another, and will fight rather than be hanged. I rage than other men, yet was often involunta They therefore landed, but with great loss, rily wishing for a war, but of a war at that time their engineers had, in the last war with the I had no prospect; and being enabled, by the French, learned something of the military sci- death of an uncle, to live without my pay, I ence, and made their approaches with sufficient quitted the army, and resolved to regulate my skil; but all their efforts had been without ef- own motions. fect, had not a ball unfortunately fallen into the powder of one our ships, which communicated the fire to the rest, and, by opening the passage of the harbour, obliged the garrison to capitulate. Thus was Louisbourg lost, and our troops marched out with the admiration of their enemies, who durst hardly think themselves masters of the place." No. 21.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 2, 1758. DEAR MR. IDler, Of the unhappiness of this state I do not expect all your readers to have an adequate idea. Many are overburthened with business, and can imagine no comfort but in rest; many have minds so placid, as willingly to indulge a voluntary lethargy; or so narrow, as easily to be filled to their utmost capacity. By these I shall not be understood, and therefore cannot be pitied. Those only will sympathise with my complaint, whose imagination is active and resolution weak, whose desires are ardent, and whose choice is delicate; who cannot satisfy themselves with standing still, and yet cannot find a motive to direct their course. I was pleased, for a while, with the novelty of independence, and imagined that I had now found what every man desires. My time was in my own power, and my habitation was wherever my choice should fix it. I amused myself for two years in passing from place to place, and comparing one convenience with another; but being at last ashamed of inquiry, and weary of uncertainty, I purchased a house, and established my family. I now expected to begin to be happy, and was happy for a short time with that expectation. But I soon perceived my spirits to subside, and my imagination to grow dark. The gloom thickened every day around me. I wondered by what malignant power my peace was blasted, till I discovered at last that I had no thing to do. Time, with all its celerity, moves slowly to him whose whole employment is to watch its flight. I am forced upon a thousand shifts to enable me to endure the tediousness of the day. I rise when I can sleep no longer, and take my morning walk; I see what I have seen before, and return. I set down and persuade myself that I sit down to think, find it impossible to think without a subject, rise up to inquire after news, and endeavour to kindle in myself an artificial impatience for intelligence of events, which will never extend any consequence to me, but that a few minutes they abstract me from myself. When I have heard any thing that may gra tify curiosity, I am busied for a while in running to relate it. I hasten from one place of concourse to another, delighted with my own importance, and proud to think that I am doing something, though I know that another hour would spare my labour. I was the second son of a gentleman, whose estate was barely sufficient to support himself and his heir in the dignity of killing game. He therefore made use of the interest which the alliances of his family afforded him, to procure I had once a round of visits, which I paid me a post in the army. I passed some years very regularly; but I have now tired most of in the most contemptible of all human stations, my friends. When I have sat down I forget to that of a soldier in time of peace. I wandered rise, and have more than once overheard one with the regiment as the quarters were chang- asking another when I would be gone. I per ed, without opportunity for business, taste for ceive the company tired, I observe the mistress knowledge, or money for pleasure. Wherever of the family whispering to her servants, I find I came, I was for some time a stranger with-orders given to put off business till to-morrow, out curiosity, and afterwards an acquaintance I see the watches frequently inspected, and yet without friendship. Having nothing to hope cannot withdraw to the vacuity of solitude, of in these places of fortuitous residence, I reventure myself in my own company. signed my conduct to chance; I had no intention to offend, I had no ambition to delight. I suppose every man is shocked when he hears how frequently soldiers are wishing for war. The wish is not always sincere; the greater part are content with sleep and lace, and counterfeit an ardour which they do not feel; but those who desire it most are neither prompted by malevolence nor patriotism; they neither pant for laurels nor delight in blood; but long to be delivered from the tyranny of idleness, and restored to the dignity of active beings. I never imagined myself to have more cou Thus burthensome to myself and others, I form many schemes of employment which may make my life useful or agreeable, and exempt me from the ignominy of living by sufferance. This new course I have long designed, but have not yet begun. The present moment is never proper for the change, but there is al ways a time in view when all obstacles will be removed, and I shall surprise all that know me with a new distribution of my time. Twenty years have passed since I have resolved a complete amendment, and twenty years have been lost in delays. Age is coming upon me; and I should look back with rage and despair 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. 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 dis covered, 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 The confinement, therefore, of any man in he is impoverished by compulsive traffic, and the sloth and darkness of a prison, is a loss to at last overwhelmed, in the common receptathe nation, and no gain to the creditor. For of cles of misery, by debts, which, without his own the multitudes who are pining in those cells of consent, were accumulated on his head. To misery, a very small part is suspected of any the relief of this distress, no other objection fraudulent act by which they retain what be- can be made, but that by an easy dissolution of longs to others. The rest are imprisoned by debts, fraud will be left without punishment, the wantonness of pride, the malignity of re- and imprudence without awe; and that when venge, or the acrimony of dissappointed ex-insolvency should be no longer punishable, pectation. credit will cease. The motive to credit is the hope of advantage. Commerce can never be at a stop, while one man wants what another can supply; and credit will never be denied, while it is likely to be repaid with profit. He that trusts one whom he designs to sue, is criminal by the act of trust. the 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 power which the law has put into their hands, be asked, why they continue to imprison those whom they know to be unable to pay them? one will answer, that his debtor once lived better 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 tak ing 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. 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. be 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 wan ton 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. wise man will obviate as inconsistent with This, however, is a slow malignity, which a 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 be found together, which can at once subdue their discontent, or immediately enjoy the sweets of peace, without remembering the wounds of the conflict. 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 Friendship has other enemies. Suspicion is increased by short intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value always hardening the cautious, and disgust remore when it is regained; but that which has will sometimes part those whom long recipro pelling the delicate. Very slender differences been 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 conversation is admitted. angry that compliance had been exacted. The most fatal disease of friendship is grad ual decay, or dislike hourly increased by cau ses 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 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 expectation is more frequently disap-of pleasing and willingness to be pleased is pointed, 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. Friendship is often destroyed by opposition of interest, not only by the ponderous and visible 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 No. 24.] SATURDAY, SEPT. 30, 1758. Of this question since neither bird nor beast can answer it, we must be content to live without the resolution. We know not how much 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, 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. day do something which we forget when it is 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 annuities; in traders retired from business; in soldiers absent from their regiments; or in widows that have no children? road through a country desert and uniform, the traveller languishes for want of amusement, so the passage of life will be tedious and irksome 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 re mains? 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 r 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. treated with unreasonable rigour by those that Reproof should not exhaust its power upon 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. No. 26.] SATURDAY, OCT. 14, 1758. 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. MR. IDLER, I NEVER thought that I should write any thing 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 contri terwards 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, ex- know. 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 ignoBut surely this laudable forbearance might be|rance, and will work the harder the less they 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 than that of a waiting-maid or something that contexture of the scenes, the opposition of cha- might qualify her to wear laced shoes and long racters, the involution of the plot, the expedi- rutiles, and to sit at work in the parlour winents of suspension, and the stratagems of sur-dow. But she was resolved, for her part, to prise 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. spoil no more girls; those, who were to live by She was for a short time wamly opposed 1 |