No More Learning

Being obliged to remove my habitation, I was led by my evil genius to a
convenient house in a street where many of the nobility reside. We had
scarcely ranged our furniture, and aired our rooms, when my wife began
to grow discontented, and to wonder what the neighbours would think,
when they saw so few chairs and chariots at her door.

Her acquaintance, who came to see her from the quarter that we had left,
mortified her without design, by continual inquiries about the ladies
whose houses they viewed from our windows. She was ashamed to confess
that she had no intercourse with them, and sheltered her distress under
general answers, which always tended to raise suspicion that she knew
more than she would tell; but she was often reduced to difficulties,
when the course of talk introduced questions about the furniture or
ornaments of their houses, which, when she could get no intelligence,
she was forced to pass slightly over, as things which she saw so often
that she never minded them.

To all these vexations she was resolved to put an end, and redoubled her
visits to those few of her friends who visited those who kept good
company; and, if ever she met a lady of quality, forced herself into
notice by respect and assiduity. Her advances were generally rejected;
and she heard them, as they went down stairs, talk how some creatures
put themselves forward.

She was not discouraged, but crept forward from one to another; and, as
perseverance will do great things, sapped her way unperceived, till,
unexpectedly, she appeared at the card-table of lady Biddy Porpoise, a
lethargick virgin of seventy-six, whom all the families in the next
square visited very punctually when she was not at home.

This was the first step of that elevation to which my wife has since
ascended. For five months she had no name in her mouth but that of lady
Biddy, who, let the world say what it would, had a fine understanding,
and such a command of her temper, that, whether she won or lost, she
slept over her cards.

At lady Biddy's she met with lady Tawdry, whose favour she gained by
estimating her ear-rings, which were counterfeit, at twice the value of
real diamonds. When she had once entered two houses of distinction, she
was easily admitted into more, and in ten weeks had all her time
anticipated by parties and engagements. Every morning she is bespoke, in
the summer, for the gardens, in the winter, for a sale; every afternoon
she has visits to pay, and every night brings an inviolable appointment,
or an assembly in which the best company in the town are to appear.

You will easily imagine that much of my domestick comfort is withdrawn.
I never see my wife but in the hurry of preparation, or the languor of
weariness. To dress and to undress is almost her whole business in
private, and the servants take advantage of her negligence to increase
expense. But I can supply her omissions by my own diligence, and should
not much regret this new course of life, if it did nothing more than
transfer to me the care of our accounts. The changes which it has made
are more vexatious. My wife has no longer the use of her understanding.
She has no rule of action but the fashion. She has no opinion but that
of the people of quality. She has no language but the dialect of her own
set of company. She hates and admires in humble imitation; and echoes
the words _charming_ and _detestable_ without consulting her own
perceptions.

If for a few minutes we sit down together, she entertains me with the
repartees of lady Cackle, or the conversation of lord Whiffler and Miss
Quick, and wonders to find me receiving with indifference sayings which
put all the company into laughter.

By her old friends she is no longer very willing to be seen, but she
must not rid herself of them all at once; and is sometimes surprised by
her best visitants in company which she would not show, and cannot hide;
but from the moment that a countess enters, she takes care neither to
hear nor see them: they soon find themselves neglected, and retire; and
she tells her ladyship that they are somehow related at a great
distance, and that, as they are a good sort of people, she cannot be
rude to them.

As by this ambitious union with those that are above her, she is always
forced upon disadvantageous comparisons of her condition with theirs,
she has a constant source of misery within; and never returns from
glittering assemblies and magnificent apartments but she growls out her
discontent, and wonders why she was doomed to so indigent a state. When
she attends the duchess to a sale, she always sees something that she
cannot buy; and, that she may not seem wholly insignificant, she will
sometimes venture to bid, and often make acquisitions which she did not
want at prices which she cannot afford.

What adds to all this uneasiness is, that this expense is without use,
and this vanity without honour; she forsakes houses where she might be
courted, for those where she is only suffered; her equals are daily made
her enemies, and her superiors will never be her friends.

I am, Sir, yours, &c.




No. 54. SATURDAY, APRIL 28, 1759.

TO THE IDLER.

Sir,

You have lately entertained your admirers with the case of an
unfortunate husband, and, thereby, given a demonstrative proof you are
not averse even to hear appeals and terminate differences between man
and wife; I, therefore, take the liberty to present you with the case of
an injured lady, which, as it chiefly relates to what I think the
lawyers call a point of law, I shall do in as juridical a manner as I am
capable, and submit it to the consideration of the learned gentlemen of
that profession.

_Imprimis_. In the style of my marriage articles, a marriage was _had
and solemnized_ about six months ago, between me and Mr. Savecharges, a
gentleman possessed of a plentiful fortune of his own, and one who, I
was persuaded, would improve, and not spend, mine.

Before our marriage, Mr. Savecharges had all along preferred the
salutary exercise of walking on foot to the distempered ease, as he
terms it, of lolling in a chariot; but, notwithstanding his fine
panegyricks on walking, the great advantages the infantry were in the
sole possession of, and the many dreadful dangers they escaped, he found
I had very different notions of an equipage, and was not easily to be
converted, or gained over to his party.

An equipage I was determined to have, whenever I married. I too well
knew the disposition of my intended consort to leave the providing one
entirely to his honour, and flatter myself Mr. Savecharges has, in the
articles made previous to our marriage, _agreed to keep me a coach_; but
lest I should be mistaken, or the attorneys should not have done me
justice in methodizing or legalizing these half dozen words, I will set
about and transcribe that part of the agreement, which will explain the
matter to you much better than can be done by one who is so deeply
interested in the event; and show on what foundation I build my hopes of
being soon under the transporting, delightful denomination of a
fashionable lady, who enjoys the exalted and much-envied felicity of
bowling about in her own coach.

"And further the said Solomon Savecharges, for divers good causes and
considerations him hereunto moving, hath agreed, and doth hereby agree,
that the said Solomon Savecharges shall and will, so soon as
conveniently may be after the solemnization of the said intended
marriage, at his own proper cost and charges, find and provide a
_certain vehicle, or four-wheel-carriage, commonly called or known by
the name of a coach_; which said vehicle, or wheel-carriage, so called
or known by the name of a coach, shall be _used and enjoyed_ by the said
Sukey Modish, his intended wife," [pray mind that, Mr. Idler,] "at such
times and in such manner as she, the said Sukey Modish, shall think fit
and convenient. "

Such, Mr. Idler, is the agreement my passionate admirer entered into;
and what the dear, frugal husband calls a performance of it, remains to
be described. Soon after the ceremony of signing and sealing was over,
our wedding-clothes being sent home, and, in short, every thing in
readiness except the coach, my own shadow was scarcely more constant
than my passionate lover in his attendance on me: wearied by his
perpetual importunities for what he called a completion of his bliss, I
consented to make him happy; in a few days I gave him my hand, and,
attended by Hymen in his saffron robes, retired to a country-seat of my
husband's, where the honey-moon flew over our heads ere we had time to
recollect ourselves, or think of our engagements in town. Well, to town
we came, and you may be sure, Sir, I expected to step into my coach on
my arrival here; but, what was my surprise and disappointment, when,
instead of this, he began to sound in my ears? "that the interest of
money was low, very low; and what a terrible thing it was to be
encumbered with a little regiment of servants in these hard times! " I
could easily perceive what all this tended to, but would not seem to
understand him; which made it highly necessary for Mr. Savecharges to
explain himself more intelligibly; to harp upon and protest he dreaded
the expense of keeping a coach. And truly, for his part, he could not
conceive how the pleasure resulting from such a convenience could be any
way adequate to the heavy expense attending it. I now thought it high
time to speak with equal plainness, and told him, as the fortune I
brought fairly entitled me to ride in my own coach, and as I was
sensible his circumstances would very well afford it, he must pardon me
if I insisted on a performance of his agreement.

I appeal to you, Mr. Idler, whether any thing could be more civil, more
complaisant, than this? And, would you believe it, the creature in
return, a few days after, accosted me, in an offended tone, with,
"Madam, I can now tell you, your coach is ready; and since you are so
passionately fond of one, I intend you the honour of keeping a pair of
horses. --You insisted upon having an article of pin-money, and horses
are no part of my agreement. " Base, designing wretch! --I beg your
pardon, Mr. Idler, the very recital of such mean, ungentleman-like
behaviour fires my blood, and lights up a flame within me. But hence,
thou worst of monsters, ill-timed Rage! and let me not spoil my cause
for want of temper.

Now, though I am convinced I might make a worse use of part of the
pin-money, than by extending my bounty towards the support of so useful a
part of the brute creation; yet, like a true-born Englishwoman, I am so
tenacious of my rights and privileges, and moreover so good a friend to
the gentlemen of the law, that I protest, Mr. Idler, sooner than tamely
give up the point, and be quibbled out of my right, I will receive my
pin-money, as it were, with one hand, and pay it to them with the other;
provided they will give me, or, which is the same thing, my trustees,
encouragement to commence a suit against this dear, frugal husband of
mine.

And of this I can't have the least shadow of doubt, inasmuch as I have
been told by very good authority, it is somewhere or other laid down as
a rule "_That whenever_ the law doth give any thing to one, it giveth
impliedly whatever is necessary for taking and enjoying the same[1]. "
Now, I would gladly know what enjoyment I, or any lady in the kingdom,
can have of a coach without horses? The answer is obvious--None at all!
For, as Serjeant Catlyne very wisely observes, "though a coach has
wheels, to the end it may thereby and by virtue thereof be enabled to
move; yet in point of utility it may as well have none, if they are not
put in motion by means of its vital parts, that is, the horses. "

And, therefore, Sir, I humbly hope you and the learned in the law will
be of opinion, that two certain animals, or quadruped creatures,
commonly called or known by the name of horses, ought to be annexed to,
and go along with, the coach. SUKEY SAVECHARGES[2]

[1] Quando lex aliquid alicui concedit, concedere videtur et id, sine
quo res ipsa esse non potest. Coke on Littleton, 56. a. --ED.

[2] An unknown correspondent.




No. 55. SATURDAY, MAY 5, 1759.

TO THE IDLER.

Mr. Idler,

I have taken the liberty of laying before you my complaint, and of
desiring advice or consolation with the greater confidence, because I
believe many other writers have suffered the same indignities with
myself, and hope my quarrel will be regarded by you and your readers as
the common cause of literature.

Having been long a student, I thought myself qualified in time to become
an author. My inquiries have been much diversified and far extended, and
not finding my genius directing me by irresistible impulse to any
particular subject, I deliberated three years which part of knowledge to
illustrate by my labours. Choice is more often determined by accident
than by reason: I walked abroad one morning with a curious lady, and, by
her inquiries and observations, was incited to write the natural history
of the country in which I reside.

Natural history is no work for one that loves his chair or his bed.
Speculation may be pursued on a soft couch, but nature must be observed
in the open air. I have collected materials with indefatigable
pertinacity. I have gathered glow-worms in the evening, and snails in
the morning; I have seen the daisy close and open, I have heard the owl
shriek at midnight, and hunted insects in the heat of noon.

Seven years I was employed in collecting animals and vegetables, and
then found that my design was yet imperfect. The subterranean treasures
of the place had been passed unobserved, and another year was to be
spent in mines and coal-pits. What I had already done supplied a
sufficient motive to do more. I acquainted myself with the black
inhabitants of metallick caverns, and, in defiance of damps and floods,
wandered through the gloomy labyrinths, and gathered fossils from every
fissure,

At last I began to write, and as I finished any section of my book, read
it to such of my friends, as were most skilful in the matter which it
treated. None of them were satisfied; one disliked the disposition of
the parts, another the colours of the style; one advised me to enlarge,
another to abridge. I resolved to read no more, but to take my own way
and write on, for by consultation I only perplexed my thoughts and
retarded my work.

The book was at last finished, and I did not doubt but my labour would
be repaid by profit, and my ambition satisfied with honours. I
considered that natural history is neither temporary nor local, and that
though I limited my inquiries to my own country, yet every part of the
earth has productions common to all the rest. Civil history may be
partially studied, the revolutions of one nation may be neglected by
another; but after that in which all have an interest, all must be
inquisitive. No man can have sunk so far into stupidity as not to
consider the properties of the ground on which he walks, of the plants
on which he feeds, or the animals that delight his ear, or amuse his
eye; and, therefore, I computed that universal curiosity would call for
many editions of my book, and that in five years I should gain fifteen
thousand pounds by the sale of thirty thousand copies.

When I began to write, I insured the house; and suffered the utmost
solicitude when I entrusted my book to the carrier, though I had secured
it against mischances by lodging two transcripts in different places. At
my arrival, I expected that the patrons of learning would contend for
the honour of a dedication, and resolved to maintain the dignity of
letters, by a haughty contempt of pecuniary solicitations.

I took my lodgings near the house of the Royal Society, and expected
every morning a visit from the president. I walked in the Park, and
wondered that I overheard no mention of the great naturalist. At last I
visited a noble earl, and told him of my work: he answered, that he was
under an engagement never to subscribe. I was angry to have that refused
which I did not mean to ask, and concealed my design of making him
immortal. I went next day to another, and, in resentment of my late
affront, offered to prefix his name to my new book. He said, coldly,
that _he did not understand those things_; another thought, _there were
too many books_; and another would _talk with me when the races were
over_.

Being amazed to find a man of learning so indecently slighted, I
resolved to indulge the philosophical pride of retirement and
independence. I then sent to some of the principal booksellers the plan
of my book, and bespoke a large room in the next tavern, that I might
more commodiously see them together, and enjoy the contest, while they
were outbidding one another. I drank my coffee, and yet nobody was come;
at last I received a note from one, to tell me that he was going out of
town; and from another, that natural history was out of his way. At last
there came a grave man, who desired to see the work, and, without
opening it, told me, that a book of that size _would never do_.

I then condescended to step into shops, and mentioned my work to the
masters. Some never dealt with authors; others had their hands full;
some never had known such a dead time; others had lost by all that they
had published for the last twelvemonth. One offered to print my work, if
I could procure subscriptions for five hundred, and would allow me two
hundred copies for my property. I lost my patience, and gave him a kick;
for which he has indicted me.

I can easily perceive, that there is a combination among them to defeat
my expectations; and I find it so general, that I am sure it must have
been long concerted. I suppose some of my friends, to whom I read the
first part, gave notice of my design, and, perhaps, sold the treacherous
intelligence at a higher price than the fraudulence of trade will now
allow me for my book.

Inform me, Mr. Idler, what I must do; where must knowledge and industry
find their recompense, thus neglected by the high, and cheated by the
low? I sometimes resolve to print my book at my own expense, and, like
the Sibyl, double the price; and sometimes am tempted, in emulation of
Raleigh, to throw it into the fire, and leave this sordid generation to
the curses of posterity. Tell me, dear Idler, what I shall do.

I am, Sir, &c.




No. 56. SATURDAY, MAY 12, 1759.

There is such difference between the pursuits of men, that one part of
the inhabitants of a great city lives to little other purpose than to
wonder at the rest. Some have hopes and fears, wishes and aversions,
which never enter into the thoughts of others, and inquiry is
laboriously exerted to gain that which those who possess it are ready to
throw away.

To those who are accustomed to value every thing by its use, and have no
such superfluity of time or money, as may prompt them to unnatural wants
or capricious emulations, nothing appears more improbable or extravagant
than the love of curiosities, or that desire of accumulating trifles,
which distinguishes many by whom no other distinction could have ever
been obtained.

He that has lived without knowing to what height desire may be raised by
vanity, with what rapture baubles are snatched out of the hands of rival
collectors, how the eagerness of one raises eagerness in another, and
one worthless purchase makes a second necessary, may, by passing a few
hours at an auction, learn more than can be shown by many volumes of
maxims or essays.

The advertisement of a sale is a signal which, at once, puts a thousand
hearts in motion, and brings contenders from every part to the scene of
distribution. He that had resolved to buy no more, feels his constancy
subdued; there is now something in the catalogue which completes his
cabinet, and which he was never before able to find. He whose sober
reflections inform him, that of adding collection to collection there is
no end, and that it is wise to leave early that which must be left
imperfect at last, yet cannot withhold himself from coming to see what
it is that brings so many together, and when he comes is soon
overpowered by his habitual passion; he is attracted by rarity, seduced
by example, and inflamed by competition.

While the stores of pride and happiness are surveyed, one looks with
longing eyes and gloomy countenance on that which he despairs to gain
from a richer bidder; another keeps his eye with care from settling too
long on that which he most earnestly desires; and another, with more art
than virtue, depreciates that which he values most, in hope to have it
at an easy rate.

The novice is often surprised to see what minute and unimportant
discriminations increase or diminish value. An irregular contortion of a
turbinated shell, which common eyes pass unregarded, will ten times
treble its price in the imagination of philosophers. Beauty is far from
operating upon collectors as upon low and vulgar minds, even where
beauty might be thought the only quality that could deserve notice.
Among the shells that please by their variety of colours, if one can be
found accidentally deformed by a cloudy spot, it is boasted as the pride
of the collection. China is sometimes purchased for little less than its
weight in gold, only because it is old, though neither less brittle, nor
better painted, than the modern; and brown china is caught up with
ecstasy, though no reason can be imagined for which it should be
preferred to common vessels of common clay.

The fate of prints and coins is equally inexplicable. Some prints are
treasured up as inestimably valuable, because the impression was made
before the plate was finished. Of coins the price rises not from the
purity of the metal, the excellence of the workmanship, the elegance of
the legend, or the chronological use. A piece, of which neither the
inscription can be read, nor the face distinguished, if there remain of
it but enough to show that it is rare, will be sought by contending
nations, and dignify the treasury in which it shall be shown.

Whether this curiosity, so barren of immediate advantage, and so liable
to depravation, does more harm or good, is not easily decided. Its harm
is apparent at first view. It fills the mind with trifling ambition;
fixes the attention upon things which have seldom any tendency towards
virtue or wisdom; employs in idle inquiries the time that is given for
better purposes; and often ends in mean and dishonest practices, when
desire increases by indulgence beyond the power of honest gratification.

These are the effects of curiosity in excess; but what passion in excess
will not become vicious? All indifferent qualities and practices are
bad, if they are compared with those which are good, and good, if they
are opposed to those that are bad. The pride or the pleasure of making
collections, if it be restrained by prudence and morality, produces a
pleasing remission after more laborious studies; furnishes an amusement
not wholly unprofitable for that part of life, the greater part of many
lives, which would otherwise be lost in idleness or vice; it produces an
useful traffick between the industry of indigence and the curiosity of
wealth; it brings many things to notice that would be neglected, and, by
fixing the thoughts upon intellectual pleasures, resists the natural
encroachments of sensuality, and maintains the mind in her lawful
superiority.




No. 57. SATURDAY, MAY 19, 1759.

Prudence is of more frequent use than any other intellectual quality; it
is exerted on slight occasions, and called into act by the cursory
business of common life.

Whatever is universally necessary, has been granted to mankind on easy
terms. Prudence, as it is always wanted, is without great difficulty
obtained. It requires neither extensive view nor profound search, but
forces itself, by spontaneous impulse, upon a mind neither great nor
busy, neither engrossed by vast designs, nor distracted by multiplicity
of attention.

Prudence operates on life in the same manner as rules on composition: it
produces vigilance rather than elevation, rather prevents loss than
procures advantage; and often escapes miscarriages, but seldom reaches
either power or honour. It quenches that ardour of enterprise, by which
every thing is done that can claim praise or admiration; and represses
that generous temerity which often fails, and often succeeds. Rules may
obviate faults, but can never confer beauties; and prudence keeps life
safe, but does not often make it happy. The world is not amazed with
prodigies of excellence, but when wit tramples upon rules, and
magnanimity breaks the chains of prudence.

One of the most prudent of all that have fallen within my observation,
is my old companion Sophron, who has passed through the world in quiet,
by perpetual adherence to a few plain maxims, and wonders how contention
and distress can so often happen.

The first principle of Sophron is, _to run no hazards_. Though he loves
money, he is of opinion that frugality is a more certain source of
riches than industry. It is to no purpose that any prospect of large
profit is set before him; he believes little about futurity, and does
not love to trust his money out of his sight, for _nobody knows what may
happen_. He has a small estate, which he lets at the old rent, because
_it is better to have a little than nothing_; but he rigorously demands
payment on the stated day, for _he that cannot pay one quarter cannot
pay two_. If he is told of any improvements in agriculture, he likes the
old way, has observed that changes very seldom answer expectation, is of
opinion that our forefathers knew how to till the ground as well as we;
and concludes with an argument that nothing can overpower, that the
expense of planting and fencing is immediate, and the advantage distant,
and that _he is no wise man who will quit a certainty for an
uncertainty_.

Another of Sophron's rules is, _to mind no business but his own_. In the
state, he is of no party; but hears and speaks of publick affairs with
the same coldness as of the administration of some ancient republick. If
any flagrant act of fraud or oppression is mentioned, he hopes that _all
is not true that is told_: if misconduct or corruption puts the nation
in a flame, he hopes _every man means well_. At elections he leaves his
dependants to their own choice, and declines to vote himself, for every
candidate is a good man, whom he is unwilling to oppose or offend.

If disputes happen among his neighbours, he observes an invariable and
cold neutrality. His punctuality has gained him the reputation of
honesty, and his caution that of wisdom; and few would refuse to refer
their claims to his award. He might have prevented many expensive
law-suits, and quenched many a feud in its first smoke; but always refuses
the office of arbitration, because he must decide against one or the
other.

With the affairs of other families he is always unacquainted. He sees
estates bought and sold, squandered and increased, without praising the
economist, or censuring the spendthrift. He never courts the rising,
lest they should fall; nor insults the fallen, lest they should rise
again. His caution has the appearance of virtue, and all who do not want
his help praise his benevolence; but, if any man solicits his
assistance, he has just sent away all his money; and, when the
petitioner is gone, declares to his family that he is sorry for his
misfortunes, has always looked upon him with particular kindness, and,
therefore, could not lend him money, lest he should destroy their
friendship by the necessity of enforcing payment.

Of domestick misfortunes he has never heard. When he is told the
hundredth time of a gentleman's daughter who has married the coachman,
he lifts up his hands with astonishment, for he always thought her a
sober girl.

When nuptial quarrels, after having filled the country with talk and
laughter, at last end in separation, he never can conceive how it
happened, for he looked upon them as a happy couple.

If his advice is asked, he never gives any particular direction, because
events are uncertain, and he will bring no blame upon himself; but he
takes the consulter tenderly by the hand, tells him he makes his case
his own, and advises him not to act rashly, but to weigh the reasons on
both sides; observes, that a man may be as easily too hasty as too slow;
and that as many fail by doing too much as too little; that _a wise man
has two ears and one tongue_; and that _little said is soon mended_;
that he could tell him this and that, but that after all every man is
the best judge of his own affairs.

With this some are satisfied, and go home with great reverence of
Sophron's wisdom; and none are offended, because every one is left in
full possession of his own opinion.

Sophron gives no characters. It is equally vain to tell him of vice and
virtue; for he has remarked, that no man likes to be censured, and that
very few are delighted with the praises of another. He has a few terms
which he uses to all alike. With respect to fortune, he believes every
one to be in good circumstances; he never exalts any understanding by
lavish praise, yet he meets with none but very sensible people. Every
man is honest and hearty; and every woman is a good creature.

Thus Sophron creeps along, neither loved nor hated, neither favoured nor
opposed: he has never attempted to grow rich, for fear of growing poor;
and has raised no friends, for fear of making enemies.




No. 58. SATURDAY, MAY 26, 1759.

Pleasure is very seldom found where it is sought. Our brightest blazes
of gladness are commonly kindled by unexpected sparks. The flowers which
scatter their odours, from time to time, in the paths of life, grow up
without culture from seeds scattered by chance.

Nothing is more hopeless than a scheme of merriment. Wits and humourists
are brought together from distant quarters by preconcerted invitations;
they come, attended by their admirers, prepared to laugh and to applaud;
they gaze awhile on each other, ashamed to be silent, and afraid to
speak; every man is discontented with himself, grows angry with those
that give him pain, and resolves that he will contribute nothing to the
merriment of such worthless company. Wine inflames the general
malignity, and changes sullenness to petulance, till at last none can
bear any longer the presence of the rest. They retire to vent their
indignation in safer places, where they are heard with attention; their
importance is restored, they recover their good humour, and gladden the
night with wit and jocularity.

Merriment is always the effect of a sudden impression. The jest which is
expected is already destroyed. The most active imagination will be
sometimes torpid, under the frigid influence of melancholy, and
sometimes occasions will be wanting to tempt the mind, however volatile,
to sallies and excursions. Nothing was ever said with uncommon felicity,
but by the co-operation of chance; and, therefore, wit, as well as
valour, must be content to share its honours with fortune.

All other pleasures are equally uncertain; the general remedy of
uneasiness is change of place; almost every one has some journey of
pleasure in his mind, with which he flatters his expectation. He that
travels in theory has no inconvenience; he has shade and sunshine at his
disposal, and wherever he alights finds tables of plenty and looks of
gaiety.
These ideas are indulged till the day of departure arrives, the
chaise is called, and the progress of happiness begins.

A few miles teach him the fallacies of imagination. The road is dusty,
the air is sultry, the horses are sluggish, and the postillion brutal.
He longs for the time of dinner, that he may eat and rest. The inn is
crowded, his orders are neglected, and nothing remains but that he
devour in haste what the cook has spoiled, and drive on in quest of
better entertainment. He finds at night a more commodious house, but the
best is always worse than he expected.

He at last enters his native province, and resolves to feast his mind
with the conversation of his old friends, and the recollection of
juvenile frolicks. He stops at the house of his friend, whom he designs
to overpower with pleasure by the unexpected interview. He is not known
till he tells his name, and revives the memory of himself by a gradual
explanation. He is then coldly received, and ceremoniously feasted. He
hastes away to another, whom his affairs have called to a distant place,
and, having seen the empty house, goes away disgusted by a
disappointment which could not be intended, because it could not be
foreseen. At the next house he finds every face clouded with misfortune,
and is regarded with malevolence as an unreasonable intruder, who comes
not to visit but to insult them. It is seldom that we find either men
or places such as we expect them. He that has pictured a prospect upon
his fancy, will receive little pleasure from his eyes; he that has
anticipated the conversation of a wit, will wonder to what prejudice he
owes his reputation. Yet it is necessary to hope, though hope should
always be deluded; for hope itself is happiness, and its frustrations,
however frequent, are less dreadful than its extinction.




No. 59. SATURDAY, JUNE 2, 1759.

In the common enjoyments of life, we cannot very liberally indulge the
present hour, but by anticipating part of the pleasure which might have
relieved the tediousness of another day; and any uncommon exertion of
strength, or perseverance in labour, is succeeded by a long interval of
languor and weariness. Whatever advantage we snatch beyond the certain
portion allotted us by nature, is like money spent before it is due,
which, at the time of regular payment, will be missed and regretted.

Fame, like all other things which are supposed to give or to increase
happiness, is dispensed with the same equality of distribution. He that
is loudly praised will be clamorously censured; he that rises hastily
into fame will be in danger of sinking suddenly into oblivion.

Of many writers who filled their age with wonder, and whose names we
find celebrated in the books of their contemporaries, the works are now
no longer to be seen, or are seen only amidst the lumber of libraries
which are seldom visited, where they lie only to show the deceitfulness
of hope, and the uncertainty of honour.

Of the decline of reputation many causes may be assigned. It is commonly
lost because it never was deserved; and was conferred at first, not by
the suffrage of criticism, but by the fondness of friendship, or
servility of flattery. The great and popular are very freely applauded;
but all soon grow weary of echoing to each other a name which has no
other claim to notice, but that many mouths are pronouncing it at once.

But many have lost the final reward of their labours, because they were
too hasty to enjoy it. They have laid hold on recent occurrences, and
eminent names, and delighted their readers with allusions and remarks,
in which all were interested, and to which all, therefore, were
attentive. But the effect ceased with its cause; the time quickly came
when new events drove the former from memory, when the vicissitudes of
the world brought new hopes and fears, transferred the love and hatred
of the publick to other agents; and the writer, whose works were no
longer assisted by gratitude or resentment, was left to the cold regard
of idle curiosity.

He that writes upon general principles, or delivers universal truths,
may hope to be often read, because his work will be equally useful at
all times and in every country; but he cannot expect it to be received
with eagerness, or to spread with rapidity, because desire can have no
particular stimulation: that which is to be loved long, must be loved
with reason rather than with passion. He that lays his labours out upon
temporary subjects, easily finds readers, and quickly loses them; for
what should make the book valued when the subject is no more?

These observations will show the reason why the poem of Hudibras is
almost forgotten, however embellished with sentiments and diversified
with allusions, however bright with wit, and however solid with truth.
The hypocrisy which it detected, and the folly which it ridiculed, have
long vanished from publick notice. Those who had felt the mischief of
discord, and the tyranny of usurpation, read it with rapture; for every
line brought back to memory something known, and gratified resentment by
the just censure of something hated. But the book, which was once quoted
by princes, and which supplied conversation to all the assemblies of the
gay and witty, is now seldom mentioned, and even by those that affect to
mention it, is seldom read. So vainly is wit lavished upon fugitive
topicks; so little can architecture secure duration when the ground is
false.




No. 60. SATURDAY, JUNE 9, 1759.

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at a
very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature
upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences, which may by mere
labour be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man
can exert such judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom
nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his
vanity by the name of a Critick.

I hope it will give comfort to great numbers who are passing through the
world in obscurity, when I inform them how easily distinction may be
obtained. All the other powers of literature are coy and haughty, they
must be long courted, and at last are not always gained; but Criticism
is a goddess easy of access and forward of advance, who will meet the
slow, and encourage the timorous; the want of meaning she supplies with
words, and the want of spirit she recompenses with malignity.

This profession has one recommendation peculiar to itself, that it gives
vent to malignity without real mischief. No genius was ever blasted by
the breath of criticks. The poison which, if confined, would have burst
the heart, fumes away in empty hisses, and malice is set at ease with
very little danger to merit. The critick is the only man whose triumph
is without another's pain, and whose greatness does not rise upon
another's ruin.

To a study at once so easy and so reputable, so malicious and so
harmless, it cannot be necessary to invite my readers by a long or
laboured exhortation; it is sufficient, since all would be criticks if
they could, to show, by one eminent example, that all can be criticks if
they will.

Dick Minim, after the common course of puerile studies, in which he was
no great proficient, was put an apprentice to a brewer, with whom he had
lived two years, when his uncle died in the city, and left him a large
fortune in the stocks. Dick had for six months before used the company
of the lower players, of whom he had learned to scorn a trade, and,
being now at liberty to follow his genius, he resolved to be a man of
wit and humour. That he might be properly initiated in his new
character, he frequented the coffee-houses near the theatres, where he
listened very diligently, day after day, to those who talked of language
and sentiments, and unities and catastrophes, till, by slow degrees, he
began to think that be understood something of the stage, and hoped in
time to talk himself.

But he did not trust so much to natural sagacity as wholly to neglect
the help of books. When the theatres were shut, he retired to Richmond
with a few select writers, whose opinions he impressed upon his memory
by unwearied diligence; and, when he returned with other wits to the
town, was able to tell, in very proper phrases, that the chief business
of art is to copy nature; that a perfect writer is not to be expected,
because genius decays as judgment increases; that the great art is the
art of blotting; and that, according to the rule of Horace, every piece
should be kept nine years.

Of the great authors he now began to display the characters, laying down
as an universal position, that all had beauties and defects. His opinion
was, that Shakespeare, committing himself wholly to the impulse of
nature, wanted that correctness which learning would have given him; and
that Jonson, trusting to learning, did not sufficiently cast his eyes on
nature. He blamed the stanzas of Spenser, and could not bear the
hexameters of Sidney. Denham and Waller he held the first reformers of
English numbers; and thought that if Waller could have obtained the
strength of Denham, or Denham the sweetness of Waller, there had been
nothing wanting to complete a poet. He often expressed his commiseration
of Dryden's poverty, and his indignation at the age which suffered him
to write for bread; he repeated with rapture the first lines of All for
Love, but wondered at the corruption of taste which could bear any thing
so unnatural as rhyming tragedies.

In Otway he found uncommon powers of moving the passions, but was
disgusted by his general negligence, and blamed him for making a
conspirator his hero; and never concluded his disquisition, without
remarking how happily the sound of the clock is made to alarm the
audience. Southern would have been his favourite, but that he mixes
comick with tragick scenes, intercepts the natural course of the
passions, and fills the mind with a wild confusion of mirth and
melancholy. The versification of Rowe he thought too melodious for the
stage, and too little varied in different passions. He made it the great
fault of Congreve, that all his persons were wits, and that he always
wrote with more art than nature. He considered Cato rather as a poem
than a play, and allowed Addison to be the complete master of allegory
and grave humour, but paid no great deference to him as a critick. He
thought the chief merit of Prior was in his easy tales and lighter
poems, though he allowed that his Solomon had many noble sentiments
elegantly expressed. In Swift he discovered an inimitable vein of irony,
and an easiness which all would hope and few would attain. Pope he was
inclined to degrade from a poet to a versifier, and thought his numbers
rather luscious than sweet. He often lamented the neglect of Phaedra and
Hippolytus, and wished to see the stage under better regulations.

These assertions passed commonly uncontradicted; and if now and then an
opponent started up, he was quickly repressed by the suffrages of the
company, and Minim went away from every dispute with elation of heart
and increase of confidence.

He now grew conscious of his abilities, and began to talk of the present
state of dramatick poetry; wondered what had become of the comick genius
which supplied our ancestors with wit and pleasantry, and why no writer
could be found that durst now venture beyond a farce. He saw no reason
for thinking that the vein of humour was exhausted, since we live in a
country, where liberty suffers every character to spread itself to its
utmost bulk, and which, therefore, produces more originals than all the
rest of the world together. Of tragedy he concluded business to be the
soul, and yet often hinted that love predominates too much upon the
modern stage.

He was now an acknowledged critick, and had his own seat in a
coffee-house, and headed a party in the pit. Minim has more vanity than
ill-nature, and seldom desires to do much mischief; he will, perhaps,
murmur a little in the ear of him that sits next him, but endeavours to
influence the audience to favour, by clapping when an actor exclaims,
_Ye gods! _ or laments the misery of his country.

By degrees he was admitted to rehearsals; and many of his friends are of
opinion, that our present poets are indebted to him for their happiest
thoughts; by his contrivance the bell was rung twice in Barbarossa, and
by his persuasion the author of Cleone concluded his play without a
couplet; for what can be more absurd, said Minim, than that part of a
play should be rhymed, and part written in blank verse? and by what
acquisition of faculties is the speaker, who never could find rhymes
before, enabled to rhyme at the conclusion of an act?

He is the great investigator of hidden beauties, and is particularly
delighted when he finds "the sound an echo to the sense. " He has read
all our poets, with particular attention to this delicacy of
versification, and wonders at the supineness with which their works have
been hitherto perused, so that no man has found the sound of a drum in
this distich:

"When pulpit, drum ecclesiastic,
Was beat with fist instead of a stick;"

and that the wonderful lines upon honour and a bubble have hitherto
passed without notice:

"Honour is like the glassy bubble,
Which costs philosophers such trouble;
Where, one part crack'd, the whole does fly,
And wits are crack'd to find out why. "

In these verses, says Minim, we have two striking accommodations of the
sound to the sense. It is impossible to utter the first two lines
emphatically without an act like that which they describe; _bubble_ and
_trouble_ causing a momentary inflation of the cheeks by the retention
of the breath, which is afterwards forcibly emitted, as in the practice
of _blowing bubbles_. But the greatest excellence is in the third line,
which is _crack'd_ in the middle to express a crack, and then shivers
into monosyllables. Yet has this diamond lain neglected with common
stones, and among the innumerable admirers of Hudibras the observation
of this superlative passage has been reserved for the sagacity of Minim.




No. 61. SATURDAY, JUNE 15, 1759.

Mr. Minim had now advanced himself to the zenith of critical reputation;
when he was in the pit, every eye in the boxes was fixed upon him; when
he entered his coffee-house, he was surrounded by circles of candidates,
who passed their noviciate of literature under his tuition: his opinion
was asked by all who had no opinion of their own, and yet loved to
debate and decide; and no composition was supposed to pass in safety to
posterity, till it had been secured by Minim's approbation.

Minim professes great admiration of the wisdom and munificence by which
the academies of the continent were raised; and often wishes for some
standard of taste, for some tribunal, to which merit may appeal from
caprice, prejudice and malignity. He has formed a plan for an academy of
criticism, where every work of imagination may be read before it is
printed, and which shall authoritatively direct the theatres what pieces
to receive or reject, to exclude or to revive.

Such an institution would, in Dick's opinion, spread the fame of English
literature over Europe, and make London the metropolis of elegance and
politeness, the place to which the learned and ingenious of all
countries would repair for instruction and improvement, and where
nothing would any longer be applauded or endured that was not conformed
to the nicest rules, and finished with the highest elegance.

Till some happy conjunction of the planets shall dispose our princes or
ministers to make themselves immortal by such an academy, Minim contents
himself to preside four nights in a week in a critical society selected
by himself, where he is heard without contradiction, and whence his
judgment is disseminated through the great vulgar and the small.

When he is placed in the chair of criticism, he declares loudly for the
noble simplicity of our ancestors, in opposition to the petty
refinements, and ornamental luxuriance. Sometimes he is sunk in despair,
and perceives false delicacy daily gaining ground, and sometimes
brightens his countenance with a gleam of hope, and predicts the revival
of the true sublime. He then fulminates his loudest censures against the
monkish barbarity of rhyme; wonders how beings that pretend to reason
can be pleased with one line always ending like another; tells how
unjustly and unnaturally sense is sacrificed to sound; how often the
best thoughts are mangled by the necessity of confining or extending
them to the dimensions of a couplet; and rejoices that genius has, in
our days, shaken off the shackles which had encumbered it so long. Yet
he allows that rhyme may sometimes be borne, if the lines be often
broken, and the pauses judiciously diversified.

From blank verse he makes an easy transition to Milton, whom he produces
as an example of the slow advance of lasting reputation. Milton is the
only writer in whose books Minim can read for ever without weariness.
What cause it is that exempts this pleasure from satiety he has long and
diligently inquired, and believes it to consist in the perpetual
variation of the numbers, by which the ear is gratified and the
attention awakened. The lines that are commonly thought rugged and
unmusical, he conceives to have been written to temper the melodious
luxury of the rest, or to express things by a proper cadence: for he
scarcely finds a verse that has not this favourite beauty; he declares
that he could shiver in a hot-house when he reads that

"the ground
Burns frore, and cold performs th' effect of fire;"

and that, when Milton bewails his blindness, the verse,

"So thick a drop serene has quench'd these orbs,"

has, he knows not how, something that strikes him with an obscure
sensation like that which he fancies would be felt from the sound of
darkness.

Minim is not so confident of his rules of judgment as not very eagerly
to catch new light from the name of the author. He is commonly so
prudent as to spare those whom he cannot resist, unless, as will
sometimes happen, he finds the publick combined against them. But a
fresh pretender to fame he is strongly inclined to censure, till his own
honour requires that he commend him. Till he knows the success of a
composition, he intrenches himself in general terms; there are some new
thoughts and beautiful passages, but there is likewise much which he
would have advised the author to expunge. He has several favourite
epithets, of which he has never settled the meaning, but which are very
commodiously applied to books which he has not read, or cannot
understand. One is _manly_, another is _dry_, another _stiff_, and
another _flimsy_; sometimes he discovers delicacy of style, and
sometimes meets with _strange expressions_.

He is never so great, or so happy, as when a youth of promising parts is
brought to receive his directions for the prosecution of his studies. He
then puts on a very serious air; he advises the pupil to read none but
the best authors; and when he finds one congenial to his own mind, to
study his beauties, but avoid his faults; and, when he sits down to
write, to consider how his favourite author would think at the present
time on the present occasion. He exhorts him to catch those moments when
he finds his thoughts expanded and his genius exalted, but to take care
lest imagination hurry him beyond the bounds of nature. He holds
diligence the mother of success; yet enjoins him, with great
earnestness, not to read more than he can digest, and not to confuse his
mind by pursuing studies of contrary tendencies. He tells him, that
every man has his genius, and that Cicero could never be a poet. The boy
retires illuminated, resolves to follow his genius, and to think how
Milton would have thought: and Minim feasts upon his own beneficence
till another day brings another pupil.




No. 62. SATURDAY, JUNE 23, 1759.

_Quid faciam, proescribe. Quiescas_. --HOR. Lib. ii. Sat. i. 5.

TO THE IDLER.

Sir,

An opinion prevails almost universally in the world, that he who has
money has every thing. This is not a modern paradox, or the tenet of a
small and obscure sect, but a persuasion which appears to have operated
upon most minds in all ages, and which is supported by authorities so
numerous and so cogent, that nothing but long experience could have
given me confidence to question its truth.

But experience is the test by which all the philosophers of the present
age agree, that speculation must be tried; and I may be, therefore,
allowed to doubt the power of money, since I have been a long time rich,
and have not yet found that riches can make me happy.

My father was a farmer neither wealthy nor indigent, who gave me a
better education than was suitable to my birth, because my uncle in the
city designed me for his heir, and desired that I might be bred a
gentleman. My uncle's wealth was the perpetual subject of conversation
in the house; and when any little misfortune befell us, or any
mortification dejected us, my father always exhorted me to hold up my
head, for my uncle would never marry.

My uncle, indeed, kept his promise. Having his mind completely busied
between his warehouse and the 'Change, he felt no tediousness of life,
nor any want of domestick amusements. When my father died, he received
me kindly; but, after a few months, finding no great pleasure in the
conversation of each other, we parted; and he remitted me a small
annuity, on which I lived a quiet and studious life, without any wish to
grow great by the death of my benefactor.

But though I never suffered any malignant impatience to take hold on my
mind, I could not forbear sometimes to imagine to myself the pleasure of
being rich; and, when I read of diversions and magnificence, resolved to
try, when time should put the trial in my power, what pleasure they
could afford.

My uncle, in the latter spring of his life, when his ruddy cheek and his
firm nerves promised him a long and healthy age, died of an apoplexy.
His death gave me neither joy nor sorrow. He did me good, and I regarded
him with gratitude; but I could not please him, and, therefore, could
not love him.

He had the policy of little minds, who love to surprise; and, having
always represented his fortune as less than it was, had, I suppose,
often gratified himself with thinking, how I should be delighted to find
myself twice as rich as I expected. My wealth was such as exceeded all
the schemes of expense which I had formed; and I soon began to expand my
thoughts, and look round for some purchase of felicity.

The most striking effect of riches is the splendour of dress, which
every man has observed to enforce respect, and facilitate reception; and
my first desire was to be fine. I sent for a tailor who was employed by
the nobility, and ordered such a suit of clothes as I had often looked
on with involuntary submission, and am ashamed to remember with what
flutters of expectation I waited for the hour, when I should issue forth
in all the splendour of embroidery. The clothes were brought, and for
three days I observed many eyes turned towards me as I passed: but I
felt myself obstructed in the common intercourse of civility by an
uneasy consciousness of my new appearance; as I thought myself more
observed, I was more anxious about my mien and behaviour; and the mien
which is formed by care is commonly ridiculous. A short time accustomed
me to myself, and my dress was without pain, and without pleasure.

For a little while I tried to be a rake, but I began too late; and
having by nature no turn for a frolick, was in great danger of ending in
a drunkard. A fever, in which not one of my companions paid me a visit,
gave me time for reflection. I found that there was no great pleasure in
breaking windows and lying in the round-house; and resolved to associate
no longer with those whom, though I had treated and bailed them, I could
not make friends.

I then changed my measures, kept running horses, and had the comfort of
seeing my name very often in the news. I had a chesnut horse, the
grandson of Childers, who won four plates, and ten by-matches; and a bay
filly, who carried off the five years' old plate, and was expected to
perform much greater exploits, when my groom broke her wind, because I
happened to catch him selling oats for beer. This happiness was soon at
an end; there was no pleasure when I lost, and, when I won, I could not
much exalt myself by the virtues of my horse. I grew ashamed of the
company of jockey-lords, and resolved to spend no more of my time in the
stable.

It was now known that I had money, and would spend it, and I passed four
months in the company of architects, whose whole business was to
persuade me to build a house. I told them that I had more room than I
wanted, but could not get rid of their importunities. A new plan was
brought me every morning; till at last my constancy was overpowered, and
I began to build. The happiness of building lasted but a little while,
for though I love to spend, I hate to be cheated; and I soon found, that
to build is to be robbed.

How I proceed in the pursuit of happiness, you shall hear when I find
myself disposed to write.

I am, Sir, &c.

TIM. RANGER.




No. 63. SATURDAY, JUNE 30, 1759.

The natural progress of the works of men is from rudeness to
convenience, from convenience to elegance, and from elegance to nicety.

The first labour is enforced by necessity. The savage finds himself
incommoded by heat and cold, by rain and wind; he shelters himself in
the hollow of a rock, and learns to dig a cave where there was none
before. He finds the sun and the wind excluded by the thicket; and when
the accidents of the chase, or the convenience of pasturage, leads him
into more open places, he forms a thicket for himself, by planting
stakes at proper distances, and laying branches from one to another.

The next gradation of skill and industry produces a house closed with
doors, and divided by partitions; and apartments are multiplied and
disposed according to the various degrees of power or invention;
improvement succeeds improvement, as he that is freed from a greater
evil grows impatient of a less, till ease in time is advanced to
pleasure.

The mind, set free from the importunities of natural want, gains leisure
to go in search of superfluous gratifications, and adds to the uses of
habitation the delights of prospect. Then begins the reign of symmetry;
orders of architecture are invented, and one part of the edifice is
conformed to another, without any other reason, than that the eye may
not be offended.

The passage is very short from elegance to luxury, Ionick and Corinthian
columns are soon succeeded by gilt cornices, inlaid floors and petty
ornaments, which show rather the wealth than the taste of the
possessour.

Language proceeds, like every thing else, through improvement to
degeneracy. The rovers who first took possession of a country, having
not many ideas, and those not nicely modified or discriminated, were
contented, if by general terms and abrupt sentences they could make
their thoughts known to one another: as life begins to be more
regulated, and property to become limited, disputes must be decided, and
claims adjusted; the differences of things are noted, and distinctness
and propriety of expression become necessary. In time, happiness and
plenty give rise to curiosity, and the sciences are cultivated for ease
and pleasure; to the arts, which are now to be taught, emulation soon
adds the art of teaching; and the studious and ambitious contend not
only who shall think best, but who shall tell their thoughts in the most
pleasing manner.

Then begin the arts of rhetorick and poetry, the regulation of figures,
the selection of words, the modulation of periods, the graces of
transition, the complication of clauses, and all the delicacies of style
and subtilties of composition, useful while they advance perspicuity,
and laudable while they increase pleasure, but easy to be refined by
needless scrupulosity till they shall more embarrass the writer than
assist the reader or delight him.

The first state is commonly antecedent to the practice of writing; the
ignorant essays of imperfect diction pass away with the savage
generation that uttered them. No nation can trace their language beyond
the second period, and even of that it does not often happen that many
monuments remain.

The fate of the English tongue is like that of others. We know nothing
of the scanty jargon of our barbarous ancestors; but we have specimens
of our language when it began to be adapted to civil and religious
purposes, and find it such as might naturally be expected, artless and
simple, unconnected and concise. The writers seem to have desired little
more than to be understood, and, perhaps, seldom aspired to the praise
of pleasing. Their verses were considered chiefly as memorial, and,
therefore, did not differ from prose but by the measure or the rhyme.

In this state, varied a little according to the different purposes or
abilities of writers, our language may be said to have continued to the
time of Gower, whom Chaucer calls his master, and who, however obscured
by his scholar's popularity, seems justly to claim the honour which has
been hitherto denied him, of showing his countrymen that something more
was to be desired, and that English verse might be exalted into poetry.

From the time of Gower and Chaucer, the English writers have studied
elegance, and advanced their language, by successive improvements, to as
much harmony as it can easily receive, and as much copiousness as human
knowledge has hitherto required. These advances have not been made at
all times with the same diligence or the same success. Negligence has
suspended the course of improvement, or affectation turned it aside;
time has elapsed with little change, or change has been made without
amendment. But elegance has been long kept in view with attention as
near to constancy as life permits, till every man now endeavours to
excel others in accuracy, or outshine them in splendour of style, and
the danger is, lest care should too soon pass to affectation.




No. 64. SATURDAY, JULY 1, 1759.

_Quid faciam, praescribe. Quiescas_. --HOR. Lib. ii. Sat. i. 5.

TO THE IDLER.

Sir,

As nature has made every man desirous of happiness, I flatter myself,
that you and your readers cannot but feel some curiosity to know the
sequel of my story; for though, by trying the different schemes of
pleasure, I have yet found nothing in which I could finally acquiesce;
yet the narrative of my attempts will not be wholly without use, since
we always approach nearer to truth as we detect more and more varieties
of errour.

When I had sold my racers, and put the orders of architecture out of my
head, my next resolution was to be a _fine gentleman_. I frequented the
polite coffee-houses, grew acquainted with all the men of humour, and
gained the right of bowing familiarly to half the nobility. In this new
scene of life my great labour was to learn to laugh. I had been used to
consider laughter as the effect of merriment; but I soon learned that it
is one of the arts of adulation, and, from laughing only to show that I
was pleased, I now began to laugh when I wished to please. This was at
first very difficult. I sometimes heard the story with dull
indifference, and, not exalting myself to merriment by due gradations,
burst out suddenly into an awkward noise, which was not always
favourably interpreted.