Little expenses will not hurt us; and I could forgive a few juvenile frolicks, if he would be careful of the main; but his favourite topick is contempt of money, which, he says, is of no use but to be spent.  Riches, without honour, he holds empty things; and once told me to my face, that wealthy plodders were only purveyors to men of spirit.

He is always impatient in the company of his old friends, and seldom speaks till he is warmed with wine; he then entertains us with accounts that we do not desire to hear, of intrigues among lords and ladies, and quarrels between officers of the guards; shows a miniature on his snuff-box, and wonders that any man can look upon the new dancer without rapture.

All this is very provoking; and yet all this might be borne, if the boy could support his pretensions.  But, whatever he may think, he is yet far from the accomplishments which he has endeavoured to purchase at so dear a rate.  I have watched him in publick places.  He sneaks in like a man that knows he is where he should not be; he is proud to catch the slightest salutation, and often claims it when it is not intended.  Other men receive dignity from dress, but my booby looks always more meanly for his finery.  Dear Mr. Idler, tell him what must at last become of a fop, whom pride will not suffer to be a trader, and whom long habits in a shop forbid to be a gentleman.

I am, Sir, &c.

TIM WAINSCOT.

No. 96.  SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1760.

Qui se volet esse potentem, Animos domet ille feroces:  Nec victa libidine colla Foedis 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 day solemnly carolled to the harp by the Laplanders, at the fires with which, they celebrate their nightly festivities.  Such was his intrepid spirit, that he ventured to pass the lake Vether to the isle of Wizards, where he descended alone into the dreary vault in which a magician had been kept bound for six ages, and read the Gothick characters inscribed on his brazen mace.  His eye was so piercing, that, as ancient chronicles report, he could blunt the weapons of his enemies only by looking at them.  At twelve years of age he carried an iron vessel of a prodigious weight, for the length of five furlongs, in the presence of all the chiefs of his father’s castle.

Nor was he less celebrated for his prudence and wisdom.  Two of his proverbs are yet remembered and repeated among Laplanders.  To express the vigilance of the Supreme Being, he was wont to say, “Odin’s belt is always buckled.”  To show that the most prosperous condition of life is often hazardous, his lesson was, “When you slide on the smoothest ice, beware of pits beneath.”  He consoled his countrymen, when they were once preparing to leave the frozen deserts of Lapland, and resolved to seek some warmer climate, by telling them, that the Eastern nations, notwithstanding their boasted fertility, passed every night amidst the horrours of anxious apprehension, and were inexpressibly affrighted, and almost stunned, every morning, with the noise of the sun while he was rising.