The New Hampshire Gazette

TO THE PRINTER.

Had no Suspicion, when the Proposal for taxing Nonsense, &c. was made, that any Person had so little Sense as to take it in Earnest. And I am at a Loss to guess, how you, Rusticus, could take it into your Head to treat a Burlesque with such a serious Air.

When I see with what Violence you fall upon the innocent Excise: it brings to my Mind Don Quixot's Engagement with the Wind Mills, which he mistook for Giants; And I can hardly help laughing to see you toil and sweat and rage to prove you know not what.

Indeed, there appears such a confus'd Jumble of Inconsistencies in your Essay, that it would puzzle the quickest Sagacity to discover your Meaning. Sometimes you represent me writing with no View but to help fill the News Paper and shew my Ability of writing; then I am represented as a mercenary Fellow, "that uses his Pen for the Sake of a Living." At one Time, you say, I am a "trifling Scribler of unfruitful Invention;" then you wonder, "I could not produce something of Importance to the Public." You are angry with me for not writing on a better Subject, viz. "the Encouragement of Learning," when you had just before asserted, that "my Mind was not capable of furnishing a better." In one Sentence, you inform the Public, that my Design is "to bring Men forcibly to the Knowledge of Letters;" in the very next Sentence, you conceive a new Thought, and "the Promotion of Learning is not my Design." Unintelligible jargon! Absurdity upon Absurdity!

As to your impertinent Queries; they deserve no Notice. So many Instances of Impertinence, Contradictions and Nonsense occur in that short Effort of your angry Genius that I am tir'd of examining, and leave it to the World to judge, whether you ought not to pay a Round Sum for troubling the Public with such incoherent Nonsense.

I will add one Query to what I formerly propos'd, Whether there shall not be an Excise laid on surly Wranglers at Wit and Pleasantry, and on blundering Criticks that carp at what they don't understand?

N. B. It is hoped, this Query may be settled very soon, least Mr. Rusticus, in his great Wrath, shou'd resume his Pen and aspire to be a Critic: Out of Pity to his Weakness and unhappy Temper, I therefore advise him to consider his Danger and to take Care in what manner he appears again in Print.

Portsmouth, January 1762.

W.W.