You may publish, burn, or destroy this, just as you are in the humour;
it is ten to one but I forget that I wrote it, before it reaches you. I
believe you may find a motto for it in Horace, but I cannot reach him
without getting out of my chair; that is a sufficient reason for my not
affixing any.--And being obliged to sit upright to ring the bell for my
servant to convey this to the penny-post, if I slip the opportunity of
his being now in the room, makes me break off abruptly[1].
This correspondent, whoever he be, is not to be dismissed without some
tokens of regard. There is no mark more certain of a genuine Idler, than
uneasiness without molestation, and complaint without a grievance.
Yet my gratitude to the contributor of half a paper shall not wholly
overpower my sincerity. I must inform him, that, with all his
pretensions, he that calls for directions to be idle, is yet but in the
rudiments of idleness, and has attained neither the practice nor theory
of wasting life. The true nature of idleness he will know in time, by
continuing to be idle. Virgil tells us of an impetuous and rapid being,
that acquires strength by motion.
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