Sir; he’ll not come out:  he’ll only growl in his den.”  “But you think, Sir, that Warburton is a superiour critick to Theobald?” “O Sir he’d make two-and-fifty Theobalds, cut into slices!  The worst of Warburton is, that he has a rage for saying something, when there’s nothing to be said.”  Mr. Burney then asked him whether he had seen the letter which Warburton had written in answer to a pamphlet addressed “To the most impudent Man alive.”  He answered in the negative.  Mr. Burney told him it was supposed to be written by Mallet.  The controversey now raged between the friends of Pope and Bolingbroke; and Warburton and Mallet were the leaders of the several parties.  Mr. Burney asked him then if he had seen Warburton’s book against Bolingbroke’s Philosophy?  “No, Sir, I have never read Bolingbroke’s impiety, and therefore am not interested about its confutation."’

On the fifteenth of April he began a new periodical paper, entitled The Idler, which came out every Saturday in a weekly news-paper, called The Universal Chronicle, or Weekly Gazette, published by Newbery.  These essays were continued till April 5, 1760.  Of one hundred and three, their total number, twelve were contributed by his friends.

The Idler is evidently the work of the same mind which produced The Rambler, but has less body and more spirit.  It has more variety of real life, and greater facility of language.  He describes the miseries of idleness, with the lively sensations of one who has felt them; and in his private memorandums while engaged in it, we find ’This year I hope to learn diligence.’  Many of these excellent essays were written as hastily as an ordinary letter.  Mr. Langton remembers Johnson, when on a visit at Oxford, asking him one evening how long it was till the post went out; and on being told about half an hour, he exclaimed, ’then we shall do very well.’  He upon this instantly sat down and finished an Idler, which it was necessary should be in London the next day.  Mr. Langton having signified a wish to read it, ’Sir, (said he) you shall not do more than I have done myself.’  He then folded it up and sent it off.

1759:  AETAT. 50.]—­In 1759, in the month of January, his mother died at the great age of ninety, an event which deeply affected him; not that ‘his mind had acquired no firmness by the contemplation of mortality;’ but that his reverential affection for her was not abated by years, as indeed he retained all his tender feelings even to the latest period of his life.  I have been told that he regretted much his not having gone to visit his mother for several years, previous to her death.  But he was constantly engaged in literary labours which confined him to London; and though he had not the comfort of seeing his aged parent, he contributed liberally to her support.