There are those who take the Advantage of your putting an Half-penny Value upon your self above the rest of our daily Writers, to defame you in publick Conversation, and strive to make you unpopular upon the Account of this said Half-penny.  But if I were you, I would insist upon that small Acknowledgment for the superior Merit of yours, as being a Work of Invention.  Give me Leave therefore to do you Justice, and say in your Behalf what you cannot your self, which is, That your Writings have made Learning a more necessary Part of good Breeding than it was before you appeared:  That Modesty is become fashionable, and Impudence stands in need of some Wit, since you have put them both in their proper Lights.  Prophaneness, Lewdness, and Debauchery are not now Qualifications, and a Man may be a very fine Gentleman, tho’ he is neither a Keeper nor an Infidel.

I would have you tell the Town the Story of the Sybills, if they deny giving you Two-Pence.  Let them know, that those sacred Papers were valued at the same Rate after two Thirds of them were destroyed, as when there was the whole Set.  There are so many of us who will give you your own Price, that you may acquaint your Non-Conformist Readers, That they shall not have it, except they come in within such a Day, under Three-pence.  I don’t know, but you might bring in the Date Obolum Belisario with a good Grace.  The Witlings come in Clusters to two or three Coffee-houses which have left you off, and I hope you will make us, who fine to your Wit, merry with their Characters who stand out against it.

  I am your most humble Servant.

P.  S. I have lately got the ingenious Authors of Blacking for Shoes, Powder for colouring the Hair, Pomatum for the Hands, Cosmetick for the Face, to be your constant Customers; so that your Advertisements will as much adorn the outward Man, as your Paper does the inward. [2]

T.

[Footnote 1:  This letter and the version of the 114th Psalm are by Dr Isaac Watts, who was at this time 38 years old, broken down by an attack of illness, and taking rest and change with his friend Sir Thomas Abney, at Theobalds.  Isaac Watts, the son of a Nonconformist schoolmaster at Southampton, had injured his health by excessive study.  After acting for a time as tutor to the son of Sir John Hartupp, he preached his first sermon in 1698, and three years later became pastor of the Nonconformist congregation in Mark Lane.  By this office he abided, and with Sir Thomas Abney also he abided; his visit to Theobalds, in 1712, being, on all sides, so agreeable that he stayed there for the remaining 36 years of his life.  There he wrote his Divine and Moral Songs for children, his Hymns, and his metrical version of the Psalms.  But his Horae Lyricae, published in 1709, had already attracted much attention when he contributed this Psalm to the Spectator.  In the Preface