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 his debt. Worse and worse
commodities, at a higher and higher price, are forced upon him; he is
impoverished by compulsive traffick, and at last overwhelmed, in the
common receptacles of misery, by debts, which, without his own consent,
were accumulated on his head. To the relief of this distress, no other
objection can be made, but that by an easy dissolution of debts fraud
will be left without punishment, and imprudence without awe; and that
when insolvency should be no longer punishable, 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 insidious traffick is to be desired, and no reason can
be given why a change of the law should impair any other.
We see nation trade with nation, where no payment can be compelled.
Mutual convenience produces mutual confidence; and the merchants
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 taking
credit; let us try whether fraud and avarice may be more easily
restrained from giving it[1].
I am, Sir, &c.
[1] This number was substituted, for some reason not ascertained, for
the keenly satirical original, which is reprinted at the end of this
volume.
The observations of the present paper are such as would naturally
suggest themselves to an honest and benevolent mind like Johnson's; but
their political correctness may reasonably be questioned. An attempt has
been made, since his day, to provide a humane protection for the
unfortunate debtor. But has it not, at the same time, exposed the
confiding tradesman to deception and to consequent ruin, by destroying
all adequate punishment, and therefore removing every check upon vice
and prodigality? In a _Dictionnaire des Gens du Monde_, insolvency has
been, not unaptly, defined, a mode of getting rich by infallible rules!
See Idler 38, and Note.
No. 23. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1758.
Life has no pleasure higher or nobler than that of friendship. It is
painful to consider, that this sublime enjoyment may be impaired or
destroyed by innumerable causes, and that there is no human possession
of which the duration is less certain.
Many have talked, in very exalted language, of the perpetuity of
friendship, of invincible constancy, and unalienable kindness; and some
examples have been seen of men who have continued faithful to their
earliest choice, and whose affection has predominated over changes of
fortune, and contrariety of opinion.
But these instances are memorable, because they are rare. The friendship
which is to be practised or expected by common mortals, must take its
rise from mutual pleasure, and must end when the power ceases of
delighting each other.
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.
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 be increased by short
intermissions. What we have missed long enough to want it, we value more
when it is regained; but that which has been lost till it is forgotten,
will be found at last with little gladness, and with still less if a
substitute has supplied the place. A man deprived of the companion to
whom he used to open his bosom, and with whom he shared the hours of
leisure and merriment, feels the day at first hanging heavy on him; his
difficulties 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.
No expectation is more frequently disappointed, 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 had
formerly enjoyed, is for ever 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 operate. There is scarcely
any man without some favourite trifle which he values above greater
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 wanton 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.
This, however, is a slow malignity, which a wise man will obviate as
inconsistent with 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.
Friendship has other enemies. Suspicion is always hardening the
cautious, and disgust repelling the delicate. Very slender differences
will sometimes part those whom long reciprocation of civility or
beneficence has united. Lonelove and Ranger retired into the country to
enjoy the company of each other, and returned in six weeks cold and
petulant; Ranger's pleasure was to walk in the fields, and Lonelove's to
sit in a bower; each had complied with the other in his turn, and each
was angry that compliance had been exacted.
The most fatal disease of friendship is gradual decay, or dislike hourly
increased by causes 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 of pleasing and
willingness to be pleased is silently diminished, the renovation of
friendship is hopeless; as, when the vital powers sink into languor,
there is no longer any use of the physician.
No. 24. SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 1758.
When man sees one of the inferior creatures perched upon a tree, or
basking in the sunshine, without any apparent endeavour or pursuit, he
often asks himself, or his companion, _On what that animal can be
supposed to be thinking_?
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 consequence of thought 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 in their condition, and have
therefore neither fear, hope, nor design, and yet are supposed to be
thinking beings.
To every act a subject is required. He that thinks must think upon
something. But tell me, ye that pierce deepest into nature, ye that take
the widest surveys of life, inform me, kind shades of Malbranche and of
Locke, what that something can be, which excites and continues thought
in maiden aunts with small fortunes; 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?
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 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
subtle, 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
should we imagine that we have had thought of which no consciousness
remains?
This argument, which appeals to experience, may from experience be
confuted. We every 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 skepticism, 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?
But how frequent soever may be the examples of existence without
thought, it is certainly a state not much to be desired. He that lives
in torpid insensibility, wants nothing of a carcass but putrefaction. It
is the part of every inhabitant of the earth to partake the pains and
pleasures of his fellow-beings; and, as in a 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.
No. 25. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1758.
TO THE IDLER.
Sir,
I 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 performances fill 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 dramatick 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 endeavour, dissipate the blush of diffidence, 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 publick 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 possession 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.
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. An art in
which such numbers fancy themselves excellent, and which the publick
liberally rewards, will excite many competitors, and in many attempts
there must be many miscarriages.
The care of the critick should be to distinguish errour 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 faults should be for a time overlooked, and
afterwards censured with gentleness and candour. But if in an actor
there appears an utter vacancy of meaning, a frigid equality, a stupid
languor, a torpid 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 publick; he that hisses in malice or sport,
is an oppressor and a robber.
But surely this laudable forbearance might be justly extended to young
poets. The art of the writer, like that of the player, is attained by
slow degrees. The power of distinguishing and discriminating comick
characters, or of filling tragedy with poetical images, must be the gift
of nature, which no instruction nor labour can supply; but the art of
dramatick disposition, the contexture of the scenes, the opposition of
characters, the involution of the plot, the expedients of suspension,
and the stratagems of surprise, 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. They that enter into the world are too often treated
with unreasonable rigour by those that were once as ignorant and heady
as themselves; and distinction is not always made between the faults
which require speedy and violent eradication, and those that will
gradually drop away in the progression of life. Vicious solicitations of
appetite, if not checked, will grow more importunate; and mean arts of
profit or ambition will gather strength in the mind, if they are not
early suppressed. But mistaken notions of superiority, desires of
useless show, pride of little accomplishments, and all the train of
vanity, will be brushed away by the wing of time.
Reproof should not exhaust its power upon petty failings; let it watch
diligently against the incursion of vice, and leave foppery and futility
to die of themselves.
No. 26 SATURDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1758.
Mr. Idler,
I never thought that I should write any thing to be printed; but having
lately seen your first essay, which was sent down into the kitchen, with
a great bundle of gazettes and useless papers, I find that you are
willing to admit any correspondent, and therefore hope you will not
reject me. If you publish my letter, it may encourage others, in the
same condition with myself, to tell their stories, which may be,
perhaps, as useful as those of great ladies.
I am a poor girl. I was bred in the country at a charity-school,
maintained by the contributions of wealthy neighbours. The ladies, or
patronesses, visited us from time to time, examined how we were taught,
and saw that our clothes were clean. We lived happily enough, and were
instructed to be thankful to those at whose cost we were educated. I was
always the favourite of my mistress; she used to call me to read and
show my copybook to all strangers, who never dismissed me without
commendation, and very seldom without a shilling.
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, she said, are born to ignorance, and will
work the harder the less they know. She told her friends, that London
was in confusion by the insolence of servants; that scarcely a wench was
to be got for _all work_, since education had made such numbers of fine
ladies; that nobody would now accept a lower title than that of a
waiting-maid, or something that might qualify her to wear laced shoes
and long ruffles, and to sit at work in the parlour window. But she was
resolved, for her part, to spoil no more girls; those, who were to live
by their hands, should neither read nor write out of her pocket; the
world was bad enough already, and she would have no part in making it
worse.
She was for a short time warmly opposed; but she persevered in her
notions, and withdrew her subscription. Few listen without a desire of
conviction to those who advise them to spare their money. Her example
and her arguments gained ground daily; and in less than a year the whole
parish was convinced, that the nation would be ruined, if the children
of the poor were taught to read and write.
Our school was now dissolved: my mistress kissed me when we parted, and
told me, that, being old and helpless, she could not assist me; advised
me to seek a service, and charged me not to forget what I had learned.
My reputation for scholarship, which had hitherto recommended me to
favour, was, by the adherents to the new opinion, considered as a crime;
and, when I offered myself to any mistress, I had no other answer than,
"Sure, child, you would not work! hard work is not fit for a pen-woman;
a scrubbing-brush would spoil your hand, child!"
I could not live at home; and while I was considering to what I should
betake me, one of the girls, who had gone from our school to London,
came down in a silk gown, and told her acquaintance how well she lived,
what fine things she saw, and what great wages she received. I resolved
to try my fortune, and took my passage in the next week's waggon to
London. I had no snares laid for me at my arrival, but came safe to a
sister of my mistress, who undertook to get me a place. She knew only
the families of mean tradesmen; and I, having no high opinion of my own
qualifications, was willing to accept the first offer.
My first mistress was wife of a working watch-maker, who earned more
than was sufficient to keep his family in decency and plenty; but it was
their constant practice to hire a chaise on Sunday, and spend half the
wages of the week on Richmond Hill; of Monday he commonly lay half in
bed, and spent the other half in merriment; Tuesday and Wednesday
consumed the rest of his money; and three days every week were passed in
extremity of want by us who were left at home, while my master lived on
trust at an alehouse. You may be sure, that of the sufferers, the maid
suffered most; and I left them, after three months, rather than be
starved.
I was then maid to a hatter's wife. There was no want to be dreaded, for
they lived in perpetual luxury. My mistress was a diligent woman, and
rose early in the morning to set the journeymen to work; my master was a
man much beloved by his neighbours, and sat at one club or other every
night. I was obliged to wait on my master at night, and on my mistress
in the morning. He seldom came home before two, and she rose at five. I
could no more live without sleep than without food, and therefore
entreated them to look out for another servant.
My next removal was to a linen-draper's, who had six children. My
mistress, when I first entered the house, informed me, that I must never
contradict the children, nor suffer them to cry. I had no desire to
offend, and readily promised to do my best. But when I gave them their
breakfast, I could not help all first; when I was playing with one in my
lap, I was forced to keep the rest in expectation. That which was not
gratified, always resented the injury with a loud outcry, which put my
mistress in a fury at me, and procured sugar-plums to the child. I could
not keep six children quiet, who were bribed to be clamorous; and was
therefore dismissed, as a girl honest, but not good-natured.