I do not call this an answer to your letter, but such as it is I send
it, presuming upon that interest which I know you take in my minutest
concerns, which I cannot express better than in the words of Terence a
little varied--_Nihil mei a te alienum putas._
TO THE REV. WILLIAM UNWIN
_A laugh that hurts nobody_
_18 Nov. 1782._
MY DEAR WILLIAM,
... I little thought when I was writing the history of John Gilpin,
that he would appear in print--I intended to laugh, and to make two
or three others laugh, of whom you were one. But now all the world
laughs, at least if they have the same relish for a tale ridiculous in
itself, and quaintly told, as we have.--Well--they do not always laugh
so innocently, or at so small an expense--for in a world like this,
abounding with subjects for satire, and with satirical wits to mark
them, a laugh that hurts nobody has at least the grace of novelty to
recommend it. Swift's darling motto was, _Vive la bagatelle_--a good
wish for a philosopher of his complexion, the greater part of whose
wisdom, whencesoever it came, most certainly came not from above. _La
bagatelle_ has no enemy in me, though it has neither so warm a friend,
nor so able a one, as it had in him. If I trifle, and merely trifle,
it is because I am reduced to it by necessity--a melancholy, that
nothing else so effectually disperses, engages me sometimes in the
arduous task of being merry by force. And, strange as it may seem,
the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest
mood, and, but for that saddest mood, perhaps had never been written
at all.
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