considerable number of laborious performances. We have twice as many
fire-skreens as chimneys, and three flourished quilts for every bed.
Half the rooms are adorned with a kind of _sutile pictures_, which
imitate tapestry. But all their work is not set out to show; she has
boxes filled with knit garters and braided shoes. She has twenty covers
for side-saddles embroidered with silver flowers, and has curtains
wrought with gold in various figures, which she resolves some time or
other to hang up. All these she displays to her company whenever she is
elate with merit, and eager for praise; and amidst the praises which her
friends and herself bestow upon her merit, she never fails to turn to
me, and ask what all these would cost, if I had been to buy them.
I sometimes venture to tell her, that many of the ornaments are
superfluous; that what is done with so much labour might have been
supplied by a very easy purchase; that the work is not always worth the
materials; and that I know not why the children should be persecuted
with useless tasks, or obliged to make shoes that are never worn. She
answers with a look of contempt, that men never care how money goes, and
proceeds to tell of a dozen new chairs for which she is contriving
covers, and of a couch which she intends to stand as a monument of
needle-work.
In the mean time, the girls grow up in total ignorance of every thing
past, present, and future. Molly asked me the other day, whether Ireland
was in France, and was ordered by her mother to mend her hem. Kitty
knows not, at sixteen, the difference between a Protestant and a Papist,
because she has been employed three years in filling the side of a
closet with a hanging that is to represent Cranmer in the flames. And
Dolly, my eldest girl, is now unable to read a chapter in the Bible,
having spent all the time, which other children pass at school, in
working the interview between Solomon and the queen of Sheba.
About a month ago, Tent and Turkey-stitch seemed at a stand; my wife
knew not what new work to introduce; I ventured to propose that the
girls should now learn to read and write, and mentioned the necessity of
a little arithmetick; but, unhappily, my wife has discovered that linen
wears out, and has bought the girls three little wheels, that they may
spin huckaback for the servants' table. I remonstrated, that with larger
wheels they might despatch in an hour what must now cost them a day; but
she told me, with irresistible authority, that any business is better
than idleness; that when these wheels are set upon a table, with mats
under them, they will turn without noise, and keep the girls upright;
that great wheels are not fit for gentlewomen; and that with these,
small as they are, she does not doubt but that the three girls, if they
are kept close, will spin every year as much cloth as would cost five
pounds if one were to buy it.
No 14. SATURDAY, JULY 15, 1758.
When Diogenes received a visit in his tub from Alexander the Great, and
was asked, according to the ancient forms of royal courtesy, what
petition he had to offer; "I have nothing," said he, "to ask, but that
you would remove to the other side, that you may not, by intercepting
the sunshine, take from me what you cannot give me."
Such was the demand of Diogenes from the greatest monarch of the earth,
which those, who have less power than Alexander, may, with yet more
propriety, apply to themselves. He that does much good, may be allowed
to do sometimes a little harm. But if the opportunities of beneficence
be denied by fortune, innocence should at least be vigilantly preserved.
It is well known, that time once passed never returns; and that the
moment which is lost, is lost for ever. Time therefore ought, above all
other kinds of property, to be free from invasion; and yet there is no
man who does not claim the power of wasting that time which is the right
of others.
This usurpation is so general, that a very small part of the year is
spent by choice; scarcely any thing is done when it is intended, or
obtained when it is desired. Life is continually ravaged by invaders;
one steals away an hour, and another a day; one conceals the robbery by
hurrying us into business, another by lulling us with amusement; the
depredation is continued through a thousand vicissitudes of tumult and
tranquillity, till, having lost all, we can lose no more.
This waste of the lives of men has been very frequently charged upon the
Great, whose followers linger from year to year in expectations, and die
at last with petitions in their hands. Those who raise envy will easily
incur censure. I know not whether statesmen and patrons do not suffer
more reproaches than they deserve, and may not rather themselves
complain, that they are given up a prey to pretensions without merit,
and to importunity without shame.
The truth is, that the inconveniencies of attendance are more lamented
than felt. To the greater number solicitation is its own reward. To be
seen in good company, to talk of familiarities with men of power, to be
able to tell the freshest news, to gratify an inferior circle with
predictions of increase or decline of favour, and to be regarded as a
candidate for high offices, are compensations more than equivalent to
the delay of favours, which, perhaps, he that begs them has hardly
confidence to expect.
A man conspicuous in a high station, who multiplies hopes that he may
multiply dependants, may be considered as a beast of prey, justly
dreaded, but easily avoided; his den is known, and they who would not be
devoured, need not approach it. The great danger of the waste of time is
from caterpillars and moths, who are not resisted, because they are not
feared, and who work on with unheeded mischiefs, and invisible
encroachments.
He, whose rank or merit procures him the notice of mankind, must give up
himself, in a great measure, to the convenience or humour of those who
surround him. Every man, who is sick of himself, will fly to him for
relief; he that wants to speak will require him to hear; and he that
wants to hear will expect him to speak. Hour passes after hour, the noon
succeeds to morning, and the evening to noon, while a thousand objects
are forced upon his attention, which he rejects as fast as they are
offered, but which the custom of the world requires to be received with
appearance of regard.
If we will have the kindness of others, we must endure their follies. He
who cannot persuade himself to withdraw from society, must be content to
pay a tribute of his time to a multitude of tyrants; to the loiterer,
who makes appointments which he never keeps; to the consulter, who asks
advice which he never takes; to the boaster, who blusters only to be
praised; to the complainer, who whines only to be pitied; to the
projector, whose happiness is to entertain his friends with expectations
which all but himself know to be vain; to the economist, who tells of
bargains and settlements; to the politician, who predicts the fate of
battles and breach of alliances; to the usurer, who compares the
different funds; and to the talker, who talks only because he loves to
be talking.
To put every man in possession of his own time, and rescue the day from
this succession of usurpers, is beyond my power, and beyond my hope.
Yet, perhaps, some stop might be put to this unmerciful persecution, if
all would seriously reflect, that whoever pays a visit that is not
desired, or talks longer than the hearer is willing to attend, is guilty
of an injury which he cannot repair, and takes away that which he cannot
give.
No. 15. SATURDAY, JULY 22, 1758.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
I have the misfortune to be a man of business; that, you will say, is a
most grievous one; but what makes it the more so to me, is, that my wife
has nothing to do: at least she had too good an education, and the
prospect of too good a fortune in reversion when I married her, to think
of employing herself either in my shop-affairs, or the management of my
family.
Her time, you know, as well as my own, must be filled up some way or
other. For my part, I have enough to mind in weighing my goods out, and
waiting on my customers: but my wife, though she could be of as much use
as a shopman to me, if she would put her hand to it, is now only in my
way. She walks all the morning sauntering about the shop with her arms
through her pocket-holes or stands gaping at the door-sill, and looking
at every person that passes by. She is continually asking me a thousand
frivolous questions about every customer that comes in and goes out; and
all the while that I am entering any thing in my day-book, she is
lolling over the counter, and staring at it, as if I was only scribbling
or drawing figures for her amusement. Sometimes, indeed, she will take a
needle; but as she always works at the door, or in the middle of the
shop, she has so many interruptions, that she is longer hemming a towel,
or darning a stocking, than I am in breaking forty loaves of sugar, and
making it up into pounds.
In the afternoons I am sure likewise to have her company, except she is
called upon by some of her acquaintance: and then, as we let out all the
upper part of our house, and have only a little room backwards for
ourselves, they either keep such a chattering, or else are calling out
every moment to me, that I cannot mind my business for them.
My wife, I am sure, might do all the little matters our family requires;
and I could wish that she would employ herself in them; but, instead of
that, we have a girl to do the work, and look after a little boy about
two years old, which, I may fairly say, is the mother's own child. The
brat must be humoured in every thing: he is therefore suffered
constantly to play in the shop, pull all the goods about, and clamber up
the shelves to get at the plums and sugar. I dare not correct him;
because, if I did, I should have wife and maid both upon me at once. As
to the latter, she is as lazy and sluttish as her mistress; and because
she complains she has too much work, we can scarcely get her to do any
thing at all: nay, what is worse than that, I am afraid she is hardly
honest; and as she is intrusted to buy-in all our provisions, the jade,
I am sure, makes a market-penny out of every article.
But to return to my deary.--The evenings are the only time, when it is
fine weather, that I am left to myself; for then she generally takes the
child out to give it milk in the Park. When she comes home again, she is
so fatigued with walking, that she cannot stir from her chair: and it is
an hour, after shop is shut, before I can get a bit of supper, while the
maid is taken up in undressing and putting the child to bed.
But you will pity me much more, when I tell you the manner in which we
generally pass our Sundays. In the morning she is commonly too ill to
dress herself to go to church; she therefore never gets up till noon;
and, what is still more vexatious, keeps me in bed with her, when I
ought to be busily engaged in better employment. It is well if she can
get her things on by dinner-time; and, when that is over, I am sure to
be dragged out by her either to Georgia, or Hornsey Wood, or the White
Conduit House. Yet even these near excursions are so very fatiguing to
her, that, besides what it costs me in tea and hot rolls, and sillabubs,
and cakes for the boy, I am frequently forced to take a hackney-coach,
or drive them out in a one-horse chair. At other times, as my wife is
rather of the fattest, and a very poor walker, besides bearing her whole
weight upon my arm, I am obliged to carry the child myself.
Thus, Sir, does she constantly drawl out her time, without either profit
or satisfaction; and, while I see my neighbours' wives helping in the
shop, and almost earning as much as their husbands, I have the
mortification to find that mine is nothing but a dead weight upon me. In
short, I do not know any greater misfortune can happen to a plain
hard-working tradesman, as I am, than to be joined to such a woman, who
is rather a clog than a helpmate to him.
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
ZACHARY TREACLE.[1]
[1]An unknown correspondent.
No. 16. SATURDAY, JULY 29, 1758.
I paid a visit yesterday to my old friend Ned Drugget, at his
country-lodgings. Ned began trade with a very small fortune; he took a
small house in an obscure street, and for some years dealt only in
remnants. Knowing that _light gains make a heavy purse_, he was content
with moderate profit: having observed or heard the effects of civility,
he bowed down to the counter-edge at the entrance and departure of every
customer, listened without impatience to the objections of the ignorant,
and refused without resentment the offers of the penurious. His only
recreation was to stand at his own door and look into the street. His
dinner was sent him from a neighbouring alehouse, and he opened and shut
the shop at a certain hour with his own hands.
His reputation soon extended from one end of the street to the other;
and Mr. Drugget's exemplary conduct was recommended by every master to
his apprentice, and by every father to his son. Ned was not only
considered as a thriving trader, but as a man of elegance and
politeness, for he was remarkably neat in his dress, and would wear his
coat threadbare without spotting it; his hat was always brushed, his
shoes glossy, his wig nicely curled, and his stockings without a
wrinkle. With such qualifications it was not very difficult for him to
gain the heart of Miss Comfit, the only daughter of Mr. Comfit the
confectioner.
Ned is one of those whose happiness marriage has increased. His wife had
the same disposition with himself; and his method of life was very
little changed, except that he dismissed the lodgers from the first
floor, and took the whole house into his own hands.
He had already, by his parsimony, accumulated a considerable sum, to
which the fortune of his wife was now added. From this time he began to
grasp at greater acquisitions, and was always ready, with money in his
hand, to pick up the refuse of a sale, or to buy the stock of a trader
who retired from business. He soon added his parlour to his shop, and
was obliged a few months afterwards to hire a warehouse.
He had now a shop splendidly and copiously furnished with every thing
that time had injured, or fashion had degraded, with fragments of
tissues, odd yards of brocade, vast bales of faded silk, and innumerable
boxes of antiquated ribbons. His shop was soon celebrated through all
quarters of the town, and frequented by every form of ostentatious
poverty. Every maid, whose misfortune it was to be taller than her lady,
matched her gown at Mr. Drugget's; and many a maiden, who had passed a
winter with her aunt in London, dazzled the rusticks, at her return,
with cheap finery which Drugget had supplied. His shop was often visited
in a morning by ladies who left their coaches in the next street, and
crept through the alley in linen gowns. Drugget knows the rank of his
customers by their bashfulness; and, when he finds them unwilling to be
seen, invites them up stairs, or retires with them to the back window.
I rejoiced at the increasing prosperity of my friend, and imagined that,
as he grew rich, he was growing happy. His mind has partaken the
enlargement of his fortune. When I stepped in for the first five years,
I was welcomed only with a shake of the hand; in the next period of his
life, he beckoned across the way for a pot of beer; but for six years
past, he invites me to dinner; and, if he bespeaks me the day before,
never fails to regale me with a fillet of veal.
His riches neither made him uncivil nor negligent; he rose at the same
hour, attended with the same assiduity, and bowed with the same
gentleness. But for some years he has been much inclined to talk of the
fatigues of business, and the confinement of a shop, and to wish that he
had been so happy as to have renewed his uncle's lease of a farm, that
he might have lived without noise and hurry, in a pure air, in the
artless society of honest villagers, and the contemplation of the works
of nature.
I soon discovered the cause of my friend's philosophy. He thought
himself grown rich enough to have a lodging in the country, like the
mercers on Ludgate-hill, and was resolved to enjoy himself in the
decline of life. This was a revolution not to be made suddenly. He
talked three years of the pleasures of the country, but passed every
night over his own shop. But at last he resolved to be happy, and hired
a lodging in the country, that he may steal some hours in the week from
business; for, says he, _when a man advances in life, he loves to
entertain himself sometimes with his own thoughts._
I was invited to this seat of quiet and contemplation, among those whom
Mr. Drugget considers as his most reputable friends, and desires to make
the first witnesses of his elevation to the highest dignities of a
shopkeeper. I found him at Islington, in a room which overlooked the
high road, amusing himself with looking through the window, which the
clouds of dust would not suffer him to open. He embraced me, told me I
was welcome into the country, and asked me if I did not feel myself
refreshed. He then desired that dinner might be hastened, for fresh air
always sharpened his appetite, and ordered me a toast and a glass of
wine after my walk. He told me much of the pleasures he found in
retirement, and wondered what had kept him so long out of the country.
After dinner company came in, and Mr. Drugget again repeated the praises
of the country, recommended the pleasures of meditation, and told them
that he had been all the morning at the window, counting the carriages
as they passed before him.
No. 17. SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1758.
_Surge tandem Carnifex_[1]. MAECENAS AD AUGUSTUM.
The rainy weather, which has continued the last month, is said to have
given great disturbance to the inspectors of barometers. The oraculous
glasses have deceived their votaries; shower has succeeded shower,
though they predicted sunshine and dry skies; and, by fatal confidence
in these fallacious promises, many coats have lost their gloss, and many
curls been moistened to flaccidity.
This is one of the distresses to which mortals subject themselves by the
pride of speculation. I had no part in this learned disappointment, who
am content to credit my senses, and to believe that rain will fall when
the air blackens, and that the weather will be dry when the sun is
bright. My caution, indeed, does not always preserve me from a shower.
To be wet may happen to the genuine Idler; but to be wet in opposition
to theory, can befall only the Idler that pretends to be busy. Of those
that spin out life in trifles and die without a memorial, many flatter
themselves with high opinions of their own importance, and imagine that
they are every day adding some improvement to human life. To be idle and
to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man
endeavours, with his utmost care, to hide his poverty from others, and
his idleness from himself.
Among those whom I never could persuade to rank themselves with Idlers,
and who speak with indignation of my morning sleeps and nocturnal
rambles; one passes the day in catching spiders, that he may count their
eyes with a microscope; another erects his head, and exhibits the dust
of a marigold separated from the flower with a dexterity worthy of
Leuwenhoeck himself. Some turn the wheel of electricity; some suspend
rings to a load-stone, and find that what they did yesterday they can do
again to-day. Some register the changes of the wind, and die fully
convinced that the wind is changeable.
There are men yet more profound, who have heard that two colourless
liquors may produce a colour by union, and that two cold bodies will
grow hot if they are mingled; they mingle them, and produce the effect
expected, say it is strange, and mingle them again.
The Idlers that sport only with inanimate nature may claim some
indulgence; if they are useless, they are still innocent: but there are
others, whom I know not how to mention without more emotion than my love
of quiet willingly admits. Among the inferior professors of medical
knowledge, is a race of wretches, whose lives are only varied by
varieties of cruelty; whose favourite amusement is to nail dogs to
tables and open them alive; to try how long life may be continued in
various degrees of mutilation, or with the excision or laceration of the
vital parts; to examine whether burning irons are felt more acutely by
the bone or tendon; and whether the more lasting agonies are produced by
poison forced into the mouth, or injected into the veins.
It is not without reluctance that I offend the sensibility of the tender
mind with images like these. If such cruelties were not practised, it
were to be desired that they should not be conceived; but, since they
are published every day with ostentation, let me be allowed once to
mention them, since I mention them with abhorrence.
Mead has invidiously remarked of Woodward, that he gathered shells and
stones, and would pass for a philosopher. With pretensions much less
reasonable, the anatomical novice tears out the living bowels of an
animal, and styles himself physician, prepares himself by familiar
cruelty for that profession which he is to exercise upon the tender and
the helpless, upon feeble bodies and broken minds, and by which he has
opportunities to extend his arts of torture, and continue those
experiments upon infancy and age, which he has hitherto tried upon cats
and dogs.
What is alleged in defence of these hateful practices, every one knows;
but the truth is, that by knives, fire, and poison, knowledge is not
always sought, and is very seldom attained. The experiments that have
been tried, are tried again; he that burned an animal with irons
yesterday, will be willing to amuse himself with burning another
to-morrow. I know not, that by living dissections any discovery has been
made by which a single malady is more easily cured. And if the knowledge
of physiology has been somewhat increased, he surely buys knowledge
dear, who learns the use of the lacteals at the expense of his humanity.
It is time that universal resentment should arise against these horrid
operations, which tend to harden the heart, extinguish those sensations
which give man confidence in man, and make the physician more dreadful
than the gout or stone.
[1] Dr. Johnson gave this, among other mottos, to Mrs. Piozzi. They will
be inserted in this Edition in their proper places, and indicated by
an asterisk. See Mrs. Piozzi's Anecdotes, and Chalmers' British
Essayists, vol. 33.
No. 18. SATURDAY, AUGUST 12, 1758.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
It commonly happens to him who endeavours to obtain distinction by
ridicule or censure, that he teaches others to practise his own arts
against himself; and that, after a short enjoyment of the applause paid
to his sagacity, or of the mirth excited by his wit, he is doomed to
suffer the same severities of scrutiny, to hear inquiry detecting his
faults, and exaggeration sporting with his failings.
The natural discontent of inferiority will seldom fail to operate in
some degree of malice against him who professes to superintend the
conduct of others, especially if he seats himself uncalled in the chair
of judicature, and exercises authority by his own commission.
You cannot, therefore, wonder that your observations on human folly, if
they produce laughter at one time, awaken criticism at another; and that
among the numbers whom you have taught to scoff at the retirement of
Drugget, there is one who offers his apology.
The mistake of your old friend is by no means peculiar. The publick
pleasures of far the greater part of mankind are counterfeit. Very few
carry their philosophy to places of diversion, or are very careful to
analyze their enjoyments. The general condition of life is so full of
misery, that we are glad to catch delight without inquiring whence it
comes, or by what power it is bestowed.
The mind is seldom quickened to very vigorous operations but by pain, or
the dread of pain. We do not disturb ourselves with the detection of
fallacies which do us no harm, nor willingly decline a pleasing effect
to investigate its cause. He that is happy, by whatever means, desires
nothing but the continuance of happiness, and is no more solicitous to
distribute his sensations into their proper species, than the common
gazer on the beauties of the spring to separate light into its original
rays.