The Virginia Gazette

To the Genius who has kept the Literati of Europe in high Expectations for a Number of Years past, without ever having had Occasion to blush.

Dear Genius,

Despise the Advice of your Friends and Flatterers. Take that of One who will give you better. You seem to think it a mighty Matter that you are able to return some Kind of Answer, in the nip-nap Way of writing, to every Antagonist. Trust me, it requires no more Talents, in a peevish Writer, barely to keep his Pen running, than it does in a Scold to keep her Tongue in Motion. It is a Business that may at any Time be performed, by impenetrable and persevering Dulness. I have observed, in many of your Compositions, a few shining Particles thinly scattered through a large Mass of barren and unprofitable Ore. Give over the Thoughts of working your Mine until you can afford better Proof of your having discovered in it some rich and flowing Vein, either of Argumentation or of Wit, or of Humour, the three precious Metals of the Understanding. You had better be employed in taming mad Bulls, in walking to and fro after the Rate of ten or twelve Miles an Hour, in muttering the elementary Ideas of Poetry, and setting them in Lecture Array, in contemplating the near Relationship between a certain Person and the Prince de Bern, with the vast Consequences thence ready to burst into Being, or in any other innocent Amusement, than in publishing Provocatives to every candid and intelligent Reader's Disgust. I am moved to interest myself in your Affairs, neither by the Partiality of your Friends, nor the Servility of your Zany, nor the Infatuation of your Puffer, but by the manly and sacred Tie of your Neighbour and Fellow Citizen. Nihil humani a me alienum puto.

HOMO SUM.