, and grow great by
setting before us what our own sloth had hidden from our view.

Yet are not even these writers to be indiscriminately censured and
rejected. Truth like beauty varies its fashions, and is best recommended
by different dresses to different minds; and he that recalls the
attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind
it, may be truly said to advance the literature of his own age. As the
manners of nations vary, new topicks of persuasion become necessary, and
new combinations of imagery are produced; and he that can accommodate
himself to the reigning taste, may always have readers who, perhaps,
would not have looked upon better performances.

To exact of every man who writes, that he should say something new,
would be to reduce authors to a small number; to oblige the most fertile
genius to say only what is new would be to contract his volumes to a few
pages. Yet, surely, there ought to be some bounds to repetition;
libraries ought no more to be heaped for ever with the same thoughts
differently expressed, than with the same books differently decorated.

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 g