The Idler was a series of 103 essays, all but twelve of them by Samuel Johnson, published in the London weekly the Universal Chronicle between 1758 and 1760. It is likely that the Chronicle was published for the sole purpose of including The Idler, since it had produced only one issue before the series began, and ceased publication when it finished. The authors besides Johnson were Thomas Warton, Bennet Langton, and Joshua Reynolds.
Johnson's biographer, James Boswell, recalled that Johnson wrote some of the essays in The Idler "as hastily as an ordinary letter". He said that once while visiting Oxford, Johnson composed an essay due for publication the next day in the half-hour before the last post was collected.
The essays were so popular that other publications began reprinting them without permission, prompting Johnson to insert a notice in the Chronicle threatening to do the same to his competitors' material and give the profits to London's prostitutes.
When The Idler appeared in book form, one of Johnson's essays, The Vulture, was omitted, apparently because its anti-war satire was felt to be seditious. Johnson replaced it with an essay on the imprisonment of debtors.;
The essays All the essays were published under the byline "Idler". They were not given titles until they were published in book form. In the book's introduction, Johnson specified that twelve of the essays were not his. The authors of seven of the essays were named in Boswell's biography; the authorship of the other five remains unclear.
No 1. The Idler's character (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 15 April 1758
Johnson explains how he chose his pen name. "Every man is", he says, "or hopes to be, an Idler." He promises his readers "obloquy and satire": "The Idler is naturally censorious; those who attempt nothing themselves, think every thing easily performed, and consider the unsuccessful always as criminal." However, he says that this incurs no obligation and that disappointed readers will have only themselves to blame.
"Every mode of life has its conveniencies. The Idler, who habituates himself to be satisfied with what he can most easily obtain, not only escapes labours which are often fruitless, but sometimes succeeds better than those who despise all that is within their reach, and think every thing more valuable as it is harder to be acquired."
No 2. Invitation to correspondents (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 22 April 1758
Johnson complains that, although he has "now been a writer almost a week", he has not received a single letter of praise, nor has he had any contributions to the series. He asks for "those who have already devoted themselves to literature, or, without any determinate intention, wander at large through the expanse of life" to submit essays for publication under the Idler byline.
"He that is known to contribute to a periodical work, needs no other caution than not to tell what particular pieces are his own; such secrecy is indeed very difficult; but if it can be maintained, it is scarcely to be imagined at how small an expense he may grow considerable."
No 3. Idler's reason for writing (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 29 April 1758
Johnson considers the possibility that essayists may someday run out of amusing topics. He explains that he writes to bring relief to his fellow idlers and others "who awake in the morning, vacant of thought, with minds gaping for the intellectual food, which some kind essayist has been accustomed to supply."
"Much mischief is done in the world with very little interest or design. He that assumes the character of a critick, and justifies his claim by perpetual censure, imagines that he is hurting none but the author, and him he considers as a pestilent animal, whom every other being has a right to persecute; little does he think how many harmless men he involves in his own guilt, by teaching them to be noxious without malignity, and to repeat objections which they do not understand; or how many honest minds he debars from pleasure, by exciting an artificial fastidiousness, and making them too wise to concur with their own sensations. He who is taught by a critick to dislike that which pleased him in his natural state, has the same reason to complain of his instructor, as the madman to rail at his doctor, who, when he thought himself master of Peru, physicked him to poverty."
No 4. Charities and hospitals (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 6 May 1758
Johnson says that charity is "known only to those who enjoy, either immediately or by transmission, the light of revelation." He claims that it was unheard of in ancient Rome, and that Islam and Zoroastrianism imported the idea from Judaism or Christianity. He notes that hospitals in Britain are sustained solely by charitable donations, and calls upon them to stop feuding with one another lest such donations be discouraged.
"Compassion is by some reasoners, on whom the name of philosophers has been too easily conferred, resolved into an affection merely selfish, an involuntary perception of pain at the involuntary sight of a being like ourselves languishing in misery. But this sensation, if ever it be felt at all from the brute instinct of uninstructed nature, will only produce effects desultory and transient; it will never settle into a principle of action, or extend relief to calamities unseen, in generations not yet in being."
No 5. Proposal for a female army (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 13 May 1758
As more soldiers are deployed in the Seven Years' War, Johnson affects pity for the wives and sweethearts left behind in England, and suggests that an army of women be formed so they can follow their loved ones. He says that since the invention of modern weapons, he "cannot find that a modern soldier has any duties, except that of obedience, which a lady cannot perform. If the hair has lost its powder, a lady has a puff; if a coat be spotted, a lady has a brush."
"Of these ladies, some, I hope, have lap-dogs, and some monkeys; but they are unsatisfactory companions. Many useful offices are performed by men of scarlet, to which neither dog nor monkey has adequate abilities. A parrot, indeed, is as fine as a colonel, and, if he has been much used to good company, is not wholly without conversation; but a parrot, after all, is a poor little creature, and has neither sword nor shoulder-knot, can neither dance nor play at cards."
No 6. Lady's performance on horseback (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 20 May 1758
Johnson comments on the public adulation given a woman who rode a horse a thousand miles in less than a thousand hours. With tongue in cheek, he suggests that a statue be erected to her for posterity, and speculates on the wording of the inscription.
"Let it therefore be carefully mentioned, that by this performance she won her wager; and, lest this should, by any change of manners, seem an inadequate or incredible incitement, let it be added, that at this time the original motives of human actions had lost their influence; that the love of praise was extinct; the fear of infamy was become ridiculous; and the only wish of an Englishman was" to win his wager.
No 7. Scheme for news-writers (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 27 May 1758
Johnson bemoans the repetitiveness of news coverage. He suggests that, instead of announcing an event all at once and then rehashing it endlessly, newspaper writers should reveal the story gradually to keep readers entertained.
"Thus journals are daily multiplied without increase of knowledge. The tale of the morning paper is told again in the evening, and the narratives of the evening are bought again in the morning. These repetitions, indeed, waste time, but they do not shorten it. The most eager peruser of news is tired before he has completed his labour; and many a man, who enters the coffee-house in his nightgown and slippers, is called away to his shop, or his dinner, before he has well considered the state of Europe."
No 8. Plan of military discipline (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 3 June 1758
This instalment takes the form of a letter to the Idler, but it is not among the essays that Johnson attributed to others.
The writer proposes a method of developing courage in British soldiers. He suggests that they be lured to a mock fortress with roast beef and ale and made to march upon it before they can eat. This should be done day after day, with a few more frightening sights and sounds being added to the scene each time. The soldiers will eventually be accustomed enough to violence to brave enemy fire.
"I cannot pretend to inform our generals through what gradations of danger they should train their men to fortitude. They best know what the soldiers and what themselves can bear. It will be proper that the war should every day vary its appearance. Sometimes, as they mount the rampart, a cook may throw fat upon the fire, to accustom them to a sudden blaze; and sometimes, by the clatter of empty pots, they may be inured to formidable noises. But let it never be forgotten, that victory must repose with a full belly."
No 9. Progress of idleness (authorship uncertain)
Published: Saturday, 10 June 1758
A correspondent complains that the Idler does not give tips on how to be idle. The Idler says this request shows that the writer "is yet but in the rudiments of idleness, and has attained neither the practice nor theory of wasting life." True idleness comes only with practice.
"So wide is the region of Idleness, and so powerful her influence. But she does not immediately confer all her gifts. My correspondent, who seems, with all his errours, worthy of advice, must be told, that he is calling too hastily for the last effusion of total insensibility. Whatever he may have been taught by unskilful Idlers to believe, labour is necessary in his initiation to idleness. He that never labours may know the pains of idleness, but not the pleasure. The comfort is, that if he devotes himself to insensibility, he will daily lengthen the intervals of idleness, and shorten those of labour, till at last he will lie down to rest, and no longer disturb the world or himself by bustle or competition."
No 10. Political credulity (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 17 June 1758
Johnson discusses political zealots, who "resign the use of their own eyes and ears, and resolve to believe nothing that does not favour those whom they profess to follow." He describes the two basic types of his time, personified as Tom Tempest (a supporter of the House of Stuart) and Jack Sneaker (a supporter of the House of Hanover).
"The bigot of philosophy is seduced by authorities which he has not always opportunities to examine, is entangled in systems by which truth and falsehood are inextricably complicated, or undertakes to talk on subjects which nature did not form him able to comprehend."
No 11. Discourses on the weather (Johnson)
Published: Saturday, 24 June 1758
Johnson says the English are obsessed with their weather because it is so changeable. He lampoons the fashionable theory that a country's political climate is determined by its weather, and criticises those who let the weather affect their mood.