en hitherto suffered to lie
neglected, while the repositories of every family that has produced a
soldier or a minister are ransacked, and libraries are crowded with
useless folios of state-papers which will never be read, and which
contribute nothing to valuable knowledge.

I hope the learned will be taught to know their own strength and their
value, and, instead of devoting their lives to the honour of those who
seldom thank them for their labours, resolve at last to do justice to
themselves.

No. 103. SATURDAY, APRIL 5, 1760.

_Respicere ad longae jussit spatia ultima vitae_. JUV. Sat. x. 275.

Much of the pain and pleasure of mankind arises from the conjectures
which every one makes of the thoughts of others; we all enjoy praise
which we do not hear, and resent contempt which we do not see. The Idler
may, therefore, be forgiven, if he suffers his imagination to represent
to him what his readers will say or think when they are informed that
they have now his last paper in their hands.

Value is more frequently raised by scarcity than by use. That which lay
neglected when it was common, rises in estimation as its quantity
becomes less. We seldom learn the true want of what we have till it is
discovered that we can have no more.

This essay will, perhaps, be read with care even by those who have not
yet attended to any other; and he that finds this late attention
recompensed, will not forbear to wish that he had bestowed it sooner.

Though the Idler and his readers have contracted no close friendship,
they are, perhaps, both unwilling to part. There are few things not
purely evil, of which we can say, without some emotion of uneasiness,
_this is the last_. Those who never could agree together, shed tears
when mutual discontent has determined them to final separation; of a
place which has been frequently visited, though without pleasure, the
last look is taken with heaviness of heart; and the Idler, with all his
chilness of tranquillity, is not wholly unaffected by the thought that
his last essay is now before him.

The secret horrour of the last is inseparable from a thinking being,
whose life is limited, and to whom death is dreadful. We always make a
secret comparison between a part and the whole; the termination of any
period of life reminds us that life itself has likewise its termination;
when we have done any thing for the last time, we involuntarily reflect
that a part of the days allotted us