In these imaginary similitudes, the same | ignorance informed we are most delighted word is used at once in its primitive and me- with the plainest diction; and it is only in taphorical sense. Thus health, ascribed to the moments of idleness or pride, that we call the body natural, is opposed to sickness; but for the gratifications of wit or flattery. attributed to the body politic stands as contrary to adversity. These parallels, therefore, have more of genius, but less of truth; they often please, but they never convince. Of this kind is a curious speculation frequently indulged by a philosopher of my acquaintance, who had discovered, the qualities requisite to conversation are very exactly represented by a bowl of punch. He only will please long, who by tempering the acidity of satire with the sugar of civility, and allaying the heat of wit with the frigidity of humble chat, can make the true punch of conversation; and as that punch can be drank in the greatest quantity which has the largest proportion of water, so that companion will be oftenest welcome, whose talk flows out with inoffensive copiousness, and unenvied insipidity. TO THE IDLER. MR. IDLER, Punch, says this profound investigator, is a liquor compounded of spirit and acid juices, sugar and water. The spirit, volatile and fiery, is the proper emblem of vivacity and wit; the No. 35.] SATURDAY, DEC. 16, 1758. acidity of the lemon will very aptly figure pungency of raillery, and acrimony of censure; sugar is the natural representative of luscious adulation and gentle complaisance; and water is the proper hieroglyphic of easy prattle, inno-Ir it be difficult to persuade the idle to be busy, cent and tasteless. it is likewise, as experience has taught me, not easy to convince the busy that it is better to be idle. When you shall despair of stimulating sluggishness to motion, I hope you will turn your thoughts towards the means of stilling the bustle of pernicious activity. Spirit alone is too powerful for use. It will produce madness rather than merriment; and instead of quenching thirst will inflame the blood. Thus wit, too copiously poured out, agitates the hearer with emotions rather violent than pleasing; every one shrinks from the force of its oppression, the company sits entranced and overpowered; all are astonished but nobody is pleased. The acid juices give this genial liquor all its power of stimulating the palate. Conversation would become dull and vapid, if negligence were not sometimes roused, and sluggishness quickened by due severity of reprehension. But acids unmixed will distort the face and torture the palate; and he that has no other qualities than penetration and aspersity, he whose constant employment is detection and censure, who looks only to find faults, and speaks only to publish them, will soon be dreaded, hated, and avoided. I am the unfortunate husband of a buyer of bargains. My wife has somewhere heard that a good housewife never has any thing to purchase when it is wanted. This maxim is often in her mouth, and always in her head. She is not one of those philosophical talkers that speculate without practice, and learn sentences of wisdom only to repeat them; she is always making additions to her stores; she never looks into a broker's shop but she spies something that may be wanted some time; and it is impossible to make her pass the door of a house where she hears goods selling by auction. Whatever she thinks cheap she holds it the duty of an economist to buy; in consequence of The taste of sugar is generally pleasing, but this maxim, we are encumbered on every side it cannot long be eaten by itself. Thus meek- with useless lumber. The servants can scarcely ness and courtesy will always recommend the creep to their beds through the chests and first address, but soon pall and nauseate, unless boxes that surround them. The carpenter is they are associated with more sprightly quali-employed once a week in building closets, fixties. The chief use of sugar is to temper the taste of other substances; and softness of behaviour in the same manner mitigates the roughness of contradiction, and allays the bitterness of unwelcome truth. ing cupboards, and fastening shelves; and my house has the appearance of a ship stored for a voyage to the colonies. I had often observed that advertisements set her on fire; and therefore pretending to emuWater is the universal vehicle by which are late her laudable frugality, I forbade the newsconveyed the particles necessary to sustenance paper to be taken any longer; but my precauand growth, by which thirst is quenched, and tion is vain; I know not by what fatality, or all the wants of life and nature are supplied. by what confederacy, every catalogue of Thus all the business of the world is transacted genuine furniture comes to her hand, every by artless and easy talk, neither sublimed by advertisement of a newspaper newly opened fancy, nor discoloured by affectation, without is in her pocket-book, and she knows before either the harshness of satire, or the luscious- any of her neighbours when the stock of any ness of flattery. By this limpid vein of lan- man leaving off trade is to be sold cheap for guage, curiosity is gratified, and all the know-ready money. ledge is conveyed which one man is required Such intelligence is to my dear one the to impart for the safety or convenience of another. Water is the only ingredient in punch which can be used alone, and with which man is content till fancy has framed an artificial want. Thus while we only desire to have our Siren's song. No engagement, no duty, no interest, can withhold her from a sale, from which she always returns congatulating herself upon her dexterity at a bargain; the porter lays down his burden in the hall; she dis Tur great differences that disturb the peace of mankind are not about ends, but means. We have all the same general desires, but how those desires shall be accomplished will for plays her new acquisitions, and spends the | No. 36.] SATURDAY, Dec. 23, 1758. rest of the day in contriving where they shall be put. As she cannot bear to have any thing incomplete, one purchase necessitates another; she has twenty feather-beds more than she can use, and a late sale has supplied her with a propor-ever be disputed. The ultimate purpose of tionable number of Witney blankets, a large roll of linen for sheets, and five quilts for every bed, which she bought because the seller told her, that if she would clear his hands he would let her have a bargain. Thus by hourly encroachments my habitation is made narrower and narrower; the dining-room is so crowded with tables, that dinner scarcely can be served; the parlour is decorated with so many piles of china, that I dare not step within the door; at every turn of the stairs I have a clock, and half the windows of the upper floors are darkened that shelves may be set before them. government is temporal, and that of religion is eternal happiness. Hitherto we agree; but here we must part to try according to the endless varieties of passion and understanding combined with one another, every possible form of government, and every imaginable tenet of religion. We are told by Cumberland that rectitude, applied to action or contemplation, is merely metaphorical; and that as a right line describes the shortest passage from point to point, so a right action effects a good design by the fewest means; and so likewise a right opinion is that which connects distant truths by the shortest train of intermediate propositions. This, however, might be borne, if she would gratify her own inclinations without opposing mine. But I, who am idle, am luxurious, and To find the nearest way from truth to truth, she condemns me to live upon salt provision. or from purpose to effect, not to use more inShe knows the loss of buying in small quanti-struments where fewer will be sufficient, not ties, we have therefore whole hogs and quar- to move by wheels and levers what will give ters of oxen. Part of our meat is tainted before it is eaten, and part is thrown away because it is spoiled, but she persists in her system, and will never buy any thing by single pennyworths. way to the naked hand, is the great proof of a healthful and vigorous mind, neither feeble with healthful ignorance, nor overburdened with unwieldy knowledge. But there are men who seem to think nothing so much the characteristic of a genius, as to do common things in an uncommon manner; like Hudibras, to tell the clock by algebra; or like the lady in Dr. Young's satires, to drink tea by stratagem; to quit the beaten track only because it is known, and take a new path how ever crooked or rough because the straight was found out before. Every man speaks and writes with intent to be understood; and it can seldom happen but he that understands himself might convey his notions to another, if, eontent to be understood, he did not seek to be admired; but when once he begins to contrive how his sentiments may be received, not with most ease to his reader, but with most advantage to himself, he then transfers his consideration from words to sounds, from sentences to periods, and as he grows more elegant becomes less intelligible. The common vice of those who are still grasping at more, is to neglect that which they already possess; but from this failing my charmer is free. It is the great care of her life that the pieces of beef should be boiled in the order in which they are bought; that the second bag of peas should not be opened till the first were eaten; that every feather-bed shall be lain on in its turn; that the carpets should be taken out of the chests once a month and brushed; and the rolls of linen opened now and then before the fire. She is daily inquiring after the best traps for mice, and keeps the rooms always scented by fumigations to destroy the moths. She employs a workman from time to time to adjust six clocks that never go, and clean five jacks that rust in the garret; and a woman in the next alley that lives by scouring the brass and pewter which are only laid up to tarnish again. It is difficult to enumerate every species of She is always imagining some distant time in authors whose labours counteract themselves; which she shall use whatever she accumulates; the man of exuberance and copiousness, who she has four looking-glasses which she cannot diffuses every thought through so many diversihang up in her house, but which will be hand-ties of expression, that it is lost like water in a some in more lofty rooms; and pays rent for the place of a vast copper in some warehouse, because when we live in the country we shall brew our own beer. Of this life I have long been weary, but I Your very humble Servant. mist; the ponderous dictator of sentences, whose notions are delivered in the lump, and are like uncoined bullion, of more weight than use; the liberal illustrator, who shows by examples and comparisons what was clearly seen when it was first proposed; and the stately son of demonstration, who proves with mathematical formality what no man has yet pretended to doubt. There is a mode of style for which I know not that the masters of oratory have yet found a name; a style by which the most evident truths are so obscured, that they can no longer be perceived, and the most familiar proposi tions so disguised that they cannot be known. | where to be found; and that not only its proEvery other kind of eloquence is the dress of per ore is copiously treasured in the caverns of sense; but this is the mask by which a true the earth, but that its particles are dispersed master of his art will so effectually conceal it, throughout all other bodies. that a man will as easily mistake his own positions, if he meets them thus transformed, as he may pass in a masquerade his nearest acquaintance. If the extent of the human view could comprehend the whole frame of the universe, I believe it would be found invariably true, that Providence has given that in greatest plenty, This style may be called the terrific, for its which the condition of life makes of greatest chief intention is to terrify and amaze; it may use; and that nothing is penuriously imparted be termed the repulsive, for its natural effect is or placed far from the reach of man, of which to drive away the reader; or it may be distin-a more liberal distribution, or more easy ac guished, in plain English, by the denomination quisition, would increase real and rational of the bugbear style, for it has more terror than felicity. danger, and will appear less formidable as it is more nearly approached. "A mother tells her infant that two and two make four; the child remembers the proposition, and is able to count four to all the purposes of life, till the course of his education brings him among philosophers who fright him from his former knowledge, by telling him, that four is a certain aggregate of units; that all numbers being only the repetition of an unit, which, though not a number itself, is the parent, root, or original of all number, four is the denomination assigned to a certain number of such repetitions. The only danger is, lest, when he first hears these dreadful sounds, the pupil should run away; if he has but the courage to stay till the conclusion, he will find that when speculation has done its worst, two and two still make four. Iron is common, and gold is rare. Iron contributes so much to supply the wants of nature, that its use constitutes much of the difference between savage and polished life, between the state of him that slumbers in European palaces, and him that shelters himself in the cavities of a rock from the chillness of the night, or the violence of the storm. Gold can never be hardened into saws or axes; it can neither furnish instruments of manufacture, utensils of agriculture, nor weapons of defence; its only quality is to shine, and the value of its lustre arises from its scarcity. Throughout the whole circle, both of natural and moral life, necessaries are as iron, and superfluities as gold. What we really need we may readily obtain; so readily that far the greater part of mankind has, in the wantonness of abundance, confounded natural with artificial desires, and invented necessities for the sake of employment, because the mind is impatient of inaction, and life is sustained with so little labour, that the tediousness of idle time cannot otherwise be supported. custom gives the name of poverty to the want of superfluities. An illustrious example of this species of eloquence may be found in Letters concerning Mind. The author begins by declaring, that "the sorts of things are things that now are, have been, and shall be, and the things that strictly are." In this position, except the last Thus plenty is the original cause of many of clause, in which he uses something of the our needs; and even the poverty, which is so scholastic language, there is nothing but what frequent and distressful in civilized nations, every man has heard and imagines himself to proceeds often from that change of manners know. But who would not believe that some which opulence has produced. Nature makes wonderful novelty is presented to his intellectus poor only when we want necessaries; but when he is afterwards told, in the true bugbear style, that "the ares, in the former sense, are things that lie between the have-beens and the shall-bes. The have-beens are things that are past; the shall-bes are things that are to come; and the things that are, in the latter sense, are things that have not been, nor shall be, nor stand in the midst of such as are before them, or shall be after them. The things that have been, and shall be, have respect to present, past, and future. Those likewise that now are have moreover place; that, for instance, which is here, that which is to the east, that which is to the west." All this, my dear reader, is very strange; but though it be strange, it is not new; survey these wonderful sentences again, and they will be found to contain nothing more, than very plain truths, which till this author arose had always been delivered in plain language. No. 37.] SATurday, Dec. 30, 1758. THOSE who are skilled in the extraction and preparation of metals, declare, that iron is every When Socrates passed through shops of toys and ornaments, he cried out, How many things are here which I do not need! And the same exclamation may every man make who surveys the common accommodations of life. Superfluity and difficulty begin together. To dress food for the stomach is easy, the art is to irritate the palate when the stomach is sufficed. A rude hand may build walls, form roofs, and lay floors, and provide all that warmth and security require; we only call the nicer artificers to carve the cornice, or to paint the ceilings. Such dress as may enable the body to endure the different seasons, the most unenlightened nations have been able to procure: but the work of science begins in the ambition of distinction, in variations of fashion, and emulation of elegance. Corn grows with easy culture; the gardener's experiments are only employed to exalt the flavours of fruits, and brighten the colours of flowers. Even of knowledge, those parts are most easy which are generally necessary. The intercourse of society is maintained without the elegances of language. Figures, criticisms, and refine- | mence: we live in an age of commerce and comments, are the work of those whom idleness putation; let us therefore coolly inquire what is makes weary of themselves. The commerce of the sum of evil which the imprisonment of the world is carried on by easy methods of com- debtors brings upon our country. putation. Subtility and study are required only when questions are invented merely to puzzle, and calculations are extended to show the skill of the calculator. The light of the sun is equally beneficial to him whose eyes tell him that it moves, and to him whose reason persuades him that it stands still; and plants grow with the same luxuriance, whether we suppose earth or water the parent of vegeta tion. If we raise our thoughts to nobler inquiries, we shall still find facility concurring with usefulness. No man needs stay to be virtuous till the moralists have determined the essence of virtue; our duty is made apparent by its proximate consequences, though the general and ul timate reason should never be discovered. Religion may regulate the life of him to whom the Scotists and Thomists are alike unknown; and the assertors of fate and free-will, however different in their talk, agree to act in the same manner. It seems to be the opinion of the later computists, that the inhabitants of England do not exceed six millions, of which twenty thousand is the three hundredth part. What shall we say of the humanity or the wisdom of a nation, that voluntarily sacrifices one in every three hundred to lingering destruction! The misfortunes of an individual do not extend their influence to many; yet if we consider the effects of consanguinity and friendship, and the general reciprocation of wants and benefits, which make one man dear or necessary to another, it may reasonably be supposed, that every man languishing in prison gives trouble of some kind to two others who love or need him. By this multiplication of misery we see distress extended to the hundredth part of the whole society. If we estimate at a shilling a day what is lost by the inaction and consumed in the support of each man thus chained down to involuntary idleness, the public loss will rise in one It is not my intention to depreciate the po-year to three hundred thousand pounds; in liter arts or abstruser studies. That curiosity ten years to more than a sixth part of our cirwhich always succeeds ease and plenty, was culating coin. undoubtedly given us as a proof of capacity which our present state is not able to fill, as a preparative for some better mode of existence, which shall furnish employment for the whole soul, and where pleasure shall be adequate to our powers of fruition. In the mean time let us gratefully acknowledge that Goodness which grants us ease at a cheap rate, which changes the seasons where the nature of heat and cold has not been yet examined, and gives the vicissitudes of day and night to those who never marked the tropics, or numbered the constellations. No. 38.] SATURDAY, JAN. 6, 1759. SINCE the publication of the letter concerning the condition of those who are confined in goals by their creditors, an inquiry is said to have been made, by which it appears that more than twenty thousand* are at this time prisoners for debt. We often look with indifference on the successive parts of that, which, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion. A debtor is dragged to prison, pitied for a moment, and then forgotten; another follows him, and is lost alike in the caverns of oblivion; but when the whole mass of calamity rises up at once, when twenty thousand reasonable beings, are heard all groaning in unnecessary misery, not by the infirmity of nature, but the mistake or negligence of policy, who can forbear to pity and lament, to wonder and abhor! There is here no need of declamatory vehe I am afraid that those who are best acquainted with the state of our prisons will confess that my conjecture is too near the truth, when I suppose that the corrosion of resentment, the heaviness of sorrow, the corruption of confined air, the want of exercise, and sometimes of food, the contagion of diseases, from which there is no retreat, and the severity of tyrants, against whom there can be no resistance, and all the complicated horrors of a prison, put an end every year to the life of one in four of those that are shut up from the cozmon comforts of human life. Thus perish yearly five thousand men, overborne with sorrow, consumed by famine, or putrified by filth: many of them in the most vigorous and useful part of life; for the thoughtless and imprudent are commonly young, and the active and busy are seldom old. According to the rule generally received, which supposes that one in thirty dies yearly, the race of man may be said to be renewed at the end of thirty years. Who would have believed till now, that of every English generation, a hundred and fifty thousand perish in our gaols! that in every century, a nation eminent for science, studious of commerce, ambitious of empire, should willingly lose, in noisome dungeons, five hundred thousand of its inhabitants; a number greater than has ever been destroyed in the same time by the pestilence and sword! A very late occurrence may show us the value of the number which we thus condemn to be useless; in the re-establishment of the trained bands, thirty thousand are considered as a force sufficient against all exigencies. While, therefore, we detain twenty thousand This number was at that time confidently published, in prison, we shut up in darkness and uselessness two-thirds of an army which ourselves judge equal to the defence of our country. but the author has since found reason to question the calculation. SIR, TO THE IDLER. The nonastic institutions have been often | No. 39.] SATURDAY, JAN. 18, 1759. blamed as tending to retard the increase of mankind. And perhaps retirement ought rarely to be permitted, except to those whose employment is consistent with abstraction, and who, though solitary, will not be idle to those whom infirmity makes useless to the commonwealth, or to those who have paid their due proportion to society, and who, having lived for others, may be honourably dismissed to live for themselves. But whatever be the evil or the folly of these retreats, those have no right to censure them whose prisons contain greater numbers than the monasteries of other countries. It is, surely, less foolish and less criminal to permit inaction than compel it; to comply with doubtful opinions of happiness. than condemn to certain and apparent misery; to indulge the extravagances of erroneous piety, than to multiply and enforce temptations to wickedness. As none look more diligently about them than those who have nothing to do, or who do nothing, I suppose it has not escaped your observation, that the bracelet, an ornament of great antiquity, has been for some years revived among the English ladies. The misery of gaols is not half their evil: they are filled with every corruption which poverty and wickedness can generate between them; with all the shameless and profligate enormities that can be produced by the impudence of ignominy, the rage of want, and the malignity of despair. In a prison, the awe of the public eye is lost, and the power of the law is spent; there are few fears, there are no blushes. The lewd inflame the lewd, the audacious harden the audacious. Every one fortifies himself as he can against his own sensibility, endeavours to practise on others the arts which are practised on himself; and gains the kindness of his associates by similitude of manners. Thus some sink amidst their misery, and others survive only to propagate villany. It may be hoped, that our lawgivers will at length take away from us this power of starving and depraving one another; but, if there be any reason why this inveterate evil should not be removed in our age, which true picy has enlightened beyond any former tine, let those, whose writings from the opinions and the practices of their contemporaries endeavour to transfer the reproach of such imprisonment from the debtor to the creator, till universal infamy shall pursue the watch whose wantonness of power, or revenge of disappointment, condemns another to texture and to ruin; till he shall be hunted though the world as an enemy to man, and fnd in riches no shelter from contempt. The genius of our nation is said, I know not for what reason, to appear rather an improvement than invention. The bracelet was known in the earliest ages; but it was formerly only a hoop of gold, or a cluster of jewels, and showed nothing but the wealth or vanity of the wearer; till our ladies, by carrying pictures on their wrists, made their ornaments works of fancy and exercises of judgment. This addition of art to luxury is one of the innumerable proofs that might be given of the late increase of female erudition; and I have often congratulated myself that my life has happened at a time when those, on whom so much of human felicity depends, have learned to think as well as speak, and when respect takes possession of the ear, while love is entering at the eye. 1 I have observed, that even by the suffrages of their own sex, those ladies are accounted wisest who do not yet disdain to be taught; and therefore, I shall offer a few hints for the completion of the bracelet, without any dread of the fate of Orpheus. To the ladies who wear the pictures of their husbands or children, or any other relations, [ can offer nothing more decent or more proper. It is reasonable to believe that she intends at least to perform her duty, who carries a perpetual excitement to recollection and caution, whose own ornaments must upbraid her with every failure, and who, by an open violation of her engagements, must for ever forfeit her bracelet. Yet I know not whether it is the interest of the husband to solicit very earnestly a place on the bracelet. If his image be not in the heart, it is of small avail to hang it on the hand. A husband encircled with diamonds and rubies may gain some esteem, but will never excite love. He that thinks himself most secure of his wife, should be fearful of persecuting her continually with his presence. The joy of life is variety; the tenderest love requires to be rekindled by intervals of absence; and fidelity herself will be wearied with transferring her eye only from the same man to the same picture. Surely, he whose debtor has perished in prison, although he may acquit himself of deliberate murder, must at least have his mind clouded with discontent, when he considers In many countries the condition of every how much another has suffered from him; woman is known by her dress. Marriage is when he thinks on the wife bewailing her hus-rewarded with some honourable distinction band, or the children begging the bread which their father would have earned. If there are any made so obdurate by avarice or cruelty, as to revolve these consequences without dread or pity, I must leave them to be awakened by some other power, for I write only to human beings. which celibacy is forbidden to usurp. Some such information a bracelet might afford. The ladies might enrol themselves in distinct classes, and carry in open view the emblems of their order. The bracelet of the authoress may exhibit the muses in a grove of laurel; the housewife may show Penelope with her web; the votaress of a single life may carry Ursula with her troop of virgins; the gamester may |