SIR, TO THE IDLER. As I was passing lately under one of the gates of this city, I was struck with horror by a rueful cry which summoned me to remember the poor debtors. The wisdom and justice of the English laws are, by Englishmen at least loudly, celebrated: but scarcely the most zealous admirers of our institutions can think that law wise, which, when men are capable of work, obliges them to beg; or just, which exposes the liberty of one to the passions of another. The prosperity of a people is proportionate to the number of hands and minds usefully employed. To the community, sedition is a fever, corruption is a gangrene, and idleness is an atrophy. Whatever body, and whatever society wastes more than it acquires, must gradually decay; and every being that continues to be fed, and ceases to labour, takes away something from the public stock. The confinement, therefore, of any man in the sloth and darkness of a prison, is a loss to the nation, and no gain to the creditor. For of the multitudes who are pining in those cells of misery, a very small part is suspected of any fraudulent act by which they retain what belongs to others. The rest are imprisoned by the wantonness of pride, the malignity of revenge, or the acrimony of dissappointed expectation. Since poverty is punished among us as a crime, it ought at least to be treated with the same lenity as other crimes: the offender ought not to languish at the will of him whom he has offended, but to be allowed some appeal to the justice of his country. There can be no reason why any debtor should be imprisoned, but that he may be compelled to payment; and a term should therefore be fixed, in which the creditor should exhibit his accusation of concealed property. If such property can be discovered, let it be given to the creditor; if the charge is not offered, or cannot be proved, let the prisoner be dismissed. Those who made the laws have apparently supposed, that every deficiency of payment is the crime of the debtor. But the truth is, that the creditor always shares the act, and often more than shares the guilt of improper trust. It seldom happens that any man imprisons another but for debts which he suffered to be contracted in hope of advantage to himself, and for bargains in which he proportioned his profit to his own opinion of the hazard; and there is no reason why one should punish the other for a contract in which both concurred. Many of the inhabitants of prisons may justly complain of harder treatment. He that once owes more than he can pay, is often obliged to bribe his creditor to patience, by increasing hi debt. Worse and worse commodities, at a higher and higher price, are forced upon him; he is impoverished by compulsive traffic, and at last overwhelmed, in the common receptacles of misery, by debts, which, without his own consent, were accumulated on his head. To the relief of this distress, no other objection can be made, but that by an easy dissolution of debts, fraud will be left without punishment, and imprudence without awe; and that when insolvency should be no longer punishable, credit will cease. he designs to sue, is criminal by the act of trustthe cessation of such insiduous traffic is to be desired, and no reason can be given why a change of the law should impair any other. If those, who thus rigorously exercise the The motive to credit is the hope of advanpower which the law has put into their hands, tage. Commerce can never be at a stop, while be asked, why they continue to imprison those one man wants what another can supply; and whom they know to be unable to pay them? credit will never be denied, while it is likely to one will answer, that his debtor once lived bet-be repaid with profit. He that trusts one whom ter than himself; another, that his wife looked above her neighbours, and his children went in silk clothes to the dancing-school; and another, that he pretended to be a joker and a wit. Some will reply, that if they were in debt, they should We see nation trade with nation, where no meet with the same treatment; some, that they payment can be compelled. Mutual conveni owe no more than they can pay, and need there-ence produces mutual confidence; and the mer fore give no account of their actions. Some will confess their resolution that their debtors shall rot in gaol; and some will discover, that they hope, by cruelty, to wring the payment from their friends. chants continue to satisfy the demands of each other, though they have nothing to dread but the loss of trade. It is vain to continue an institution, which experience shows to be ineffectual. We have now imprisoned one generation of debtors after another, but we do not find that their numbers lessen. We have now learned that rashness and imprudence will not be deterred from taking credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily restrained from giv The end of all civil regulations is, to secure private happiness from private malignity; to keep individuals from the power of one another: but this end is apparently neglected, when a man, irritated with loss, is allowed to be the judge of his own cause, and to assign the punishment of his own pain; when the distinc-ing it. tion between guilt and happiness, between casualty and design, is entrusted to eyes blind with interest, to understandings depraved by resentment. I am, Sir, &c. other. Many accidents therefore may happen, by which the ardour of kindness will be abated, without criminal baseness or contemptible inconstancy on either part. To give pleasure is not always in our power; and little does he know himself, who believes that he can be always able to receive it. Those who would gladly pass their days together may be separated by the different course of their affairs: and friendship, like love, is destroyed by long absence, though it may be increased by short intermissions. What we rate. There is scarcely any man without some favourite trifle which he values above greate. attainments, some desire of petty praise which he cannot patiently suffer to be frustrated. This minute ambition is sometimes crossed before it is known, and sometimes defeated by wanton petulance; but such attacks are seldom made without the loss of friendship; for whoever has once found the vulnerable part will always be feared, and the resentment will burn on in secret, of which shame hinders the discovery. This, however, is a slow malignity, which a wise man will obviate as inconsistent with quiet, and a good man will repress as contrary to virtue; but human happiness is sometimes violated by some more sudden strokes. A dispute begun in jest upon a subject which a moment before was on both parts regarded with careless indifference, is continued by the desire of conquest, till vanity kindles into rage, and opposition rankles into enmity. Against this hasty mischief, I know not what security can be obtained; men will be sometimes surprised into quarrels; and though they might both hasten to reconciliation, as soon as their tumult had subsided, yet two minds will seldom their discontent, or immediately enjoy the be found together, which can at once subdue sweets of peace, without remembering the wounds of the conflict. Friendship has other enemies. Suspicion is have missed long enough to want it, we value always hardening the cautious, and disgust repelling the delicate. Very slender differences more when it is regained; but that which has will sometimes part those whom long reciprobeen lost till it is forgotten, will be found at cation of civility or beneficence has united. last with little gladness, and with still less, if Lonelove and Ranger retired into the country a substitute has supplied the place. A man deprived of the companion to whom he used to turned in six weeks cold and petulant: Ranto enjoy the company of each other, and reopen his bosom, and with whom he shared the ger's pleasure was, to walk in the fields, and hours of leisure and merriment, feels the day Lonelove's to sit in a bower; each had comat first hanging heavy on him; his difficul-plied with the other in his turn, and each was ties oppress, and his doubts distract him; he sees time come and go without his wonted gratification, and all is sadness within and solitude about him. But this uneasiness never lasts long; necessity produces expedients, new amusements are discovered, and new conver sation is admitted. No expectation is more frequently disappointed, than that which naturally arises in the mind from the prospect of meeting an old friend after long separation. We expect the attraction to be revived, and the coalition to be renewed; no man considers how much alteration time has made in himself, and very few inquire what effect it has had upon others. The first hour convinces them, that the pleasure which they have formerly enjoyed, is forever at an end; different scenes have made different impressions; the opinions of both are changed; and that similitude of manners and sentiment is lost which confirmed them both in the approbation of themselves. angry that compliance had been exacted. The most fatal disease of friendship is grad ual decay, or dislike hourly increased by causes too slender for complaint and too numerous for removal. Those who are angry may be reconciled; those who have been injured may receive a recompense; but when the desire of pleasing and willingness to be pleased is silently diminished, the renovation of friendship is hopeless; as, when the vital powers sink into langour, there is no longer any use of the physician. No. 24.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 30, 1758. WHEN man sees one of the inferior creatures perched upon a tree or basking in the sunshine, without any apparent endeavour or pursuit, he often asks himself, or his companion, On what that animal can be supposed to be thinking? Of this question since neither bird nor beast can answer it, we must be content to live with Friendship is often destroyed by opposition of interest, not only by the ponderous and visi-out the resolution. We know not how much ble interest which the desire of wealth and greatness forms and maintains, but by a thousand secret and slight competitions, scarcely known to the mind upon which they ope the brutes recollect of the past, or anticipate of the future; what power they have of comparing and preferring; or whether their faculties may not rest in motionless indifference, till they are moved by the presence of their proper object, I day do something which we forget when it is or stimulated to act by corporal sensations. I am the less inclined to these superfluous inquiries, because I have always been able to find sufficient matter for curiosity in my own species. It is useless to go far in quest of that which may be found at home; a very narrow circle of observation will supply a sufficient number of men and women, who might be asked, with equal propriety, On what they can be thinking? It is reasonable to believe, that thought, like every thing else, has its causes and effects; that it must proceed from something known, done, or suffered; and must produce some action or event. Yet how great is the number of those in whose minds no source of thought has ever been opened, in whose life no thought of consequence is ever discovered; who have learned nothing upon which they can reflect; who have neither seen nor felt any thing which could leave its traces on the memory; who neither foresee nor desire any change of their condition, and have therefore neither fear hope, nor design, and yet are supposed to be thinking beings. done, and know to have been done only by consequence. The waking hours are not denied to have been passed in thought; yet he that shall endeavour to recollect on one day the ideas of the former, will only turn the eye of reflection upon vacancy; he will find, that the greater part is irrevocably vanished, and wonder how the moments could come and go, and leave so little behind them. To discover only that the arguments on both sides are defective, and to throw back the tenet into its former uncertainty, is the sport of wanton or malevolent scepticism, delighting to see the sons of philosophy at work upon a task which never can be decided. I shall suggest an argument hitherto overlooked, which may perhaps determine the controversy. If it be impossible to think without materials, there must necessarily be minds that do not always think; and whence shall we furnish materials for the meditation of the glutton between his meals, of the sportsman in a rainy month, of the annuitant between the days of quarterly payment, of the politician when the mails are detained by contrary winds? To every act a subject is required. He that But how frequent soever may be the examthinks must think upon something. But tell ples of existence without thought, it is certainly me, ye that pierce deepest into nature, ye that a state not much to be desired. He that lives take the widest surveys of life, inform me, kind in torpid insensibility, wants nothing of a carshades of Malbranche and of Locke, what cass but putrefaction. It is the part of every that something can be, which excites and con- inhabitant of the earth to partake the pains and tinues thought in maiden aunts with small for- pleasures of his fellow-beings; and, as in a tunes; in younger brothers that live upon an-road through a country desert and uniform, the nuities; in traders retired from business; in traveller languishes for want of amusement, so soldiers absent from their regiments; or in the passage of life will be tedious and irksome widows that have no children? to him who does not beguile it by diversified ideas. TO THE IDLER. Life is commonly considered as either active or contemplative; but surely this division, how long soever it has been received, is inadequate and fallacious. There are mortals whose life No. 25.] SATURDAY, OCT. 7, 1758. is certainly not active for they do neither good nor evil; and whose life cannot be properly called contemplative, for they never attend either to the conduct of men, or the works of nature, but rise in the morning, look round them till night in careless stupidity, go to bed and sleep, and rise again in the morning. It has been lately a celebrated question in the schools of philosophy, Whether the soul always thinks? Some have defined the soul to be the power of thinking; concluded that its essence consists in act; that, if it should cease to act, it would cease to be; and that cessation of thought is but another name for extinction of mind. This argument is subtile, but not conclusive; because it supposes what cannot be proved, that the nature of mind is properly defined. Others affect to disdain subtilty, when subtilty will not serve their purpose, and appeal to daily experience. We spend many hours, they say, in sleep, without the least remembrance of any thoughts which then passed in our minds; and since we can only by our own consciousness be sure that we think, why thould we imagine that we have had thought of which no consciousness remains? This argument, which appeals to experience, may from experience be confuted. We every SIR, I AM am a very constant frequenter of the playhouse, a place to which I suppose the Idler not much a stranger, since he can have no where else so much entertainment with so little concurrence of his own endeavour. At all other assemblies he that comes to receive delight, will be expected to give it; but in the theatre nothing is necessary to the amusement of two hours, but to sit down and be willing to be pleased. The last week has offered two new actors to the town. The appearance and retirement of actors are the great events of the theatrical world; and their first performance fills the pit with conjecture and prognostication, as the first actions of a new monarch agitate nations with hope or fear. What opinion I have formed of the future excellence of these candidates for dramatic glory, it is not necessary to declare. Their entrance gave me a higher and nobler pleasure than any borrowed character can afford. I saw the ranks of the theatre emulating each other in candour and humanity, and contending who should most effectually assist the struggles of endeavour, dissipate the blush of diffidence, | They that enter into the world are too often and still the flutter of timidity. This behaviour is such as becomes a people, too tender to repress those who wish to please, too generous to insult those who can make no resistance. A public performer is so much in the power of spectators, that all unnecessary severity is restrained by that general law of humanity which forbids us to be cruel, where there is nothing to be feared. In every new performer something must be pardoned. No man can by any force of resolution, secure to himself the full posession of his own powers under the eye of a large assembly. Variation of gesture, and flexion of voice, are to be obtained only by experience. There is nothing for which such numbers think themselves qualified as for theatrical exhibition. Every human being has an action graceful to his own eye, a voice musical to his own ear, and a sensibility which nature forbids him to know that any other bosom can excel. An art in which such numbers fancy themselves excellent, and which the public liberally rewards, will excite many competitors, and in many attempts there must be many miscarriages. treated with unreasonable rigour by those that were once as ignorant and heady as themselves; and distinction is not always made between the faults which require speedy and violent eradica. tion, and those that will gradually drop away in the progression of life. Vicious solicitations of appetite, if not checked will grow more importunate; and mean arts of profit or ambi. tion will gather strength in the mind, if they are not early suppressed, But mistaken notions of superiority, desires of useless show, pride of little accomplishments, and all the train of vanity, will be brushed away by the wing of Time. Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings; let it watch diligently against the incursion of vice, and leave foppery and futility to die of themselves. No. 26.] SATURDAY, OCT. 14, 1758. MR. IDLER, I NEVER thought that I should write any thing to be printed; but having lately seen your first essay, which was sent down into the kitchen, with a great bundle of gazettes and uselss pa pers, I find that you are willing to admit any correspondent, and therefore hope you will not reject me. If you publish my letter, it may encourage others, in the same condition with myself, to tell their stories, which may be per haps as useful as those of great ladies. The care of the critic should be to distinguish error from inability, faults of inexperience from defects of nature. Action irregular and turbulent may be reclaimed; vociferation vehement and confused may be restrained and modulated; the stalk of the tyrant may become the gait of the man; the yell of inarticulate distress may be reduced to human lamentation. All these I am a poor girl. I was bred in the country faults should be for a time overlooked, and af- at a charity-school, maintained by the contriterwards censured with gentleness and can-butions of wealthy neighbours. The ladies, or dour. But if in an actor there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid languor, a torbid apathy, the greatest kindness that can be shown him, is a speedy sentence of expulsion. I am, Sir &c. The plea which my correspondent has offered for young actors, I am very far from wishing to invalidate. I always considered those combinations which are sometimes formed in the playhouse, as acts of fraud or of cruelty; he that applauds him who does not deserve praise, is endeavouring to deceive the public: he that hisses in malice or sport, is an oppressor and a robber. patronesses, visited us from time to time, examined how we were taught, and saw that our clothes were clean. We lived happily enough, and were instructed to be thankful to those at whose cost we were educated. I was always the favourite of my mistress; she used to call me to read, and show my copy-book to all strangers, who never dismissed me without commendation, and very seldom without a shilling. At last the chief of our subscribers, having passed a winter in London, came down full of an opinion new and strange to the whole country. She held it little less than criminal to teach poor girls to read and write. They who are born to poverty, said she, are born to ignorance, and will work the harder the less they know. But surely this laudable forbearance might be justly extended to young poets. The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by She told her friends, that London was in slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and confusion by the insolence of servants; that discriminating comic characters, or of filling scarcely a wench was to be got for allwork, since tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift education had made such numbers of fine laof nature, which no instruction nor labour candies, that nobody would now accept a lower title supply; but the art of dramatic disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the opposition of characters, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension, and the stratagems of surprise are to be learned by practice; and it is cruel to discourage a poet for ever, because he has not from genius what only experience can bestow. Life is a stage. Let me likewise solicit candour for the young actor on the stage of life. than that of a waiting-maid or something that might qualify her to wear laced shoes and long ruffles, and to sit at work in the parlour window. But she was resolved, for her part, to spoil no more girls; those, who were to live by their hands, should neither read nor write out of her pocket; the world was bad enough already, and she would have no part in making it worse. She was for a short time wamly opposed but she persevered in her notions, and with-first; when I was playing with one in my lap, drew her subscription. Few listen without a I was forced to keep the rest in expectation. desire of conviction to those who advise them to That which was not gratified always resented spare their money. Her example and her ar- the injury with a loud outcry, which put my guments gained ground daily; and in less than mistress in a fury at me, and procured sugar. a year the whole parish was convinced, that plums to the child. I could not keep six chilthe nation would be ruined, if the children of dren quiet, who were bribed to be clamorous the poor were taught to read and write. and was therefore dismissed, as a girl honest, but not good-natured. Our school was now dissolved; my mistress kissed me when we parted, and told me, that, being old and helpless, she could not assist me, advised me to seek a service, and charged me not to forget what I had learned. My reputation for scholarship, which had hitherto recommended me to favour, was, by the adherents to the new opinion, considered as a crime; and, when I offered myself to any mistress, I had no other answer than Sure, child, you would not work! hard work is not fit for a pen-woman; a scrubbing brush would spoil your hand, child! But I then lived with a couple that kept a petty shop of remnants and cheap linen. I was qualified to make a bill or keep a book; and being therefore often called, at a busy time, to serve the customers, expected that I should now be happy, in proportion as I was useful. my mistress appropriated every day part of the profit to some private use, and, as she grew bolder in her theft, at last deducted such sums, that my master began to wonder how he sold so much, and gained so little. She pretended to assist his inquiries, and began, very gravely, I could not live at home; and while I was to hope that Betty was honest, and yet those sharp considering to what I should betake me, one of girls were apt to be light fingered. You will bethe girls, who had gone from our school to Lon-lieve that I did not stay there much longer. don, came down in a silk gown and told her acquaintance how well she lived, what fine things she saw, and what great wages she received. I resolved to try my fortune, and took my passage in the next week's wagon to London. I had no snares laid for me at my arrival, but came safe to a sister of my mistress, who undertook to get me a place. She knew only the families of mean tradesmen; and I, having no high opinion of my own qualifications, was willing to accept the first offer. The rest of my story I will tell you in ano- Your very humble servant, No. 27.] SATUrday, Oct. 21, 1758. to learn his own powers and his own weakness, to observe by what evils he is most dangerously beset, and by what temptations most easily overcome. My first mistress was wife of a working watchmaker, who earned more than was suffi- Ir has been the endeavour of all those whom cient to keep his family in decency and plenty; the world has reverenced for superior wisdom, but it was their constant practice to hire ato persuade man to be acquainted with himself, chaise on Sunday, and spent half the wages of the week on Richmond Hill; of Monday he commonly lay half in bed, and spent the other half in merriment; Tuesday and Wednesday consumed the rest of his money; and three days every week were passed in extremity of want by us who were left at home, while my master lived on trust at an ale-house. You may be sure, that of the sufferers, the maid suffered most; and I left them, after three months, rather than be starved. I was then maid to a hatter's wife. There was no want to be dreaded, for they lived in perpetual luxury. My mistress was a diligent woman, and rose early in the morning to set the journeymen to work; my master was a man much beloved by his neighbours, and sat at one club or other every night. I was obliged to wait on my master at night, and on my mistress in the morning. He seldom came home before two, and she rose at five. I could no more live without sleep than without food, and therefore entreated them to look out for another servant. My next removal was to a linen-draper's, who had six children. My mistress, when I first entered the house, informed me, that I must never contradict the children, nor suffer them to cry. I had no desire to offend, and readily promised to do my best. But when I gave them their breakfast, I could not help all This counsel has been often given with serious dignity, and often received with appearance of conviction; but, as very few can search deep into their own minds without meeting what they wish to hide from themselves, scarcely any man persists in cultivating such disagreeable acquaintance, but draws the veil again between his eyes and his heart, leaves his passions and appetites as he found them, and advises others to look into themselves. This is the common result of inquiry even among those that endeavour to grow wiser or better; but this endeavour is far enough from frequency; the greater part of the multitudes that swarm upon the earth have never been disturbed by such uneasy curiosity, but deliver themselves up to business or to pleasure, plunge into the current of life, whether placid or turbulent, and pass on from one point of prospect to another, attentive rather to any thing than the state of their minds; satisfied, at an easy rate, with an opinion, that they are no worse than others, that every man must mind his own interest, or that their pleasures hurt only themselves, and are therefore no proper subjects of censure Some, however, there are, whom the intru |