Idler No. 92. Saturday, Januray 19, 1760. Whatever is useful or honourable will be desired by many who never can obtain it; and that which cannot be obtained when it is desired, artifice or folly will be diligent to counterfeit. Those to whom fortune has denied gold and diamonds decorate themselves with stones and metals, […]

Idler No. 94. Saturday, February 2, 1760. It is common to find young men ardent and diligent in the pursuit of knowledge; but the progress of life very often produces laxity and indifference; and not only those who are at liberty to choose their business and amusements, but those likewise whose professions engage them in […]

Idler No. 95. Saturday, February 9, 1760. TO THE IDLER. Mr. Idler, It is, I think, universally agreed, that seldom any good is gotten by complaint; yet we find that few forbear to complain, but those who are afraid of being reproached as the authors of their own miseries. I hope, therefore, for the common […]

Idler No. 93. Saturday, January 26, 1760. Sam Softly was bred a sugar-baker; but succeeding to a considerable estate on the death of his elder brother, he retired early from business, married a fortune, and settled in a country-house near Kentish-town, Sam, who formerly was a sportsman, and in his apprenticeship used to frequent Barnet […]

Idler No. 96. Saturday, February 16, 1760. Qui se volet esse potentem,Animos domet ille feroces:Nec victa libidine collaFoedis submittat habenis.BOETHIUS. Hacho, a king of Lapland, was in his youth the most renowned of the Northern warriors. His martial achievements remain engraved on a pillar of flint in the rocks of Hanga, and are to this […]

Idler No. 84. Saturday, November 24, 1759. Biography is, of the various kinds of narrative writing, that which is most eagerly read, and most easily applied to the purposes of life. In romances, when the wide field of possibility lies open to invention, the incidents may easily be made more numerous, the vicissitudes more sudden, […]

Idler No. 85. Saturday, December 1, 1759. One of the peculiarities which distinguish the present age is the multiplication of books. Every day brings new advertisements of literary undertakings, and we are flattered with repeated promises of growing wise on easier terms than our progenitors. How much either happiness or knowledge is advanced by this […]

Idler No. 86. Saturday, December 8, 1759. TO THE IDLER. Sir, I am a young lady newly married to a young gentleman. Our fortune is 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 […]

Idler 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 […]

Idler 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 […]

Idler 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 […]

Idler 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 […]

Idler No. 76. Saturday, September 29, 1759. TO THE IDLER, Sir, I was much pleased with your ridicule of those shallow criticks, whose judgment, though often right as far as it goes, yet reaches only to inferior beauties, and who, unable to comprehend the whole, judge only by parts, and from thence determine the merit […]

Idler No. 78. Saturday, October 13, 1759. I have passed the summer in one of those places to which a mineral spring gives the idle and luxurious an annual reason for resorting, whenever they fancy themselves offended by the heat of London. What is the true motive of this periodical assembly, I have never yet […]

Idler No. 79. Saturday, October 20, 1759. TO THE IDLER. Sir, Your acceptance of a former letter on painting gives me encouragement to offer a few more sketches on the same subject. Amongst the painters, and the writers on painting, there is one maxim universally admitted and continually inculcated. Imitate nature is the invariable rule; […]

Idler No. 77. Saturday, October 6, 1759. Easy poetry is universally admired; but I know not whether any rule has yet been fixed, by which it may be decided when poetry can be properly called easy. Horace has told us, that it is such as “every reader hopes to equal, but after long labour finds […]

Idler No. 80. Saturday, October 27, 1759. That every day has its pains and sorrows is universally experienced, and almost universally confessed; but let us not attend only to mournful truths; if we look impartially about us, we shall find that every day has likewise its pleasures and its joys. The time is now come […]

Idler No. 81. Saturday, November 3, 1759. As the English army was passing towards Quebec along a soft savanna between a mountain and a lake, one of the petty chiefs of the inland regions stood upon a rock surrounded by his clan, and from behind the shelter of the bushes contemplated the art and regularity […]

Idler No. 82. Saturday, November 10, 1759. TO THE IDLER. Sir, Discoursing in my last letter on the different practice of the Italian and Dutch painters, I observed, that “the Italian painter attends only to the invariable, the great and general ideas which are fixed and inherent in universal nature.” I was led into the […]

Idler No. 83. Saturday, November 17, 1759. TO THE IDLER. Sir, I suppose you have forgotten that many weeks ago I promised to send you an account of my companions at the Wells. You would not deny me a place among the most faithful votaries of idleness, if you knew how often I have recollected […]