This day, however, she has conquered my sagacity. When she went out of her dressingroom she said nothing but "Molly, you know," and hastened to her chariot. What I am to know is yet a secret; but if I do not knowing to be witches and ghosts, generals and before she comes back, what I have yet no means of discovering, she will make my dulness a pretence for a fortnight's ill humour, treat me as a creature devoid of the faculties necessary to the common duties of life, and perhaps give the next gown to the housekeeper.

himself weary of attending to the minutia of| a shop.

It is well for me that I know how to keep a book, for of late he is scarcely ever in the way. Since one of his friends told him that he had a genius for tragic poetry, he has locked himself in an upper room six or seven hours a day; and, when I carry him any paper to be read or signed, I hear him talking vehemently to himself, sometimes of love and beauty, sometimes of friendship and virtue, but more frequently of liberty and his country.

I would gladly, Mr. Idler, be informed what to think of a shopkeeper who is incessantly talking about liberty; a word which, since his acquaintance with polite life, my husband has always in his mouth; he is, on all occasions, afraid of our liberty, and declares his resolution to hazard all for liberty. What can the man mean? I am sure he has liberty enough-it were better for him and me if his liberty was lessened.

He has a friend whom he calls a critic, that comes twice a week to read what he is writing. This critic tells him that his piece is a little irregular, but that some detached scenes will shine prodigiously, and that in the character of Bombulus he is wonderfully great. My scribbler then squeezes his hand, calls him the best of friends, thanks him for his sincerity, and tells him that he hates to be flattered. I have reason to believe that he seldom parts with his dear friend without lending him two guineas, and am afraid that he gave bail for him three days ago.

By this course, of life our credit as traders is lessened, and I cannot forbear to suspect, that my husband's honour as a wit is not much advanced, for he seem to be always the lowest of the company, and is afraid to tell his opinion till the rest have spoken. When he was behind his counter, he used to be brisk, active, and jocular, like a man that knew what he was doing and did not fear to look another in the face; but among wits and critics he is timorous and awkward, and hangs down his head at his own table. Dear Mr. Idler, persuade him, if you can, to return once more to his native element. Tell him, that his wit will never make him rich, but that there are places where riches will always make a wit.

I am, Sir, &c.

To do nothing every man is ashamed; and do much almost every man is unwilling or afraid. Innumerable expedients have therefore been invented to produce motion without labour, and employment without solicitude. The greater part of those whom the kindness of fortune has left to their own direction, and whom want does not keep chained to the counter or the plough, play throughout life with the shadows of busi ness, and know not at last what they have been doing.

These imitators of action are of all denominations. Some are seen at every auction with out intention to purchase; others appear punetually at the Exchange, though they are known there only by their faces. Some are always making parties to visit collections for which they have no taste; and some neglect every pleasure and every duty to hear questions, in which they have no interest, debated in parliament.

These men never appear more ridiculous than in the distress which they imagine themselves to feel, from some accidental interruption of those empty pursuits. A tiger newly imprisoned is indeed more formidable, but not more angry, than Jack Tulip withheld from a florist's feast, or Tom Distich hindered from seeing the first representation of a play.

As political affairs are the highest and most extensive of temporal concerns; the mimic of a politician is more busy and important than any other trifler. Monsieur le Noir, a man who, without property or importance in any corner of the earth, has, in the present confusion of the world, declared himself a steady adherent to the French, is made miserable by a wind that keeps back the packet boat, and still more miserable by every account of a Malouin privateer caught in his cruise; he knows well that nothing can be done or said by him which can produce any effect but that of laughter, that he can neither hasten or retard good or evil, that his joys and sorrows have scarcely any partakers; yet such is his zeal, and such his curiosity, that he would run barefooted to Gravesend, for the sake of knowing first that the English had lost a tender, and would ride out to meet every mail from the continent if he might be permitted to open it.

Learning is generally confessed to be desirable, and there are some who fancy themselves DEBORAH GINGER, always busy in acquiring it. Of these ambulatory students, one of the most busy is my friend Tom Restless.

No. 48.] SATURDAY, MARCH 17, 1759.

THERE is no kind of idleness, by which we are so easily seduced as that which dignifies itself by the appearance of business, and by making the loiterer imagine that he has something to do which must not be neglected, keeps him in perpetual agitation, and hurries him rapidly from place to place.

He that sits still or reposes himself upon a couch, no more deceives himself than he deceives others; he knows that he is doing nothing, and has no other solace of his insignificance than the resolution, which the lazy hourly make, of changing his mode of life.

Tom has long had a mind to be a man of knowledge, but he does not care to spend much time among authors; for he is of opinion that few books deserve the labour of perusal, that they give the mind an unfashionable cast, and destroy that freedom of thought and easiness of manners indispensably requisite to acceptance in the world. Tom has therefore found another way to wisdom. When he rises he goes into a coffee-house, where he creeps so near to men whom he takes to be reasoners as to hear their discourse, and endeavours to remember something which, when it has been strained through Tom's head, is so near nothing, that what it once was cannot be discovered. This

he carries round from friend to friend through | to the place of dinner, though every step of his a circle of visits, till, hearing what each says horse dashed the mud into the air. upon the question, he becomes able at dinner In the afternoon, having parted from his comto say a little himself; and, as every great ge-pany, he set forward alone, and passed many nius relaxes himself among his inferiors, meets collections of water, of which it was imposwith some who wonder how so young a man sible to guess the depth, and which he now can talk so wisely. cannot review without some censure of his own rashness; but what a man undertakes he must perform, and Marvel hates a coward at his heart.

On the third day up rose the sun and Mr. Marvel. His troubles and his dangers were Will is not one of those who go out and re- now such as he wishes no other man ever to turn with nothing to tell. He has a story of encounter. The ways were less frequented, his travels, which will strike a home-bred citi-and the country more thinly inhabited. He zen with horror, and has in ten days suffered so often the extremes of terror and joy, that he is in doubt whether he shall ever again expose either his body or mind to such danger and fatigue.

sometimes that a dead body lay across the track. He sat still awhile to recollect his thoughts; and as he was about to alight and explore the darkness, out stepped a man with a lantern, and opened the turnpike. He hired a guide to the town, arrived in safety, and slept in quiet.

been used to gain their approbation; that men and women should at first come together by chance, like each other so well as to commence acquaintance, improve acquaintance into fondness, increase or extinguish fondness by mar. riage, and have children of different degrees of intellects and virtue, some of whom die be

Yet let any tell his own story, and nothing of all this has ever befallen him according to the common order of things; something has always discriminated his case; some unusual concurrence of events has appeared which made him more happy or more miserable than other mortals; for in pleasures or calamities, however common, every one has comforts and afflic tions of his own.

The rest of his journey was nothing but dan-fore their parents, and others survive them. ger. He climbed and descended precipices on which vulgar mortals tremble to look; he passed marshes like the "Serbonian bog, where armies whole have sunk;" he forded rivers where the current roared like the Egre or the Severn; or ventured himself on bridges that trembled under him, from which he looked down on foaming whirlpools, or dreadful abysses: he wandered over houseless heaths, amidst all the rage of the elements, with the snow driving in his face, and the tempest howl-mentations, many of the pleasures of life, and ing in his ears.

Such are the colours in which Marvel paints his adventures. He has accustomed himself to sounding words and hyperbolical images, till he has lost the power of true description. In a road through which the heaviest carriages pass without difficulty, and the post-boy every day and night goes and returns, he meets with hardships like those which are endured in Siberian deserts, and misses nothing of romantic danger but a giant and a dragon. When his dreadful story is told in proper terms, it is only that the way was dirty in winter, and that he experienced the common vicissitudes of rain

and sun-shine.

No. 50.] SATURDAY, MARCH 31, 1759.

It is certain that without some artificial aug

almost all its embellishments, would fall to the ground. If no man was to express more delight than he felt, those who felt most would raise little envy. If travellers were to describe the most laboured performances of art with the same coldness as the survey them, all expectations of happiness from change of place would cease. The pictures of Raphael would hang without spectators, and the gardens of Versailles might be inhabited by hermits. All the pleasure that is received ends in an opportunity of splendid falsehood, in the power of gaining notice by the display of beauties which the eye was weary of beholding, and a history of happy moments, of which in reality the most happy was the last.

The ambition of superior sensibility and superior eloquence disposes the lovers of arts to receive rapture at one time, and communicate THE character of Mr. Marvel has raised the mer-it at another; and each labours first to imriment of some and the contempt of others, who pose upon himself, and then to propagate the do not sufficiently consider how often they hear imposture. and practise the same arts of exaggerated narration.

There is not, perhaps, among the multitudes of all conditions that swarm upon the earth, a single man who does not believe that he has something extraordinary to relate of himself; and who does not, at one time or other, summon the attention of his friends to the casualties of his adventures, and the vicissitudes of his fortune; casualties and vicissitudes that happen alike in lives uniform and diversified; to the commander of armies, and the writer at a desk, to the sailor who resigns himself to the wind and water, and the farmer whose longest journey is to the market.

In the present state of the world men may pass through Shakspeare's seven stages of life, and meet nothing singular and wonderful. But such is every man's attention to himself, that what is common and unheeded when it is only seen, becomes remarkable and peculiar when we happen to feel it.

It is well enough known to be according to the usual process of nature that men should sicken and recover, that some designs should succeed and others miscarry, that friends should be separated, and meet again, that some should be made angry by endeavours to please them, and some be pleased when no care has

Pain is less subject than pleasure to caprices of expression. The torments of disease, and the grief for irremediable misfortunes, sometimes, are such as no words can declare, and can only be signified by groans, or sobs, or inarticulate ejaculations. Man has from nature a mode of utterance peculiar to pain, but he has none peculiar to pleasure, because he never has pleasure, but in such degrees as the ordinary use of language may equal or surpass.

It is nevertheless certain, that many pains as well as pleasures are heightened by rhetorical affectation, and that the picture is, for the most part, bigger than the life.

When we describe our sensations of another's sorrow either in friendly or ceremonious condolence, the customs of the world scarcely admit of rigid veracity. Perhaps the fondest friendship would enrage oftener than comfort, were the tongue on such occasions faithfully to represent the sentiments of the heart; and I think the strictest moralists allow forms of address to be used without much regard to their literal acceptation, when either respect or tenderness requires them, because they are universally know to denote not the degree but the species of our sentiments.

But the same indulgence cannot be allowed to him who aggravates dangers incurred or

sorrow endured by himself, because he darkens) all sink to the common level. We are all na kthe prospect of futurity, and multiplies the ed till we are dressed, and hungry till we are pains of our condition by useless terror. Those fed; and the general's triumph, and sage's who magnify their delights are less criminal disputation, end, like the humble labours of deceivers, yet they raise hopes which are sure the smith or ploughman, in a dinner or in to be disappointed. It would be undoubtedly sleep. best, if we could see and hear every thing as it is, that nothing might be too anxiously dreaded, or too ardently pursued.

No. 51.] SATUrday, April 7, 1759.

It has been commonly remarked, that eminent men are least eminent at home, that bright characters lose much of their splendour at a nearer view, and many who fill the world with their fame, excite very little reverence among those that surround them in their domestic privacies.

Those notions which are to be collected by reason, in opposition to the senses, will seldom stand forward in the mind, but lie treasured in the remoter repositories of memory, to be found only when they are sought. Whatever any man may have written or done, his precepts or his valour will scarcely overbalance the unimportant uniformity which runs through his time. We do not easily consider him as great, whom our own eyes show us to be little; nor labour to keep present to our thoughts the latent excellencies of him who shares with us all our weaknesses and many of our follies; who like us is To blame or to suspect is easy and natural. delighted with slight amusements, busied with When the fact is evident, and the cause doubt-trifling employments, and disturbed by little ful, some accusation is always engendered between idleness and malignity. This disparity of general and familiar esteem is therefore imputed to hidden vices, and to practises indulged in secret, but carefully covered from the public eye.

and

vexations.

Great powers cannot be exerted, but when great exigencies make them necessary. Great exigencies can happen but seldom, and therefore those qualities which have a claim to the veneration of mankind lie hid, for the most part, like subterranean treasures, over which the foot passes as on common ground, till ne

Vice will indeed always produce contempt. The dignity of Alexander, though nations fell prostrate before him, was certainly held in lit-cessity breaks open the golden cavern. In the ancient celebration of victory, a slave tle veneration by the partakers of his midnight revels, who had seen him, in the madness of was placed on a triumphal car, by the side of the wine, murder his friend, or set fire to the Per-general, who reminded him by a short sentence, that he was a man. Whatever danger there sian palace at the instigation of a harlot; might be lest a leader, in his passage to the it is well remembered among us, that the avacapitol, should forget the frailties of his nature, rice of Marlborough kept him in subjection to there was surely no need of such an admonihis wife while he was dreaded by France as tion: the intoxication could not have continued her conqueror, and honoured by the emperor long; he would have been at home but a few hours before some of his dependents would have forgot his greatness, and shown him, that notwithstanding his laurels, he was yet a man.

as his deliverer.

But though, where there is vice there must be want of reverence, it is not reciprocally true

that when there is want of reverence there is

always vice. That awe which great actions or abilities impress will be inevitably diminished by acquaintance, though nothing either mean or criminal should be found.

Of men, as of every thing else, we must judge according to our knowledge. When we see of a hero only his battles, or of a writer only his books, we have nothing to allay our ideas of their greatness. We consider the one only as the guardian of his country, and the other only as the instructor of mankind. We have neither opportunity nor motive to examine the minuter parts of their lives, or the less apparent peculiarities of their characters; we name them with habitual respect, and forget, what we still continue to know, that they are men like other

mortals.

There are some who try to escape this domestic degradation, by labouring to appear always wise or always great; but he that strives against nature will for ever strive in vain. To be grave of mien and slow of utterance; to look with solicitude and speak with hesitation, is attainable at will; but the show of wisdom is ridiculous when there is nothing to cause doubt, as that of valour where there is nothing to be feared.

A man who has duly considered the condition of his being will contentedly yield to the course of things; he will not pant for distinction where distinction would imply no merit; though on great occasions he may wish to be greater than others, he will be satisfied in com

mon occurrences not to be less.

Responsare cupidinibus.

HOR.

But such is the constitution of the world, that much of life must be spent in the same manner No. 52.] Saturday, April 14, 1759. by the wise and the ignorant, the exalted and the low. Men, however distinguished by external accidents or intrinsic qualities, have all the same wants, the same pains, and, as far as the senses are consulted, the same pleasure. The petty cares and petty duties are the same in every station to every understanding, and every hour brings some occasion on which we

but

THE practice of self-denial, or the forebearance of lawful pleasures, has been considered by almost every nation, from the remotest ages, as the highest exaltation of human virtue; and all have agreed to pay respect and vene