No. 8.] SATURday, June 3, 1758.

TO THE IDLER.

SIR, In the time of public danger, it is every man's duty to withdraw his thoughts in some measure from his private interest, and employ part of his time for the general welfare. National conduct ought to be the result of national wisdom, a plan formed by mature consideration and diligent selection out of all the schemes which may be offered, and all the information which can be procured.

In a battle, every man should fight as if he was the single champion; in preparations for war, every man should think, as if the last event depended on his counsel. None can tell what discoveries are within his reach, or how much he may contribute to the public safety.

lon, or Paris itself, with all the usual preparation for defence: let the inclosure be filled with beef and ale; let the soldiers from some proper eminence, see shirts waving upon lines, and here and there a plump landlady hurrying about with pots in their hands. When they are sufficiently animated to advance, lead them in exact order, with fife and drum, to that side whence the wind blows, till they come within the scent of roast meat and tobacco.Contrive that they may approach the place fasting, about half an hour after dinner-time, assure them that there is no danger, and command an attack.

If nobody within either moves or speaks, it is not unlikely that they may carry the place by storm; but if a panic should seize them, it will be proper to defer the enterprise to a more hungry hour. When they have entered, let them fill their bellies and return to the camp.

Full of these considerations, I have carefully On the next day let the same place be shown reviewed the process of the war, and find, what them again, but with some additions of strength every other man has found, that we have or terror. I cannot pretend to inform our genhitherto added nothing to our military reputa-erals through what gradations of danger they tion: that at one time we have been beaten by enemies whom we did not see; and, at another, have avoided the sight of enemies lest we should be beaten.

Whether our troops are defective in discipline or in courage, is not very useful to inquire; they evidently want something necessary to success; and he that shall supply that want will deserve well of his country.

To learn of an enemy has always been accounted politic and honourable; and, therefore, I hope it will raise no prejudice against my project, to confess that I borrowed it from a Frenchman.

should train their men to fortitude. They best know what the soldiers and what themselves can bear. It will be proper that the war should every day vary its appearance. Sometimes, as they mount the rampart, a cook may throw fat upon the fire, to accustom them to a sudden blaze; and sometimes by the clatter of empty pots, they may be inured to formidable noises. But let it never be forgotten, that victory must repose with a full belly.

In time it will be proper to bring our French prisoners from the coast, and place them upon the walls in martial order. At their first appearance their hands must be tied, but they may be allowed to grin. In a month the may guard the place with their hands loosed, provided that on pain of death they be forbidden to strike.

By this method our army will soon be brought to look an enemy in the face. But it has been lately observed, that fear is received by the ear as well as the eyes; and the Indian war-cry is represented as too dreadful to be endured; as a sound that will force the bravest veteran to drop his weapon, and desert his rank; that will deafen his ear and chill his breast; that will neither suffer him to hear orders or to feel shame, or retain any sensibility but the dread of death.

When the Isle of Rhodes was, many centuries ago, in the hands of that military order, now called the Knights of Malta, it was ravaged by a dragon, who inhabited a den under a rock, from which he issued forth when he was hungry or wanton, and without fear or mercy devoured men and beasts as they came in his way. Many councils were held, and many devices offered, for his destruction; but as his back was armed with impenetrable scales, none would venture to attack him. At last Dudon, a French knight, undertook the deliverance of the island. From some place of security he took a view of the dragon, or, as a modern soldier would say, reconnoitered him, and observed that his belly was naked and vul- That the savage clamours of naked barbanerable. He then returned home to take his rians should thus terrify troops disciplined to arrangements; and, by a very exact imitation war, and ranged in array with arms in their of nature, made a dragon of pasteboard, in the hands, is surely strange. But this is no time belly of which he put beef and mutton, and to reason. I am of opinion, that by a proper accustomed two sturdy mastiffs to feed them- mixture of asses, bulls, turkeys, geese, and selves by tearing their way to the concealed tragedians, a noise might be procured equally flesh. When his dogs were well practised in horrid with the war-cry. When our men have this method of plunder, he marched out with been encouraged by frequent victories, noth them at his heels, and showed them the dra-ing will remain but to qualify them for exgon, they rushed upon him in quest of their dinner; Dudon battered his skull, while they lacerated his belly; and neither his sting nor claws were able to defend him.

Something like this might be practised in our present state. Let a fortification be raised on Salisbury-Plain, resembling Brest, or Tou

treme danger, by a sudden concert of terrific vociferation. When they have endured this last trial, let them be led to action, as men who are no longer to be frightened; as men who can bear at once the grimaces of the Gauls, and the howl of the Americans.

tions which he does not desire ever to be an- | in our ships, nor caterpillars in our trees. He swered.

No. 10.] SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1758. CREDULITY, or confidence of opinion too great for the evidence from which opinion is derived, we find to be a general weakness imputed by every sect and party to all others; and, indeed. by every man to every other man.

Of all kinds of credulity, the most obstinate and wonderful is that of political zealots; of men, who being numbered, they know not how or why, in any of the parties that divide a state, resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favour those whom they profess to follow.

The bigot of philosophy is seduced by authorities which he has not always opportunities to examine, is entangled in systems by which truth and falsehood are inextricably complicated, or undertakes to talk on subjects which nature did not form him able to comprehend.

The Cartesian, who denies that his horse feels the spur, or that the hare is afraid when the hounds approach her; the disciple of Malbranche, who maintains that the man was not hurt by the bullet, which, according to vulgar apprehension, swept away his legs; the follower of Berkely, who, while he sits writing at his table, declares that he has neither table, paper, nor fingers; have all the honour at least of being deceived by fallacies not easily detected, and may plead that they did not forsake truth, but for appearances which they were not able to distinguish from it.

But the man who engages in a party has seldom to do with any thing remote or abstruse. The present state of things is before his eyes; and, if he cannot be satisfied without retrospection, yet he seldom extends his views beyond the historical events of the last century. All the knowledge that he can want is within his attainment, and most of the arguments which he can hear are within his capacity.

wonders that the nation was not awakened by the hard frost to a revocation of the true king, and is hourly afraid that the whole island will be lost in the sea. He believes that king William burnt Whitehall that he might steal the furniture; and that Tillotson died an atheist. Ofqueen Anne he speaks with more tenderness, owns that she meant well, and can tell by whom and why she was poisoned. In the succeeding reigns all has been corruption, malice, and design. He believes that nothing ill has ever happened for these forty years by chance or error; he holds that the battle of Dittingen was won by mistake, and that of Fontenoy lost by contract; that the Victory was sunk by a private order; that Cornhill was fired by emissaries from the council; and the arch of Westminster-bridge was so contrived as to sink, on purpose that the nation might be put to charge. He considers the new road to Islington as an encroachment on liberty, and often asserts that broad wheel will be the ruin of England.

Tom is generally vehement and noisy, but nevertheless has some secrets which he always communicates in a whisper. Many and many a time has Tom told me, in a corner, that our miseries were almost at an end, and that we should see, in a month, another monarch on the throne; the time elapses without a revolution; Tom meets me again with new intelligence, the whole scheme is now settled, and we shall see great events in another month.

Jack Sneakeris a hearty adherent to the present establishment; he has known those who saw the bed into which the Pretender was conveyed in a warming-pan. He often rejoices that the nation was not enslaved by the Irish.He believes that king William never lost a battle, and that if he had lived one year longer he would have conquered France. He holds that Charles the First was a Papist. He allows there were some good men in the reign of queen Anne, but the peace of Utrecht brought a blast upon the nation, and has been the cause of all the evil that we have suffered to the preYet so it is that an Idler meets every hour of sent hour. He believes that the scheme of his life with men who have different opinions the South Sea was well intended, but that it upon every thing past, present, and future; who deny the most notorious facts, contradict the most cogent truths, and persist in asserting to-day what they asserted yesterday, in defiance of evidence, and contempt of confutation.

er.

Two of my companions, who are grown old in idleness, are Tom Tempest and Jack SneakBoth of them consider themselves as neglected by their parties, and therefore entitled to credit; for why should they favour ingratitude? They are both men of integrity, where no factious interest is to be promoted; and both lovers of truth, when they are not heated with political debate.

miscarried by the influence of France. He considers a standing army as the bulwark of liberty; thinks us secured from corruption by septennial parliaments; relates how we are enriched and strengthened by the electoral do minions, and declares that the public debt is a blessing to the nation.

Yet, amidst all this prosperity, poor Jack is hourly disturbed by the dread of Popery.-He wonders that some stricter laws are not made against Papists, and is sometimes afraid that they are busy with French gold among the bishops and Judges.

He cannot believe that the Nonjurors are so quiet for nothing; they must certainly be Tom Tempest is a steady friend to the forming some plot for the establishment of house of Stuart. He can recount the pro- popery; he does not think the present oath sufdigies that have appeared in the sky, and the ficiently binding, and wishes that some better calamities that have afflicted the nation every security could be found for the succession of year from the Revolution; and is of opin- Hanover. He is zealous for the naturalization ion, that, if the exiled family had continued of foreign Protestants, and rejoiced at the adto reign, there would have neither been worms | mission of the Jews to the English privileges

because he thought a Jew would never be a Papist.

No. 11.] SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 1758.

Ir is uncommonly observed, that when two Englishman meet, their first talk is of the weather; they are in haste to tell each other, what each must already know, that it is hot or cold, bright or cloudy, windy or calm.

There are, among the numerous lovers of subtilties and paradoxes, some who derive the civil institutions of every country from its climate, who impute freedom and slavery to the temperature, of the air, can fix the meridian of vice and virtue, and tell at what degree of latitude we are to expect courage or timidity, knowledge or ignorance.

we find ourselves cheerful and good-natured, we naturally pay our acknowledgements to the powers of sunshine; or, if we sink into dulness and peevishness, look round the horizon for an excuse, and charge our discontent upon an easterly wind or a cloudy day.

Surely nothing is more reproachful to a being endowed with reason, than to resign its powers to the influence of the air, and live in dependence on the weather and the wind, for the only blessings which nature has put into our power, tranquillity and benevolence. To look up to the sky for the nutriment of our bodies, is the condition of nature; to call upon the sun for peace and gayety, to deprecate the clouds lest sorrow should overwhelm us, is the cowardice of idleness, and idolatry of folly.

ledge, when superstition is driven away, and Yet, even in this age of inquiry and knowomens and prodigies have lost their terrors, we find this folly countenanced by frequent examples. Those that laugh at the portentous

From these dreams of idle speculation, a slight survey of life, and a little knowledge of history, is sufficient to awaken any inquirer, whose ambition of distinction has not overpow-glare of a comet, and hear a crow with equal ered his love of truth. Forms of government are seldom the result of much deliberation; they are framed by chance in popular assemblies, or in conquered countries by despotic authority. Laws are often occasional, often capricious, made always by a few, and sometimes by a single voice. Nations have chang

ed their characters; slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

tranquillity from the right or left, will yet talk of times and situations proper for intellectual performances, will imagine the fancy exalted by vernal breezes, and the reason invigorated by a bright calm.

If men who have given up themselves to fanin their own minds, they might regulate their ciful credulity, would confine their conceits lives by the barometer, with inconvenience only to themselves; but to fill the world with accounts of intellects subject to ebb and flow, of one genius that awakened in the spring, and another that ripened in the autumn, of one mind expanded in the summer, and of another concentrated in the winter, is no less dangerous than to tell children of bugbears and goblins. Fear will find every house haunted; and idleness will wait for ever for the moment of

illumination.

But national customs can arise only from general agreement; they are not imposed, but chosen, and are continued only by the continuance of their cause. An Englishman's notice of the weather, is the natural censequence of changeable skies and uncertain seasons. In many parts of the world, wet weather and dry are regularly expected at certain periods; but in our island every man goes to sleep, unable to guess whether he shall behold in the mornThis distinction of seasons is produced only ing a bright or cloudy atmosphere, whether by imagination operating on luxury. To tem his rest shall be lulled by a shower, or broken perance every day is bright, and every hour is by a tempest. We therefore rejoice mutually propitious to diligence. He that shall reso at good weather, as at an escape from some-lutely excite his faculties, or exert his virtues, thing that we feared; and mutually complain will soon make himself superior to the seasons, of bad, as of the loss of something that we may set at defiance the morning mist, and hoped. Such is the reason of our practice; the evening damp, the blasts of the east, and and who shall treat it with contempt? Surely not the attendant on a court, whose business

and

the clouds of the south.

It was the boast of the Stoic philosophy, to is to watch the looks of a being weak and fool- make man unshaken by calamity, and unelatish as himself, and whose vanity is, to recounted by success; incorruptible by pleasure, and the names of men who might drop into nothing, invulnerable by pain; these are heights of and leave no vacuity; nor the proprietor of wisdom which none ever attained, and to which funds, who stops his acquaintance in the street few can aspire; but there are lower degrees of to tell him of the loss of half-a-crown; nor the constancy necessary to common virtue; and inquirer after news, who fills his head with for- every man, however he may distrust himself in eign events; and talks of skirmishes and sieg- the extremes of good or evil, might at least es, of which no consequence will ever reach struggle against the tyranny of the climate, his hearers or himself. The weather is a nobler and refuse to enslave his virtue or his reason and more interesting subject; it is the present to the most variable of all variations, the chanstate of the skies and of the earth, on which ges of the weather.

plenty and famine are suspended, on which

millions depend for the necessaries of life.

The weather is frequently mentioned for an- No. 12.] SATURDAY, July 1, 1758. other reason, less honourable to my dear coun

trymen. Our dispositions too frequently THAT every man is important in his own eyes, change with the colour of the sky; and when is a position of which we all, either voluntarily

or unwarily, at least once an hour confess the truth; and it will unavoidably follow, that every man believes himself important to the public. The right which this importance gives us to general notice and visible distinction, is one of those disputable privileges which we have not always courage to assert, and which we therefore suffer to lie dormant, till some elation of mind, or vicissitude of fortune, incites us to declare our pretensions, and enforce our demands. And hopeless as the claim of vulgar characters may seem to the supercilious and severe, there are few who do not at one time or other endeavour to step forward beyond their rank, who do not make some struggles for fame, and show that they think all other conveniences and delights imperfectly enjoyed without a name.

and wife to dignify themselves in the eyes of each other, and, according to their different tempers or expectations, to win affection, of enforce respect.

It was said of the family of Lucas that it was noble, for all the brothers were valiant, ano all the sisters were virtuous. What would a stranger say of the English nation, in which, on the day of marriage, all the men are eminent and all the women beautiful, accomplished, and rich?

How long the wife will be persuaded of the eminence of her husband, or the husband continue to believe that his wife has the qualities required to make marriage happy, may reason ably be questioned. I am afraid that much time seldom passes before each is convinced that praises are fallacious, and, particularly those praises which we confer upon ourselves

To get a name can happen but to few. A name, even in the most commercial nation, is I should, therefore, think that this custom one of the few things which cannot be bought. might be omitted without any loss to the comIt is the free gift of mankind, which must be munity; and that the sons and daughters of deserved before it will be granted, and is at lanes and alleys might go hereafter to the next last unwillingly bestowed. But this unwilling-church, with no witnesses of their worth or ness only increases desire in him who believes his merit sufficient to overcome it.

happiness but their parents and their friends; but if they cannot be happy on their bridal day without some gratification of their vanity, I hope they will be willing to encourage a friend of mine who proposes to devote his powers to

There is a particular period of life in which this fondness for a name seems principally to predominate in both sexes. Scarce any couple comes together but the nuptials are declar-their service. ed in the newspapers with encomiums on each party. Many an eye, ranging over the page with eager curiosity in quest of statesmen and heroes, is stopped by a marriage celebrated between Mr. Buckram, an eminent salesman in Threadneedle-street, and Miss Dolly Juniper, the only daughter of an eminent distiller of the parish of St. Giles's in the Fields, a young lady adorned with every accomplishment that can give happiness to the married state. Or we are told amidst our impatience for the event of a battle, that on a certain day Mr. Winker, a tide-waiter at Yarmouth, was married to Mrs. Cackle, a widow lady of great accomplishments; and that as soon as the ceremony was performed they set out in a post chaise for Yarmouth.

Many are the inquiries which such intelligence must undoubtedly raise, but nothing in the world is lasting. When the reader has contemplated with envy, or with gladness, the felicity of Mr. Buckram and Mr. Winker, and ransacked his memory for the names of Juniper and Cackle, his attention is diverted to other thoughts, by finding that Mirza will not cover this season; or that a spaniel has been lost or stolen, that answers to the name of Ranger.

Mr. Settle, a man whose eminence was once allowed by the eminent, and whose accomplishments were confessed by the accomplished, in the latter part of a long life supported himself by an uncommon expedient. He had a standing elegy and epithalamium, of which only the first and last leaves were varied occasionally, and the intermediate pages were, by general terms, left applicable alike to every character. When any marriage became known, Settle ran to the bridegroom with his epithalamium; and when he heard of any death, ran to the heir with his elegy.

Who can think himself disgraced by a trade that was practised so long by the rival of Dryden, by the poet whose Empress of Morocco was played before princes by ladies of the court?

My friend proposes to open an office in the Fleet for matrimonial panegyrics, and will accommodate all with praise who think their own powers of expression inadequate to their merit. He will sell any man or woman the virtue or qualification which is most fashionable or most desired; but desires his customers to remember, that he sets beauty at the highest price, and riches at the next; and if he be well paid, throws in virtue for nothing.

TO THE IDLER.

Whence it arises that on the day of marriage all agree to call thus openly for honours, I am not able to discover. Some, perhaps, think it kind by a public declaration, to put an end to No. 13.] SATURDAY, July 8, 1758. the hopes of rivalry and the fears of jealousy, to let parents know that they may set their daughters at liberty whom they have locked up for fear of of the bridegroom, or to dismiss to their counters and their offices the amorous youths that had been used to hover round the dwelling of the bride.

These connubial praises may have another cause. It may be the intention of the husband

DEAR MR. IDLer,

THOUGH few men of prudence are much inclined to interpose in disputes between man and wife, who commonly make peace at the expense of the arbitrator, yet I will venture to lay before you a controversy, by which the quiet of my house has been long disturbed,