takes of the common condition of humanity; he is born and married like another man; he has hopes and fears, expectations and difappointments, griefs and joys, and friends and enemies, like a courtier or a ftatefman; nor can I conceive why his affairs fhould not excite curiofity as much as the whisper of a drawing-room, or the factions of a camp.

Nothing detains the reader's attention more powerfully than deep involutions of diftrefs, or fudden viciffitudes of fortune; and thefe might be abundantly afforded by memoirs of the fons of literature. They are intangled by contracts which they know not how to fulfil, and obliged to write on fubjects which they do not understand. Every publication is a new period of time from which fome encrease or declenfion of fame is to be reckoned. The gradations of a hero's life are from battle to battle, and of an author's from book to book.

Succefs and mifcarriage have the fame effects in all conditions. The profperous are feared, hated, and flattered; and the unfortunate avoided, pitied, and defpifed. No fooner is a book published than the writer may judge of the opinion of the world. If his acquaintance prefs round him in publick places, or falute him from the other fide of the street, if invitations to dinner come thick upon him, and thofe with whom he dines keep him to fupper; if the ladies turn to him when his coat is plain, and the footmen ferve him with attention and alacrity; he may be fure that his work has been Fraifed by fome leader of literary fashions.

Of declining reputation the fymptoms are not lefs eafily obferved. If the author enters a coffeehoufe,

house, he has a box to himself; if he calls at a bookfeller's, the boy turns his back; and what is the most fatal of all prognofticks, authors will vifit him in a morning, and talk to him hour after hour of the malevolence of criticks, the neglect of merit, the bad taste of the age, and the candour of pofterity.

All this, modified and varied by accident and custom, would form very amusing scenes of biography, and might recreate many a mind which is very little delighted with confpiracies or battles, intrigues of a court, or debates of a parliament: to this might be added all the changes of the countenance of a patron, traced from the firft glow which flattery raises in his cheek, through ardour of fondnefs, vehemence of promife, magnificence of praise, excuse of delay, and lamentation of inability, to the last chill look of final difmiffion, when the one grows weary of folliciting, and the other of hearing follicitation.

Thus copious are the materials which have been hitherto fuffered to lie neglected, while the repofitories of every family that has produced a foldier or a minister are ranfacked, and libraries are crowded with useless folios of state papers which will never be read, and which contribute nothing to valuable knowledge.

I hope the learned will be taught to know their own ftrength and their value, and instead of devoting their lives to the honour of thofe who feldom thank them for their labours, refolve at last to do juftice to themselves.

NUMB. 103. SATURDAY, April 5, 1760.

Refpicere ad lenge juffit fpatia ultima vita.

M

Juv.

UCH of the pain and pleasure of mankind. arifes from the conjectures which every one makes of the thoughts of others; we all enjoy praise which we do not hear, and resent contempt which we do not fee. The Idler may therefore be forgiven, if he fuffers his imagination to represent to him what his readers will fay or think when they are informed that they have now his laft paper in their hands.

Value is more frequently raised by scarcity than by ufe. That which lay neglected when it was common, rifes in estimation as its quantity becomes lefs. We feldom learn the true want of what we have till it is difcovered that we can have no

more.

This effay will, perhaps, be read with care even by those who have not yet attended to any other; and he that finds this late attention recompenfed, will not forbear to with that he had bestowed it fooner.

Though the Idler and his readers have contracted no close friendship, they are perhaps both unwilling to part. There are few things not purely evil, of which we can fay, without fome emotion of uneafinefs, this is the left. Thofe who never could agree together, shed tears when mutual difcontent has determined

termined them to final feparation; of a place which has been frequently vifited, though without pleafure, the last look is taken with heaviness of heart; and the Idler, with all his chillnefs of tranquillity, is not wholly unaffected by the thought that his last effay is now before him.

This fecret horrour of the laft is infeparable from a thinking being, whofe life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful. We always make a fecret comparison between a part and the whole; the ter-. mination of any period of life reminds us that life itself has likewife its termination; when we have done any thing for the last time, we involuntarily reflect that a part of the days allotted us is paft, and that as more is past there is less remaining.

It is very happily and kindly provided, that in every life there are certain paufes and interruptions, which force confideration upon the careless, and seriousness upon the light; points of time where one course of action ends and another begins: and by viciffitude of fortune, or alteration of employ-. ment, by change of place, or lofs of friendship, we are forced to fay of fomething, this is the laft.

An even and unvaried tenour of life always hides from our apprehenfion the approach of its end. Succeffion is not perceived but by variation; he that lives to-day as he lived yesterday, and expects that as the prefent day is fuch will be the morrow, eafily conceives time as running in a circle and returning to itself. The uncertainty of our duration is impreffed commonly by diffimilitude of condition; it is only by finding life changeable that we are reminded of its fhortnefs.

This conviction, however forcible at every new impreffion, is every moment fading from the mind; and partly by the inevitable incurfion of new images, and partly by voluntary exclufion of unwelcome thoughts, we are again expofed to the univerfal fallacy; and we must do another thing for the laft time, before we confider that the time is nigh when we fhall do no more.

As the last Idler is publifhed in that folemn week which the Chriftian world has always fet apart for the examination of the confcience, the review of life, the extinction of earthly defires, and the renovation of holy purposes, I hope that my readers are already difpofed to view every incident with ferioufnefs, and improve it by meditation; and that when they fee this feries of trifles brought to a conclufion, they will confider that, by outliving the Idler, they have paffed weeks, months, and years, which are now no longer in their power; that an end muft in time be put to every thing great as to every thing little; that to life muft come its laft hour, and to this fyftem of being its laft day, the hour at which probation ceafes, and repentance will be vain; the day in which every work of the hand, and imagination of the heart, fhall be brought to judgment, and an everlasting futurity fhall be determined by the past.

END OF THE EIGHTH VOLUME.