t 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
not as fine and as flaunting as Mrs. Gingham, the deputy's wife, she was
not ashamed to tell her name, and would show her face with the best of
them; and since I had married her daughter--" At this instant entered my
father-in-law, a grave man, from whom I expected succour; but upon
hearing the case, he told me, "That it would be very imprudent to miss
such an opportunity of advertising my shop; and that