THE IDLER. Duplex libelli dos est, quod risum movet, No. 4. SATURDAY, MAY 6, 1758.* HARITY, or tenderness for the poor, which is now justly considered, by a great part of mankind, as inseparable from piety, and in which almost all the goodness of the present age consists, is, I 1 Phædrus, bk. i., prologue, 1. 3. 2 Iliad, vi. 15. "A friend to human race."-POPE. * J. Cradock says that Dr. Percy the night of his arrival in London from Northumberland remembered that he had to preach a charity-sermon next day. "Being much fatigued, suddenly recollecting that Johnson's fourth Idler was exactly to his purpose, he had freely engrafted the greatest part of it. His discourse was much admired; but being requested to print it, he most strenuously opposed the honour intended him, till he was assured by the Governors that it was necessary, as the annual contributions greatly depended on it. He earnestly requested that I would call upon Dr. Johnson, think, known only to those who enjoy, either immediately or by transmission, the light of revelation. Those ancient nations who have given us the wisest models of government, and the brightest examples of patriotism, whose institutions have been transcribed by all succeeding legislatures, and whose history is studied by every candidate for political or military reputation, have yet left behind them no mention of alms-houses or hospitals, of places where age might repose, or sickness be relieved. The Roman emperors, indeed, gave large donatives to the citizens and soldiers, but these distributions were always reckoned rather popular than virtuous: nothing more was intended than an ostentation of liberality, nor was any recompence expected, but suffrages and acclamations. Their beneficence was merely occasional; he that ceased to need the favour of the people, ceased likewise to court it; and, therefore, no man thought it either necessary or wise to make any standing provision for the needy, to look forwards and state particulars. I assented; and endeavoured to introduce the subject with all due solemnity; but Johnson was highly diverted, and laughing, said:-'Pray, Sir, give my kind respects to Dr. Percy, and tell him I desire he will do whatever he pleases in regard to my Idler; it is entirely at his service."-Cradock's Memoirs, ed. 1828, i. 242. The sermon, I have no doubt, was the one preached before the Sons of the Clergy on May 11, 1769; published by J. and F. Rivington. It is in the Bodleian Library. Johnson's thoughts are borrowed, but not his words. to the wants of posterity, or to secure successions of charity, for successions of distress. 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. The devotion of life or fortune to the succour of the poor, is a height of virtue, to which humanity has never risen by its own power. The charity of the Mahometans is a precept which their teacher evidently transplanted from the doctrines of Christianity; and the care with which some of the Oriental sects attend, as is said, to the necessities of the diseased and indigent, may be added to the other arguments, which prove Zoroaster to have borrowed his institutions from the law of Moses. The present age, though not likely to shine hereafter among the most splendid periods of history, has yet given examples of charity, which may be very properly recommended to imitation.1 1 Goldsmith had this passage in mind when, four years later, he wrote in his Life of Nash :-"If I were to name any reigning and fashionable virtue in the present age, I think it should be charity. The numberless benefactions privately given, the various public solicitations for charity, L The equal distribution of wealth, which long commerce has produced, does not enable any single hand to raise edifices of piety like fortified cities, to appropriate manors to religious uses, or deal out such large and lasting beneficence as was scattered over the land in ancient times, by those who possessed counties or provinces. But no sooner is a new species of misery brought to view, and a design of relieving it professed, than every hand is open to contribute something, every tongue is busied in solicitation, and every art of pleasure is employed for a time in the interest of virtue. The most apparent and pressing miseries incident to man, have now their peculiar houses of reception and relief ;1 and there are few among us raised however little above the danger of poverty, who may not justly claim, what is implored by the Mahometans in their most ardent benedictions, the prayers of the poor. Among those actions which the mind can most securely review with unabated pleasure, is that of having contributed to an hospital for the sick. Of some kinds of charity the consequences are dubious; some evils which beneficence has been and the success they meet with, serve to prove that though we may fall short of our ancestors in other respects, yet in this instance we greatly excel them."-Goldsmith's Works, iv. 78. "There are some parishes in these cities [London and Westminster] in which all the children die in the hands of parish nurses. Out of 174 brought into one parish workhouse in two years only eleven survived."- Hanway's Journal of Eight Days' Journey, ed. 1756, p. 235. |