Fowle's New Hampshire Gazette And General Advertiser

Messieurs Printers,

The piece in your paper of the 15th ult. signed Honestus, tho' screened from the dregs of vulgarity, yet from its venomous intention, kindles a spark of resentment in a breast, perfect stranger to the assumption of tantalizing common sense, or sickening the eyes of the Printers' customers by a news-paper scurrility to fool, madman, or scoundrel.

To see legacy'd wretchedness, because dignity and grandeur are too bright for its miserable optics, grasp ordure, and throw with intent to inject the effluvia and sully their robes, has awoke a sleeping pen, and armed it for a moment to express a perfect detestation of the tragi-comi-knave, fool, and his prurient performance.-- Wapping and Billingsgate.--

Can this pedlar of Grub-street impudence, be so steeped in idiotism as to scatter stuff of that kind to the view, judgment and feelings of an extended, obliged, acknowledging state, who hold, and justly hold the character aimed at, not barely in estimation, but the highest veneration:--A character, which, by God's blessing, like the flashes of Phæbus, will consume the unctuous exhalations that sometimes unhappily lead the benighted traveller astray, and contaminate the atmosphere of simple honesty.

Your Honestus informs of a certain somebody's receiving a reward--a Coach, &c.--these matters, Messieurs Printers, your humble servant knows nothing of but from Honestus. Acquainted with the gentleman, the late encumberer of your paper and insulter of your readers alludes to, and the sentiments of the inhabitants in general of the country around, he is assured, that if a real workman, in the same post were to tune the pipe of slander and detraction, they would meet with ineffable contempt and abhorrence. Produce the man, that for his country has fought to do more, has done more, is better qualified for, or readier to serve it than that gentleman: A friend to liberty and mankind, from opulence to indigence, which truth lives not in the breath only, but real experience of thousands.

How strange a mortal so replete with nonsense As your Honestus from the type appears, Should undertake to hold the shield of war, And set the challenge trumpet to his mouth: Of folly's weeds (with which he's fully stored, The only crops his blasted soil produce) To cook a mess and call the printers to it, As if his passions, stupid from the cradle, Were fully bent to poison them at heart; Since fortune puts the object that he snarls at As far beyond his reach as is the sun Beyond the teeth and foam of a mad dog. Sick'ning to sight, to common sense a purge. Ye toad-stools of the night, with other rubbish, Unfit to name, go swell the farmer's pile, Beside his cow-yard, to manure the field.