Honest Sec.

I have just set myself down with a great deal of Self-complacency, to inform you of the happy termination of a War which has been carried on for sometime by a particular friend of mine against your humble Servant; you should know Sir that I am a young Man about twenty, with all the becoming Vanity generally attending this Age; but to strike closer to the foundation of the subject now before you, I should tell you that I went early to School, at a small distance from Town, where I have continued nearly up to this period. About four years ago I enter'd upon Terms of Friendship with a Gentleman about my own age, who not having paid so early attention to Education as myself, could not of course enter so deeply into matters of Study as I did; and as our circle of acquaintance was one and the same, he sometimes appeared to a disadvantage in my company, this he bore with becoming fortitude for some time, but latterly it seem'd to sour his disposition, and (I am sorry to add) occasioned him many unhappy moments. It happened Sir to be acknowledged by a party of friends in his presence that I had a talent for poetry, this I observed seemed to vex him in an unusual manner when I might reasonably expect his congratulations, however he soon told me that two Suns would not shine on the same scene, and at the same time discovered to me that he had an inclination if not a talent, for satire, since that period he has not ceased to gall me in his malice; but I have affected every degree of good humour; appearing not to feel the weight of his lash, and at the same time practising such Artifice as to draw him into such an exposure of his own faults, that time and his absence only can deface them, I have repeatedly shewn him Pieces of my own Composition interspersed with extracts of eminent Authors, by which means some of the finest pieces have fell under the merciless stroke of his Malice, and thus I have heard Shakespeare, Dryden Pope and Thompson, accused of the very opposite extremes of their general Characters.