquiries to my own country, yet every part of the earth has productions common to all the rest. Civil history may be partially studied, the revolutions of one nation may be neglected by another; but after that in which all have an interest, all must be inquisitive. No man can have sunk so far into stupidity as not to consider the properties of the ground on which he walks, of the plants on which he feeds, or the animals that delight his ear, or amuse his eye: and therefore I computed that universal curiosity would call for many editions of my book, and that in five years I should gain fifteen thousand pounds by the sale of thirty thousand copies.

When I began to write, I insured the house; and suffered the utmost solicitude when I entrusted my book to the carrier, though I had secured it against mischances by lodging two transcripts in different places. At my arrival, I expected that the patrons of learning would Having been long a student, I thought my-contend for the honour of a dedication, and reself qualified in time to become an author. My solved to maintain the dignity of letters by a inquiries have been much diversified and far ex- haughty contempt of pecuniary solicitations. tended, and not finding my genius directing me I took lodgings near the house of the Royal by irresistible impulse to any particular subject, Society, and expected every morning a visit I deliberated three years which part of know- from the president. I walked in the Park, ledge to illustrate by my labours. Choice is and wondered that I overheard no mention of more often determined by accident than by rea- the great naturalist. At last I visited a noble son: I walked abroad one morning with a cu-earl, and told him of my work: he answered, rious lady, and by her inquiries and observations was incited to write the natural history of the country in which I reside,

Natural history is no work for one that loves his chair or his bed. Speculation may be pursued on a soft couch, but nature must be observed in the open air. I have collected materials with indefatigable pertinacity. I have gathered glow-worms in the evening, and snails in the morning; I have seen the daisy close and open; I have heard the owl shriek at midnight, and hunted insects in the heat of

noon.

Seven years I was employed in collecting animals and vegetables, and then found that my design was yet imperfect. The subterranean treasures of the place had been passed unobserved, and another year was to be spent in mines and coal-pits. What I had already done supplied a sufficient motive to do more. I acquainted myself with the black inhabitants of mettallic caverns, and, in defiance of damps and floods, wandered through the gloomy labyrinths, and gathered fossils from every fissure.

At last I began to write, and as I finished any section of my book, read it to such of my friends as were most skillful in the matter which it treated. None of them were satisfied; one disliked the disposition of the parts, another the colours of the style; one advised me to enlarge another to abridge. I resolved to read no more, but to take my own way and

that he was under an engagement never to subscribe. I was angry to have that refused which I did not mean to ask, and concealed my design of making him immortal. I went next day to another, and, in resentment of my late affront, offered to prefix his name to my new book. He said, coldly, that "he did not understand those things;" another thought "there were too many books ;" and another would "talk with me when the races were over."

Being amazed to find a man of learning so indecently slighted, I resolved to indulge the philosophical pride of retirement and independence. I then sent to some of the principal booksellers the plan of my book, and bespoke a large room in the next tavern, that I might more commodiously see them together, and enjoy the contest, while they were outbidding one another. I drank my coffee, and yet nobody was come; at last I received a note from one, to tell me that he was going out of town; and from another, that natural history was out of his way. At last there came a grave man, who desired to see the work, and without opening it told me, that a book of that size "would never do."/

I then condescended to step into shops, and mentioned my work to the masters. Some never dealt with authors; others had their hands full; some never had known such a dead time; others had lost by all that they had published for the last twelvemonth. One offered to print

dou

my work, if I could procure subscriptions for | 1arity, seduced by example, and inflamed by five hundred, and would allow me two hundred competition. copies for my property. I lost my patience, and gave him a kick; for which he has indicted me.

I can easily perceive that there is a combination among them to defeat my expectations; and I find it so general, that I am sure it must have been long concerted. I suppose some of my friends, to whom I read the first part, gave notice of my design, and, perhaps sold the treacherous intelligence at a higher price than the fraudulence of trade will now allow me for my book.

Inform me, Mr. Idler, what I must do; where must knowledge and industry find their recompense, thus neglected by the high and cheated by the low? I sometimes resolve to print my book at my own expense, and, like the Sibyl, double the price; and sometimes am tempted in emulation of Raleigh, to throw it into the fire, and leave this sordid generation to the curses of posterity. Tell me, dear Idler, what I shall do.

No. 56.]

I am, Sir, &c.

SATURDAY, MAY 12, 1759.

THERE is such difference between the pursuits of men, that one part of the inhabitants of a great city lives to little other purpose than to wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions, which never enter into the thoughts of others, and inquiry is laboriously exerted to gain that which those who possess it are ready to throw away.

While the stores of pride and happiness are surveyed, one looks with longing eyes and gloomy countenance on that which he despairs to gain from a rich bidder; another keeps his eye with care from settling too long on that which he most earnestly desires; and another, with more art than virtue, depreciates that which he values most, in hope to have it at an easy rate.

The novice is often surprised to see what minute and unimportant discriminations increase or diminish value. An irregular contortion of a turbinated shell, which common eyes pass unregarded, will ten times treble its price in the imagination of philosophers. Beauty is far from operating upon collectors as upon low and vulgar minds, even where beauty might be thought the only quality that could deserve notice. Among the shells that please by their variety of colours, if one can be found accidentally deformed by a cloudy spot, it is boasted as the pride of the collection. China is sometimes purchased for little less than its weight in gold, only because it is old, though neither less brittle nor better painted than the modern; and brown china is caught up with ecstacy, though no reason can be imagined for which it should be preferred to common vessels of common clay.

The fate of prints and coins is equally inexplicable. Some prints are treasured up as inestimably valuable, because the impression was made before the plate was finished. Of coins, the price rises not from the purity of the metal, the excellence of the workmanship, the eleTo those who are accustomed to value every gance of the legend, or the chronological use. thing by its use, and have no such superfluity A piece of which neither the inscription can of time or money as may prompt them to un-be read, nor the face distinguished, if there natural wants or capricious emulations, nothing appears more improbable or extravagant than the love of curiosities, or that desire of accumulating trifles, which distinguishes many by whom no other distinction could have ever been obtained.

He that has lived without knowing to what height desire may be raised by vanity, with what rapture baubles are snatched out of the hands of rival collectors, how the eagerness of one raises eagerness in another, and one worthless purchase makes a second necessary, may, by passing a few hours at an auction, learn more than can be shown by many volumes of maxims or essays.

The advertisement of a sale is a signal which at once puts a thousand hearts in motion, and brings contenders from every part to the scene of distribution. He that had resolved to buy no more, feels his constancy subdued; there is now something in the catalogue which completes his cabinet, and he was never before able to find. He whose sober reflections inform him, that of adding collection to collection there is no end, and that it is wise to leave early that which must be imperfect at last, yet cannot withhold himself from coming to see what it is that brings so many together, and when he comes is soon overpowered by his habitual passion; he is attracted by

remain of it but enough to show that it is rare, will be sought by contending nations, and dignify the treasury in which it shall be shown.

Whether this curiosity, so barren of immediate advantage, and so liable to depravation, does more harm or good, is not easily decided. Its harm is apparent at the first view. It fills the mind with trifling ambition; fixes the attention upon things which have seldom any tendency towards virtue or wisdom; employs in idle inquiries the time that is given for better purposes; and often ends in mean and dishonest practices, when desire increases by indulgence beyond the power of honest gratification.

These are the effects of curiosity in excess; but what passion in excess will not become vicious? All indifferent qualities and practices are bad if they are compared with those which are good, and good if they are opposed to those that are bad. The pride or the pleasure of making collections if it be restrained by prudence and morality, produces a pleas ing remission after more laborious studies; furnishes an amusement not wholly unprofita ble for that part of life, the greater part of many lives, which would otherwise be lost in idleness or vice; it produces a useful traffic between the industry of indigence and the