Custom is commonly too strong for the most resolute resolver, though furnished for the assault with all the weapons of philosophy.  “He that endeavours to free himself from an ill habit,” says Bacon, “must not change too much at a time, lest he should be discouraged by difficulty; nor too little, for then he will make but slow advances.”  This is a precept which may be applauded in a book, but will fail in the trial, in which every change will be found too great or too little.  Those who have been able to conquer habit, are like those that are fabled to have returned from the realms of Pluto: 

 —­“Pauci, quos aequus amavit
  Jupiter, atque ardens evexit ad aethera virtus.”

They are sufficient to give hope, but not security; to animate the contest, but not to promise victory.

Those who are in the power of evil habits must conquer them as they can; and conquered they must be, or neither wisdom nor happiness can be attained; but those who are not yet subject to their influence may, by timely caution, preserve their freedom; they may effectually resolve to escape the tyrant, whom they will very vainly resolve to conquer.

No. 28.  SATURDAY, OCTOBER 28, 1758.

TO THE IDLER.

Sir,

It is very easy for a man who sits idle at home, and has nobody to please but himself, to ridicule or to censure the common practices of mankind; and those who have no present temptation to break the rules of propriety, may applaud his judgment, and join in his merriment; but let the author or his readers mingle with common life, they will find themselves irresistibly borne away by the stream of custom, and must submit, after they have laughed at others, to give others the same opportunity of laughing at them.

There is no paper published by the Idler which I have read with more approbation than that which censures the practice of recording vulgar marriages in the newspapers.  I carried it about in my pocket, and read it to all those whom I suspected of having published their nuptials, or of being inclined to publish them, and sent transcripts of it to all the couples that transgressed your precepts for the next fortnight.  I hoped that they were all vexed, and pleased myself with imagining their misery.

But short is the triumph of malignity.  I was married last week to Miss Mohair, the daughter of a salesman; and, at my first appearance after the wedding night, was asked, by my wife’s mother, whether I had sent our marriage to the Advertiser?  I endeavoured to show how unfit it was to demand the attention of the publick to our domestick affairs; but she told me, with great vehemence, “That she would not have it thought to be a stolen match; that the blood of the Mohairs should never be disgraced; that her husband had served all the parish offices but one; that she had lived five-and-thirty years at the same house, had paid every body twenty shillings in the pound, and would have me know, though she was