another expedient, by which life may be passed unprofitably away without the tediousness of many vacant hours. The art is, to fill the day with petty business, to have always something in hand which may raise curiosity, but not solicitude, and keep the mind in a state of action, but not of labour.

This art has for many years been practised by my old friend Sober1 with wonderful success. Sober is a man of strong desires and quick imagination, so exactly balanced by the love of ease, that they can seldom stimulate him to any difficult undertaking; they have, however, so much power, that they will not suffer him to lie quite at rest; and though they do not make him sufficiently useful to others, they make him at least weary of himself.

Mr. Sober's chief pleasure is conversation; there is no end of his talk or his attention; to speak or to hear is equally pleasing; for he still fancies that he is teaching or learning something, and is free for the time from his own reproaches.

But there is one time at night when he must go home, that his friends may sleep; and another time in the morning, when all the world agrees to shut out interruption. These are the moments of which poor Sober trembles at the thought.

But

1 "Mr. Johnson told me that the character of Sober in The Idler was by himself intended as his own portrait."-Piozzi's Anecdotes, p. 48.

2 "Solitude," wrote Reynolds, "to Johnson was horror; nor would he ever trust himself alone but when employed in writing or reading. He has often begged me to go home with him to prevent his being alone in the coach."-Boswell's

the misery of these tiresome intervals he has many means of alleviating. He has persuaded himself, that the manual arts are undeservedly overlooked; he has observed in many trades the effects of close thought, and just ratiocination. From speculation he proceeded to practice, and supplied himself with the tools of a carpenter, with which he mended his coal-box very successfully, and which he still continues to employ, as he finds occasion.

He has attempted at other times the crafts of the shoemaker, tinman, plumber, and potter; in all these arts he has failed, and resolves to qualify himself for them by better information. But his daily amusement is chemistry. He has a small furnace, which he employs in distillation, and which has long been the solace of his life.' He draws oils and waters, and essences, and spirits, which he knows to be of no use; sits and counts

Johnson, i. 144, n. 2. Dr. Burney describes the "many long conversations" which he and Johnson had at Streatham," often sitting up as long as the fire and candles lasted, and much longer than the patience of the servants subsisted."-Ib. ii. 406. "Whoever thinks of going to bed before twelve o'clock is (Johnson said) a scoundrel.”—Ib. iii., 1, n. 1.

1 "Dr. Johnson sometimes employed himself in chemistry, sometimes in watering and pruning a vine, sometimes in small experiments, at which those who may smile should recollect that there are moments which admit of being soothed only by trifles."—Ib. iii.,398. "We made up a sort of laboratory at Streatham one summer. But the danger Mr. Thrale found his friend in one day, when he got the children and servants round him to see some experiments performed, put an end to all our entertainment."-Piozzi's Anecdotes, p.

the drops as they come from his retort, and forgets that, whilst a drop is falling, a moment flies away.

Poor Sober! I have often teazed him with reproof, and he has often promised reformation; for no man is so much open to conviction as the Idler, but there is none on whom it operates so little. What will be the effect of this paper I know not; perhaps he will read it and laugh, and light the fire in his furnace; but my hope is, that he will quit his trifles, and betake himself to rational and useful diligence.

No. 38, SATURDAY, JANUARY 6, 1759.

INCE the publication of the letter concerning the condition of those who are confined in gaols by their creditors, an inquiry is said to have been made, by which it appears that more than twenty thousand1 are at this time prisoners for debt.

We often look with indifference on the successive parts of that, which, if the whole were seen together, would shake us with emotion. A debtor is dragged to prison, pitied for a moment, and then forgotten; another follows him, and is lost alike in the caverns of oblivion; but when the whole mass of calamity rises up at once, when twenty thousand reasonable beings are heard all groaning in unnecessary misery, not by the 1 This number was at that time confidently published; but the author has since found reason to question the calculation.

infirmity of nature, but the mistake or negligence of policy, who can forbear to pity and lament, to wonder and abhor!

There is here no need of declamatory vehemence; we live in an age of commerce and computation; let us therefore coolly enquire what is the sum of evil which the imprisonment of debtors brings upon our country.

It seems to be the opinion of the later computists, that the inhabitants of England do not exceed six millions, of which twenty thousand is the three-hundredth part. What shall we say of the humanity or the wisdom of a nation that voluntarily sacrifices one in every three hundred to lingering destruction !

The misfortunes of an individual do not extend their influence to many; yet if we consider the effects of consanguinity and friendship, and the general reciprocation of wants and benefits, which make one man dear or necessary to another, it may reasonably be supposed, that every man languishing in prison gives trouble of some kind to two others who love or need him. By this multiplication of misery we see distress extended to the hundredth part of the whole society.

If we estimate at a shilling a day what is lost by the inaction and consumed in the support of each man thus chained down to involuntary idleness, the public loss will rise in one year to three hundred thousand pounds; in ten years to more than a sixth part of our circulating coin.

I am afraid that those who are best acquainted

with the state of our prisons will confess that my conjecture is too near the truth, when I suppose that the corrosion of resentment, the heaviness of sorrow, the corruption of confined air, the want of exercise, and sometimes of food,1 the contagion of diseases, from which there is no retreat, and the severity of tyrants, against whom there can be no resistance, and all the complicated horrors of prison, put an end every year to the life of one in four of those that are shut up from the common comforts of human life.

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Thus perish yearly five thousand men, over

1 John Howard, writing of debtors' side of the prison in York Castle, describes it, so far as buildings go, as "a noble prison which does honour to the country." He adds that “ the allowance for prisoners, whether debtors or felons, was a sixpenny loaf each on Tuesday and Friday " (weight in November, 1774, 3 lb. 2 oz). There were confined on Jan. 25 of that year 110 debtors.-State of the Prisons in England and Wales, ed. 1777, p. 396. Speaking of the general allowance of bread, he says:-"It is probable that when it was fixed by its value near double the quantity that the money will now purchase might be bought for it; yet the allowance continues unaltered . . . In some prisons many criminals are half-starved; such of them as at their commitment were in health come out almost famished, scarce able to move, and for weeks incapable of any labour."-Ib., p. 12. If many criminals, so also some debtors must have been halfstarved, as the allowance of food was the same for both classes.

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2 Johnson, in his Life of Savage, praising the keeper of the Bristol gaol, had said:-"Virtue is undoubtedly most laudable in that state which makes it most difficult; and, therefore, the humanity of a gaoler certainly deserves this public attestation."-Johnson's Works, viii. 183. Fielding, in the opening chapters of his Amelia, "discloses the secrets of the prison-house," and the brutality of the ruffian who was the keeper.

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