large, our minds are vacant, our dispositions gay, our acquaintances
numerous, and our relations splendid. We considered that marriage, like
life, has its youth; that the first year is the year of gaiety and
revel, and resolved to see the shows and feel the joys of London, before
the increase of our family should confine us to domestick cares and
domestick pleasures.
Little time was spent in preparation; the coach was harnessed, and a few
days brought us to London, and we alighted at a lodging provided for us
by Miss Biddy Trifle, a maiden niece of my husband's father, where we
found apartments on a second floor, which my cousin told us would serve
us till we could please ourselves with a more commodious and elegant
habitation, and which she had taken at a very high price, because it was
not worth the while to make a hard bargain for so short a time.
Here I intended to lie concealed till my new clothes were made, and my
new lodging hired; but Miss Trifle had so industriously given notice of
our arrival to all her acquaintance, that I had the mortification next
day of seeing the door thronged with painted coaches and chairs with
coronets, and was obliged to receive all my husband's relations on a
second floor.
Inconveniencies are often balanced by some advantage: the elevation of
my apartments furnished a subject for conversation, which, without some
such help, we should have been in danger of wanting. Lady Stately told
us how many years had passed since she climbed so many steps. Miss Airy
ran to the window, and thought it charming to see the walkers so little
in the street; and Miss Gentle went to try the same experiment, and
screamed to find herself so far above the ground.
They all knew that we intended to remove, and, therefore, all gave me
advice about a proper choice. One street was recommended for the purity
of its air, another for its freedom from noise, another for its nearness
to the Park, another because there was but a step from it to all places
of diversion, and another because its inhabitants enjoyed at once the
town and country.
I had civility enough to hear every recommendation with a look of
curiosity, while it was made, and of acquiescence, when it was
concluded, but in my heart felt no other desire than to be free from the
disgrace of a second floor, and cared little where I should fix, if the
apartments were spacious and splendid.
Next day a chariot was hired, and Miss Trifle was despatched to find a
lodging. She returned in the afternoon, with an account of a charming
place, to which my husband went in the morning to make the contract.
Being young and unexperienced, he took with him his friend Ned Quick, a
gentleman of great skill in rooms and furniture, who sees, at a single
glance, whatever there is to be commended or censured. Mr. Quick, at the
first view of the house, declared that it could not be inhabited, for
the sun in the afternoon shone with full glare on the windows of the
dining-room.
Miss Trifle went out again, and soon discovered another lodging, which
Mr. Quick went to survey, and found, that, whenever the wind should blow
from the, east, all the smoke of the city would be driven upon it.
A magnificent set of rooms was then found in one of the streets near
Westminster-Bridge, which Miss Trifle preferred to any which she had yet
seen; but Mr. Quick, having mused upon it for a time, concluded that it
would be too much exposed in the morning to the fogs that rise from the
river.
Thus Mr. Quick proceeded to give us every day new testimonies of his
taste and circumspection; sometimes the street was too narrow for a
double range of coaches; sometimes it was an obscure place, not
inhabited by persons of quality. Some places were dirty, and some
crowded; in some houses the furniture was ill-suited, and in others the
stairs were too narrow. He had such fertility of objections that Miss
Trifle was at last tired, and desisted from all attempts for our
accommodation.
In the mean time I have still continued to see my company on a second
floor, and am asked twenty times a day when I am to leave those odious
lodgings, in which I live tumultuously without pleasure, and expensively
without honour. My husband thinks so highly of Mr. Quick, that he cannot
be persuaded to remove without his approbation; and Mr. Quick thinks his
reputation raised by the multiplication of difficulties.
In this distress to whom can I have recourse? I find my temper vitiated
by daily disappointment, by the sight of pleasures which I cannot
partake, and the possession of riches which I cannot enjoy. Dear Mr.
Idler, inform my husband that he is trifling away, in superfluous
vexation, the few months which custom has appropriated to delight; that
matrimonial quarrels are not easily reconciled between those that have
no children; that wherever we settle he must always find some
inconvenience; but nothing is so much to be avoided as a perpetual state
of inquiry and suspense.
I am, Sir,
Your humble servant,
PEGGY HEARTLESS.
No. 87. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 15, 1759.
Of what we know not, we can only judge by what we know. Every novelty
appears more wonderful as it is more remote from any thing with which
experience or testimony has hitherto acquainted us; and, if it passes
further beyond the notions that we have been accustomed to form, it
becomes at last incredible.
We seldom consider that human knowledge is very narrow, that national
manners are formed by chance, that uncommon conjunctures of causes
produce rare effects, or that what is impossible at one time or place
may yet happen in another. It is always easier to deny than to inquire.
To refuse credit confers for a moment an appearance of superiority,
which every little mind is tempted to assume when it may be gained so
cheaply as by withdrawing attention from evidence, and declining the
fatigue of comparing probabilities. The most pertinacious and vehement
demonstrator may be wearied in time by continual negation; and
incredulity, which an old poet, in his address to Raleigh, calls _the
wit of fools_, obtunds the argument which it cannot answer, as woolsacks
deaden arrows though they cannot repel them.
Many relations of travellers have been slighted as fabulous, till more
frequent voyages have confirmed their veracity; and it may reasonably be
imagined, that many ancient historians are unjustly suspected of
falsehood, because our own times afford nothing that resembles what they
tell[1].
Had only the writers of antiquity informed us, that there was once a
nation in which the wife lay down upon the burning pile only to mix her
ashes with those of her husband, we should have thought it a tale to be
told with that of Endymion's commerce with the moon. Had only a single
traveller related, that many nations of the earth were black, we should
have thought the accounts of the Negroes and of the Phoenix equally
credible. But of black men the numbers are too great who are now
repining under English cruelty; and the custom of voluntary cremation is
not yet lost among the ladies of India.
Few narratives will either to men or women appear more incredible than
the histories of the Amazons; of female nations of whose constitution it
was the essential and fundamental law to exclude men from all
participation, either of publick affairs or domestick business; where
female armies marched under female captains, female farmers gathered the
harvest, female partners danced together, and female wits diverted one
another.
Yet several ages of antiquity have transmitted accounts of the Amazons
of Caucasus; and of the Amazons of America, who have given their name to
the greatest river in the world, Condamine lately found such memorials,
as can be expected among erratick and unlettered nations, where events
are recorded only by tradition, and new settling in the country from
time to time, confuse and efface all traces of former times.
To die with husbands, or to live without them, are the two extremes
which the prudence and moderation of European ladies have, in all ages,
equally declined; they have never been allured to death by the kindness
or civility of the politest nations, nor has the roughness and brutality
of more savage countries ever provoked them to doom their male
associates to irrevocable banishment. The Bohemian matrons are said to
have made one short struggle for superiority; but, instead of banishing
the men, they contented themselves with condemning them to servile
offices; and their constitution, thus left imperfect, was quickly
overthrown.
There is, I think, no class of English women from whom we are in any
danger of Amazonian usurpation. The old maids seem nearest to
independence, and most likely to be animated by revenge against
masculine authority; they often speak of men with acrimonious vehemence,
but it is seldom found that they have any settled hatred against them,
and it is yet more rarely observed that they have any kindness for each
other. They will not easily combine in any plot; and if they should ever
agree to retire and fortify themselves in castles or in mountains, the
sentinel will betray the passes in spite, and the garrison will
capitulate upon easy terms, if the besiegers have handsome swordknots,
and are well supplied with fringe and lace.
The gamesters, if they were united, would make a formidable body; and,
since they consider men only as beings that are to lose their money,
they might live together without any wish for the officiousness of
gallantry or the delights of diversified conversation. But as nothing
would hold them together but the hope of plundering one another, their
government would fail from the defect of its principles; the men would
need only to neglect them, and they would perish in a few weeks by a
civil war.
I do not mean to censure the ladies of England as defective in knowledge
or in spirit, when I suppose them unlikely to revive the military
honours of their sex. The character of the ancient Amazons was rather
terrible than lovely; the hand could not be very delicate that was only
employed in drawing the bow and brandishing the battle-axe; their power
was maintained by cruelty, their courage was deformed by ferocity, and
their example only shows that men and women live best together.
[1] _Le vrai n'est pas toujours le vraisemblable._ The researches of
Gibbon, Rennel and Mitford, the travels of Bruce and Belzoni have
fully proved the truth of this maxim in the case of Herodotus.
No. 88. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1759.
_Hodie quid egisti?_
When the philosophers of the last age were first congregated into the
Royal Society, great expectations were raised of the sudden progress of
useful arts; the time was supposed to be near, when engines should turn
by a perpetual motion, and health be secured by the universal medicine;
when learning should be facilitated by a real character, and commerce
extended by ships which could reach their ports in defiance of the
tempest.
But improvement is naturally slow. The society met and parted without
any visible diminution of the miseries of life. The gout and stone were
still painful, the ground that was not ploughed brought no harvest, and
neither oranges nor grapes would grow upon the hawthorn. At last, those
who were disappointed began to be angry; those likewise who hated
innovation were glad to gain an opportunity of ridiculing men who had
depreciated, perhaps with too much arrogance, the knowledge of
antiquity. And it appears, from some of their earliest apologies, that
the philosophers felt with great sensibility the unwelcome importunities
of those who were daily asking, "What have ye done?"
The truth is, that little had been done compared with what fame had been
suffered to promise; and the question could only be answered by general
apologies and by new hopes, which, when they were frustrated, gave a new
occasion to the same vexatious inquiry.
This fatal question has disturbed the quiet of many other minds. He that
in the latter part of his life too strictly inquires what he has done,
can very seldom receive from his own heart such an account as will give
him satisfaction.
We do not indeed so often disappoint others as ourselves. We not only
think more highly than others of our own abilities, but allow ourselves
to form hopes which we never communicate, and please our thoughts with
employments which none ever will allot us, and with elevations to which
we are never expected to rise; and when our days and years have passed
away in common business or common amusements, and we find at last that
we have suffered our purposes to sleep till the time of action is past,
we are reproached only by our own reflections; neither our friends nor
our enemies wonder that we live and die like the rest of mankind; that
we live without notice, and die without memorial; they know not what
task we had proposed, and, therefore, cannot discern whether it is
finished.
He that compares what he has done with what he has left undone, will
feel the effect which must always follow the comparison of imagination
with reality; he will look with contempt on his own unimportance, and
wonder to what purpose he came into the world; he will repine that he
shall leave behind him no evidence of his having been, that he has added
nothing to the system of life, but has glided from youth to age among
the crowd, without any effort for distinction.
Man is seldom willing to let fall the opinion of his own dignity, or to
believe that he does little only because every individual is a very
little being. He is better content to want diligence than power, and
sooner confesses the depravity of his will than the imbecility of his
nature.
From this mistaken notion of human greatness it proceeds, that many who
pretend to have made great advances in wisdom so loudly declare that
they despise themselves. If I had ever found any of the self-contemners
much irritated or pained by the consciousness of their meanness, I
should have given them consolation by observing, that a little more than
nothing is as much as can be expected from a being, who, with respect to
the multitudes about him, is himself little more than nothing. Every man
is obliged by the Supreme Master of the universe to improve all the
opportunities of good which are afforded him, and to keep in continual
activity such abilities as are bestowed upon him. But he has no reason
to repine, though his abilities are small and his opportunities few. He
that has improved the virtue, or advanced the happiness of one
fellow-creature, he that has ascertained a single moral proposition, or
added one useful experiment to natural knowledge, may be contented with
his own performance, and, with respect to mortals like himself, may
demand, like Augustus, to be dismissed at his departure with applause.
No. 89. SATURDAY, DECEMBER 29, 1759.
[Greek: Anechou kai apechou.] EPICT.
How evil came into the world; for what reason it is that life is
overspread with such boundless varieties of misery; why the only
thinking being of this globe is doomed to think merely to be wretched,
and to pass his time from youth to age in fearing or in suffering
calamities, is a question which philosophers have long asked, and which
philosophy could never answer.
Religion informs us that misery and sin were produced together. The
depravation of human will was followed by a disorder of the harmony of
nature; and by that providence which often places antidotes in the
neighbourhood of poisons, vice was checked by misery, lest it should
swell to universal and unlimited dominion.
A state of innocence and happiness is so remote from all that we have
ever seen, that though we can easily conceive it possible, and may,
therefore, hope to attain it, yet our speculations upon it must be
general and confused. We can discover that where there is universal
innocence, there will probably be universal happiness; for, why should
afflictions be permitted to infest beings who are not in danger of
corruption from blessings, and where there is no use of terrour nor
cause of punishment? But in a world like ours, where our senses assault
us, and our hearts betray us, we should pass on from crime to crime,
heedless and remorseless, if misery did not stand in our way, and our
own pains admonish us of our folly.
Almost all the moral good, which is left among us, is the apparent
effect of physical evil.
Goodness is divided by divines into soberness, righteousness and
godliness. Let it be examined how each of these duties would be
practised, if there were no physical evil to enforce it.
Sobriety, or temperance, is nothing but the forbearance of pleasure; and
if pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it? We see every
hour those in whom the desire of present indulgence overpowers all sense
of past and all foresight of future misery. In a remission of the gout,
the drunkard returns to his wine, and the glutton to his feast; and if
neither disease nor poverty were felt or dreaded, every one would sink
down in idle sensuality, without any care of others, or of himself. To
eat and drink, and lie down to sleep, would be the whole business of
mankind.
Righteousness, or the system of social duty, may be subdivided into
justice and charity. Of justice one of the Heathen sages has shown, with
great acuteness, that it was impressed upon mankind only by the
inconveniencies which injustice had produced. "In the first ages," says
he, "men acted without any rule but the impulse of desire; they
practised injustice upon others, and suffered it from others in their
turn; but in time it was discovered, that the pain of suffering wrong
was greater than the pleasure of doing it; and mankind, by a general
compact, submitted to the restraint of laws, and resigned the pleasure
to escape the pain."
Of charity it is superfluous to observe, that it could have no place if
there were no want; for of a virtue which could not be practised, the
omission could not be culpable. Evil is not only the occasional, but the
efficient cause of charity; we are incited to the relief of misery by
the consciousness that we have the same nature with the sufferer, that
we are in danger of the same distresses, and may sometimes implore the
same assistance.
Godliness, or piety, is elevation of the mind towards the Supreme Being,
and extension of the thoughts to another life. The other life is future,
and the Supreme Being is invisible. None would have recourse to an
invisible power, but that all other subjects have eluded their hopes.
None would fix their attention upon the future, but that they are
discontented with the present. If the senses were feasted with perpetual
pleasure, they would always keep the mind in subjection. Reason has no
authority over us, but by its power to warn us against evil.
In childhood, while our minds are yet unoccupied, religion is impressed
upon them, and the first years of almost all who have been well educated
are passed in a regular discharge of the duties of piety. But as we
advance forward into the crowds of life, innumerable delights solicit
our inclinations, and innumerable cares distract our attention; the time
of youth is passed in noisy frolicks; manhood is led on from hope to
hope, and from project to project; the dissoluteness of pleasure, the
inebriation of success, the ardour of expectation, and the vehemence of
competition, chain down the mind alike to the present scene, nor is it
remembered how soon this mist of trifles must be scattered, and the
bubbles that float upon the rivulet of life be lost for ever in the
gulph of eternity. To this consideration scarcely any man is awakened
but by some pressing and resistless evil. The death of those from whom
he derived his pleasures, or to whom he destined his possessions, some
disease which shows him the vanity of all external acquisitions, or the
gloom of age, which intercepts his prospects of long enjoyment, forces
him to fix his hopes upon another state; and when he has contended with
the tempests of life till his strength fails him, he flies at last to
the shelter of religion.
That misery does not make all virtuous, experience too certainly informs
us; but it is no less certain that of what virtue there is, misery
produces far the greater part. Physical evil may be, therefore, endured
with patience, since it is the cause of moral good; and patience itself
is one virtue by which we are prepared for that state in which evil
shall be no more[1].
[1] For a fuller exposition of Johnson's sentiments on this dark and
deep subject, see his Review of Soame Jenyns' Nature and Origin of
Evil.
No. 90. SATURDAY, JANUARY 5, 1760.
It is a complaint which has been made from time to time, and which seems
to have lately become more frequent, that English oratory, however
forcible in argument, or elegant in expression, is deficient and
inefficacious, because our speakers want the grace and energy of action.
Among the numerous projectors who are desirous to refine our manners,
and improve our faculties, some are willing to supply the deficiency of
our speakers[1]. We have had more than one exhortation to study the
neglected art of moving the passions, and have been encouraged to
believe that our tongues, however feeble in themselves, may, by the help
of our hands and legs, obtain an uncontroulable dominion over the most
stubborn audience, animate the insensible, engage the careless, force
tears from the obdurate, and money from the avaricious.
If by sleight of hand, or nimbleness of foot, all these wonders can be
performed, he that shall neglect to attain the free use of his limbs may
be justly censured as criminally lazy. But I am afraid that no specimen
of such effects will easily be shown. If I could once find a speaker in
'Change-Alley raising the price of stocks by the power of persuasive
gestures, I should very zealously recommend the study of his art; but
having never seen any action by which language was much assisted, I have
been hitherto inclined to doubt whether my countrymen are not blamed too
hastily for their calm and motionless utterance.
Foreigners of many nations accompany their speech with action; but why
should their example have more influence upon us than ours upon them?
Customs are not to be changed but for better. Let those who desire to
reform us show the benefits of the change proposed. When the Frenchman
waves his hands and writhes his body in recounting the revolutions of a
game at cards, or the Neapolitan, who tells the hour of the day, shows
upon his fingers the number which he mentions; I do not perceive that
their manual exercise is of much use, or that they leave any image more
deeply impressed by their bustle and vehemence of communication.
Upon the English stage there is no want of action; but the difficulty of
making it at once various and proper, and its perpetual tendency to
become ridiculous, notwithstanding all the advantages which art and
show, and custom and prejudice can give it, may prove how little it can
be admitted into any other place, where it can have no recommendation
but from truth and nature.
The use of English oratory is only at the bar, in the parliament, and in
the church. Neither the judges of our laws nor the representatives of
our people would be much affected by laboured gesticulation, or believe
any man the more because he rolled his eyes, or puffed his cheeks, or
spread abroad his arms, or stamped the ground, or thumped his breast, or
turned his eyes sometimes to the ceiling and sometimes to the floor.
Upon men intent only upon truth, the arm of an orator has little power;
a credible testimony, or a cogent argument will overcome all the art of
modulation, and all the violence of contortion.
It is well known that, in the city which may be called the parent of
oratory, all the arts of mechanical persuasion were banished from the
court of supreme judicature. The judges of the Areopagus considered
action and vociferation as a foolish appeal to the external senses, and
unworthy to be practised before those who had no desire of idle
amusement, and whose only pleasure was to discover right.