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be allowed to doubt the power of money, since | began too late; and having by nature no turn I have been a long time rich, and I have not yet found that riches can make me happy. My father was a farmer neither wealthy nor indigent, who gave me a better education than was suitable to my birth, because my uncle in the city designed me for his heir and desired that I might be bred a gentleman. My uncle's wealth was the perpetual subject of conversation in the house; and when any little misfortune befel us, or any mortification dejected us, my father always exhorted me to hold up my head, for my uncle would never marry. My uncle, indeed, kept his promise. Having his mind completely busied between his warehouse and the Change, he felt no tediousness of life, nor any want of domestic amusements. When my father died, he received me kindly; but after a few months finding no great pleasure in the conversation of each other, we parted; and he remitted me a small annuity, on which I lived a quiet and studious life, without any wish to grow great by the death of my benefactor.

for a frolic, was in great danger of ending in a I drunkard. A fever, in which not one of my companions paid me a visit, gave me time for reflection. I found that there was no great pleasure in breaking windows and lying in the round-house; and resolved to associate no longer with those whom, though I had treated and bailed them, I could not make friends.

But though I never suffered any malignant impatience to take holds on my mind, I could not forbear sometimes to imagine to myself the pleasure of being rich; and when I read of diversions and magnificence, resolved to try, when time should put the trial in my power, what pleasure they could afford.

My uncle, in the latter spring of his life, when his ruddy cheek and his firm nerves promised him a long and healthy age, died of an apoplexy. His death gave me neither joy nor sorrow. He did me good, and I regarded him with gratitude; but I could not please him, and therefore could not love him.

He had the policy of little minds who love to surprise and having always represented his fortune as less than it was, had, I suppose, often gratified himself with thinking, how I should be delighted to find myself twice as rich as I expected. My wealth was such as exceeded all the schemes of expense which I had formed; and I soon began to expand my thoughts and look round me for some purchase of felicity.

The most striking effect of riches is the splendour of dress, which every man has observed to enforce respect, and facilitate reception; and my first desire was to be fine. I sent for a tailor who was employed by the nobility, and ordered such a suit of clothes as I had often looked on with involuntary submission, and am ashamed to remember with what flutters of expectation I waited for the hour when I should issue forth in all the splendour of embroidery. The clothes were brought and for three days I observed many eyes turned towards me as I passed; but I felt myself obstructed in the common intercourse of civility, by an uneasy consciousness of my new appearance; as I thought myself more observed, I was more anxious about my mien and behaviour; and the mien which is formed by care is commonly ridiculous. A short time accustomed me to myself, and my dress was without pain and without pleasure.

For a little while I tried to be a rake, but I

I then changed my measures kept running horses, and had the comfort of seeing my name very often in the news. I had a chesnut horse, the grandson of Childers, who won four plates, and ten by-matches; and a bay filly who carried off the five-years-old plate, and was expected to perform much greater exploits, when my groom broke her wind because I happened to catch him selling oats for beer. This happiness was soon at an end; there was no pleasure when I lost, and when I won I could not much exalt myself by the virtues of any horse. I grew ashamed of the company of jockey-lords, and resolved to spend no more of my time in the stable.

It was now known that I had money, and would spend it, and I passed four months in the company of architects, whose whole business was, to persuade me to build a house. I told them that I had more room than I wanted, but could not get rid of their importunities. A new plan was brought me every morning; till at last my constancy was overpowered, and I began to build. The happiness of building lasted but a little while, for though I love to spend, I hate to be cheated; and I soon found, that to build is to be robbed.

How I proceed in the pursuit of happiness, you shall hear when I find myself disposed to write.

I am, Sir,

TIM. RANGER.

No. 63.] SATURDAy, June 30, 1759.

THE natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

The first labour is enforced by necessity. The savage finds himself incommoded by heat and cold, by rain and wind; he shelters himself in the hollow of a rock and learns to dig a cave where there was none before. He finds the sun and the wind excluded by the thicket, and when the accidents of the chase, or the convenience of pasturage, lead him into more open places, he forms a thicket for himself, by planting stakes at proper distances, and laying branches from one to another.

The next gradation of skill and industry produces a house closed with doors, and divided by partitions; and apartments are multiplied and disposed according to the various degrees of power or invention; improvement succeeds improvement, as he that is freed from a greater evil grows impatient of a less, till ease in time is advanced to pleasure.

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The mind set free from the importi nities of

natural want, gains leisure to go in search of superfluous gratifications, and adds to the uses of habitation the delights of prospect. Then begins the reign of symmetry; orders of architecture are invented, and one part of the edifice is conformed to another, without any other reason, than that the eye may not be of fended.

The passage is very short from elegance to luxury. Ionic and Corinthian columns are soon succeeded by gilt cornices, inlaid floors, and petty ornaments, which show rather the wealth than the taste of the possessor.

honour which has hitherto been denied him, of showing his countrymen that something more was to be desired, and that English verse might be exalted into poetry.

From the time of Gower and Chaucer, the English writers have studied elegance, and advanced their language, by successive improvements, to as much harmony as it can easily receive, and as much copiousness as human knowledge has hitherto required. These advances have not been made at all times with the same diligence or the same success. Negligence has suspended the course of improvement, or affectation turned it aside; time has elapsed with little change, or change has been made without amendment. But elegance has been long kept in view with attention as near to constancy as life permits, till every man now endeavours to excel others in accuracy or outshine them in splendour of style, and the danger is, lest care should too soon pass to affectation.

SATURDAY, JULY 7, 1759.

Language proceeds, like every thing else, through improvement to degeneracy. The rovers who first take possession of a country, having not many ideas, and those not nicely modified or discriminated, were contented, if by general terms and abrupt sentences they could make their thoughts known to one another; as life begins to be more regulated, and property to become limited, disputes must be decided, and claims adjusted; the differences of things are noted, and distinctness and propriety of expression become necessary. In time, No 64.] happiness and plenty give rise to curiosity, and the sciences are cultivated for ease and pleasure; to the arts, which are now to be taught, emulation soon adds the art of teach-As nature has made every man desirous of ing; and the studious and ambitious contend happiness, I flatter myself, that you and your not only who shall think best, but who shall readers cannot but feel some curiosity to tell their thoughts in the most pleasing man- know the sequel of my story; for though, by trying the different schemes of pleasure, I have yet found nothing in which I could finally acquiesce; yet the narrative of my attempts will not be wholly without use, since we always approach nearer to truth as we detect more and more varieties of error.

ner.

SIR,

TO THE IDLER.

Then begin the arts of rhetoric and poetry, the regulation of figures, the selection of words, the modulation of periods, the graces of transition, the complication of clauses, and all the delicacies of style and subtilities of composition, useful while they advance perspicuity, and laudable while they increase pleasure, but easily to be refined by needless scrupulosity till they shall more embarrass the writer than assist the reader or delight|quainted with all the men of humour, and

him.

The first state is commonly antecedent to the practice of writing; the ignorant essays of imperfect diction pass away with the savage generation that uttered them. No nation can trace their language beyond the second period, and even of that it does not often happen that many monuments remain.

The fate of the English tongue is like that of others. We know nothing of the scanty jargon of our barbarous ancestors; but we have specimens of our language when it began to be adapted to civil and religious purposes, and find it such as might naturally be expected, artless and simple, unconnected and concise. The writers seem to have desired little more than to be understood, and perhaps seldom aspired to the praise of pleasing. Their verses were considered chiefly as memorial, and therefore did not differ from prose but by the measure or the rhyme.

In this state, varied a little according to the different purposes or abilities of writers, our language may be said to have continued to the time of Gower, whom Chaucer calls his master, and who, however obscured by his scholar's popularity, seems justly to claim the

When I had sold my racers, and put the orders of architecture out of my head, my next resolution was to be a fine gentleman. I frequented the polite coffee-houses, grew ac

gained the right of bowing familiarly to half the nobility. In this new scene of life my great labour was to learn to laugh. I had been used to consider laughter as the effect of merriment; but I soon learned that it is one of the arts of adulation, and, from laughing only to show that I was pleased, I now began to laugh when I wished to please. This was at first very difficult. I sometimes heard the story with dull indifference; and, not exalting myself to merriment by due gradations, burst out suddenly into an awkward noise which was not always favourably interpreted. Sometimes I was behind the rest of the company, and lost the grace of laughing by delay, and sometimes when I began at the right time was deficient in loudness or in length. But, by diligent imitation of the best models, I attained at last such flexibility of muscles, that I was always a welcome auditor of a story, and got the reputation of a good-natured fe.low.

This was something; but much more was to be done, that I might be universally allow ed to be a fine gentleman. I appeared at court on all public days; betted at gamingtables and plaved at all the routs of eminence,

I went every night to the opera, took a fiddler] plain meat, and was therefore soon weary of of disputed merit under my protection, be- spreading a table of which I could not partake. came the head of a musical faction, and had I found that my guests, when they went sometimes concerts at my own house. I once away, criticised their entertainment and centhought to have attained the highest rank of sured my profusion; my cook thought him elegance, by taking a foreign singer into self necessary, and took upon him the di keeping. But my favourite fiddler contrived rection of the house; and I could not rid my to be arrested on the night of a concert, for a self of flatterers, or break from slavery, but finer suit of clothes than I had ever presumed by shutting up my house, and declaring my reto wear, and I lost all the fame of patronage solution to live in lodgings. by refusing to bail him.

My next ambition was to sit for my picture. I spent a whole winter in going from painter to painter, to bespeak a whole length of one, and a half length of another, I talked of nothing but attitudes, draperies, and proper lights; took my friends to see the pictures after every sitting; heard every day of a wonderful performer in crayons and miniature, and sent my pictures to be copied; was told by the judges that they were not like, and was recommended to other artists. At length being not able to please my friends, I grew less pleased myself, and at last resolved to think no more about it.

After all this, tell me, dear Idler, what I
must do next; I have health, I have money,
and I hope that I have understanding; yet,
with all these, I have never been able to pass
a single day which I did not wish at an end
before sunset. Tell me, dear Idler, what I
shall do.
I am,

Your humble servant,
TIM. RANGER.

No. 65.] SATURDAY, JULY 14, 1759.

THE sequel of Clarendon's history, at last It was impossible to live in total idleness: happily published, is an accession to English and wandering about in search of something literature equally agreeable to the admirers of to do I was invited to a weekly meeting of elegance and the lovers of truth; many virtuosos, and felt myself instantaneously doubtful facts may now be ascertained, and seized with an unextinguishable ardour for all many questions, after long debate, may be denatural curiosities. I ran from auction to auc-termined by decisive authority. He that retion, became a critic in shells and fossils, cords transactions in which himself was enbought a Hortus siccus of inestimable value, gaged has not only an opportunity of knowand purchased a secret art of preserving in- ing innumerable particulars which escape sects, which made my collection the envy of spectators, but has his natural powers exalted the other philosophers. I found this pleasure by that ardour which always rises at the remingled with much vexation. All the faults membrance of our own importance, and by of my life were for nine months circulated which every man is enabled to relate his own through the town with the most active malig- actions better than another's. nity, because I happened to catch a moth of peculiar variegation; and because I once outbid all the lovers of shells, and carried off a nautilus, it was hinted that the validity of my uncle's will ought to be disputed. I will not deny that I was very proud both of the moth and of the shell, and gratified myself with the envy of my companions, and perhaps more than became a benevolent being. But in time I grew weary of being hated for that which produced no advantage, gave my shells to children that wanted play-things, and suppressed the art of drying butterflies, because I would not tempt idleness and cruelty to kill

them.

I now began to feel life tedious, and wished to store myself with friends, with whom I might grow old in the interchange of benevolence. I had observed that popularity was most easily gained by an open table, and therefore hired a French cook, furnished my sideboard with great magnificence, filled my cellar with wines of pompous appellations, bought every thing that was dear before it was good, and invited all those who were most famous for judging of a dinner. In three weeks my cook gave me warning, and, upon inquiry told me that Lord Queasy, who dined with me the day before, had sent him an offer of double wages. My pride prevailed: I raised his wages, and invited his lordship to another feast. I love

The difficulties through which this work has struggled into light, and the delays with which our hopes have been long mocked, naturally lead the mind to the consideration of the common fate of posthumous compositions.

He who sees himself surrounded by admirers, and whose vanity is hourly feasted with all the luxuries of studied praise, is easily persuaded that his influence will be extended beyond his life; that they who cringe in his presence will reverence his memory, and that those who are proud to be numbered among his friends, will endeavour to vindicate his choice by zeal for his reputation.

With hopes like these, to the executors of Swift was committed the history of the last years of Queen Anne, and to those of Pope, the works which remained unprinted in his closet. The performances of Pope were burnt by those whom he had perhaps selected from all mankind as most likely to publish them; and the history had likewise perished, had not a straggling transcript fallen into busy hands.

The papers left in the closet of Pieresc, sup plied his heirs with a whole winter's fuel; and many of the labours of the learned bishop Lloyd were consumed in the kitchen of his descendants.

Some works, indeed, have escaped total destruction, but yet have had reason to lament

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The original copy of Burnet's history, though promised to some public library, has been never given; and who then can prove the fidelity of the publication, when the authenticity of Clarendon's history, though printed with the sanction of one of the first universities of the world, had not an unexpected manuscript been happily discovered, would, with the help of factious credulity, have been brought into question by the two lowest of all human beings, a scribbler for a party, and a commissioner of ex

cise?

No. 66.] SATURDAY, JULY 21, 1759

No complaint is more frequently repeated among the learned, than that of the waste made by time among the labours of antiquity. Of those who once filled the civilized world with their renown, nothing is now left but their names which are left only to raise desires that never can be satisfied, and sorrow which never can be comforted.

Had all the writings of the ancients been faithfully delivered down from age to age, had the Alexandrian library been spared, and the Palatine repositories remained unimpaired, how much might we have known of which we are now doomed to be ignorant! how many laborious inquiries, and dark conjectures; how many collations of broken hints, and muVanity is often no less mischievous than neg-tilated passages might have been spared! ligence or dishonesty. He that possesses a We should have known the successions of valuable manuscript, hopes to raise its esteem princes, the revolutions of empire, the actions by concealment, and delights in the distinction of the great, and opinions of the wise, the which he imagines himself to obtain by keep- laws and constitutions of every state, and the ing the key of a treasure which he neither uses arts by which public grandeur and happiness nor imparts. From him it falls to some other are acquired and preserved; we should have owner, less vain but more negligent, who con- traced the progress of life, seen colonies from sider it as useless lumber, and rids himself of distant regions take possession of European the incumbrance. deserts, and troops of savages settled into communities by the desire of keeping what they had acquired; we should have traced the gradations of civility, and travelled upward to the original of things by the light of history, till in remoter time it had glimmered in fable, and at last sunk into darkness.

Yet there are some works which the authors must consign unpublished to posterity, however uncertain be the event, however hopeless be the trust. He that writes the history of nis own times, if he adheres steadily to truth, will write that which his own times will not easily endure. He must be content to reposite his book till all private passions shall cease, and love and hatred give way to curiosity.

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But many leave the labours of half their life to their executors and to chance, because they will not send them abroad unfinished, and are unable to finish them, having prescribed to themselves such a degree of exactness as human diligence can scarcely attain. Lloyd," says Burnet, "did not lay out his learning with the same diligence as he laid it in." He was always hesitating and inquiring, raising objections and removing them, and waiting for clearer light and fuller discovery. Baker, after many years passed in biography, left his manuscripts to be buried in a library, because that was imperfect which could never be perfected.

Of these learned men, let those who aspire to the same praise imitate the diligence, and avoid the scrupulosity. Let it be always remembered that life is short, that knowledge is endless, and that many doubts deserve not to be cleared. Let those whom nature and study have qualified to teach mankind, tell us what they have learned while they are yet able to tell it, and trust their reputation only to themselves.

It would be proper to reposite, in some rublic place, the manuscript of Clarendon, which has no escaped all suspicion of unfaithful publication.

If the works of imagination had been less diminished, it is likely that all future times might have been supplied with inexhaustible amusement by the fictions of antiquity. The tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides would have shown all the stronger passions in all their diversities; and the comedies of Menander would have furnished all the maxims domestic life. Nothing would have bet necessary to mortal wisdom but to have studi these great masters, whose knowledge would have guided doubt, and whose authority would have silenced cavils.

Such are the thoughts that rise in every stu dent, when his curiosity is eluded, and his searches are frustrated; yet it may perhaps be doubted, whether our complaints are not sometimes inconsiderate, and whether we do not imagine more evil than we feel. Of the ancients, enough remains to excite our emulation and direct our endeavours. Many of the works which time has left us, we know to have been those that were most esteemed, and which antiquity itself considered as models; so that, having the originals, we may without much regret lose the imitations. which the want of contemporary writers often produces, only darkens single passages, and those commonly of slight importance. The general tendency of every piece may be known: and though that diligence deserves praise which leaves nothing unexamined, yet its mis carriages are not much to be lamented; for the most useful truths are always universal, and unconnected with accidents and customs. Such is the general conspiracy of human

The obscurity

nature against contemporary merit, that, if we had inherited from antiquity enough to afford employment for the labourious, and amusement for the ile, I know not what room would have been left for modern genius or modern industry; almost every subject would have been pre-occupied, and every style would have been fixed by a precedent from which few would have ventured to depart Every writer would have had a rival, whose superiority was already acknowledged, and to whose fame his work would, even before it was seen, be marked out for a sacrifice.

We see how little the united experience of mankind hath been able to add to the heroic characters displayed by Homer, and how few incidents the fertile imagination of modern Italy has yet produced which may not be found in the Iliad and Odyssey. It is likely that if all the works of the Athenian philosophers had been extant, Malbranche and Locke would have been condemned to be silent readers of the ancient metaphysicians; and it is apparent, that, if the old writers had all remained, the Idler could not have written a disquisition on the loss.

No. 67.] SATUrday, July 28, 1759.

TO THE IDLER.

Mem. The following three days I propose to give up to reading; and intend, after all the delays which have obtruded themselves upon me, to finish my "Essay on the Extent of the Mental Powers;" to revise my "Treatise on Logic;" to begin the "Epic" which I have long projected; to proceed in my persual of the "Scriptures with Grotius's Comment;" and at my leisure to regale myself with the works of classics, ancient and modern, and to finish my "Ode to Astronomy.

Monday. Designed to rise at six, but, by my servant's laziness, my fire was not lighted before eight; when I dropped into a slamber that lasted till nine, at which time I arose, and after breakfast at ten sat down to study, proposing to begin upon my Essay: but, finding occasion to consult a passage in Plato, was absorbed in the persual of the Republic till twelve. I had neglected to forbid company, and now enters Tom Careless, who after half an hour's chat, insisted upon my going with him to enjoy an absurd character, that he had appointed, by an advertisement, to meet him at a particular coffee-house. After we had for some time entertained ourselves with him, we sallied out, designing each to repair his home; but, as it fell out, coming up in the street to a man whose steel by his side declared him a butcher, we overheard him opening an address to a genteelish sort of young lady, whom he walked with: " Miss, though your father is master of a coal-lighter, and you will be a great fortune, 'tis true; yet I wish I may be cut into quarters, if it is not only love, and not lucre of gain, that is my motive for offering terms of marriage." As this lover proceeded in his speech, he misled us the length of three streets, in admiration at the unlimited power of the tender passion that could soften even the heart of a butcher. We then adjourned to a This opinion is, perhaps, generally true; tavern, and from thence to one of the public yet when we contemplate the inquisitive nature gardens, where I was regaled with a most of the human mind, and its perpetual impa- amusing variety of men, possessing great tatience of all restraint, it may be doubted whe-lents, so discoloured by affectation, that they ther the faculties may not be contracted by confining the attention; and whether it may not sometimes be proper to risk the certainty of little for the chance of much. Acquisitions of knowledge, like blazes of genius, are often fortuitous. Those who had proposed to themselves a methodical course of reading, light by accident on a new book, which seizes their thoughts and kindles their curiosity, and opens an unexpected prospect, to which the way which they had prescribed to themselves would never have conducted them.

SIR, IN the observations which you have made on the various opinions and pursuits of mankind, you must often, in literary conversations, have met with men who consider dissipation as the great enemy of the intellect; and maintain, that, in proportion as the student keeps himself within the bounds of a settled plan, he will certainly advance in science.

To enforce and illustrate my meaning, I have sent you a journal of three days' employment, found among the papers of a late intimate acquaintance; who, as will plainly appear, was a man of vast designs, and of vast performances, though he sometimes designed one thing and performed another. I allow that the Spectator's inimitable productions of this kind may well discourage all subsequent journalists; but as the subject of this is different from that of any which the Spectator has given us, I leave it to you to publish or suppress

it.

only made them eminently ridiculous; shallow things, who, by continual dissipation, had annihilated the few ideas nature had given them, and yet were celebrated for wonderful pretty gentlemen; young ladies extolled for their wit, because they were handsome; illiterate empty women, as well as men, in high life, admired for their knowledge, from their being resolutely positive; and women of real understanding so far from pleasing the polite million, that they frightened them away, and were left solitary. When we quitted this entertaining scene, Tom pressed me irresistibly to sup with him. I reached home at twelve, and then reflected, that though indeed I had, by remark ing various characters, improved my insight into human nature, yet still I neglected the studies proposed, and accordingly took up my Treatise on Logic, to give it the intented revisal, but found my spirits too much agitated, and could not forbear a few satirical lines, under the title of "The Evening's Walk."

Tuesday, At breakfast, seeing my "Ode to Astronomy" lying on my desk, I was struck with a train of ideas, that I thought might

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