The good or evil which these secondary writers produce is seldom of any long duration.  As they owe their existence to change of fashion, they commonly disappear when a new fashion becomes prevalent.  The authors that in any nation last from age to age are very few, because there are very few that have any other claim to notice than that they catch hold on present curiosity, and gratify some accidental desire, or produce some temporary conveniency.

But however the writers of the day may despair of future fame, they ought at least to forbear any present mischief.  Though they cannot arrive at eminent heights of excellence, they might keep themselves harmless.  They might take care to inform themselves before they attempt to inform others, and exert the little influence which they have for honest purposes.

But such is the present state of our literature, that the ancient sage, who thought a great book a great evil, would now think the multitude of books a multitude of evils.  He would consider a bulky writer who engrossed a year, and a swarm of pamphleteers who stole each an hour, as equal wasters of human life, and would make no other difference between them, than between a beast of prey and a flight of locusts.

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 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.