TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.
Olney, Feb. 13, 1783.
My dear Friend,—In writing to you I never want a subject. Self is always at hand, and self, with its concerns, is always interesting to a friend.
You may think perhaps that, having commenced poet by profession, I am always writing verses. Not so; I have written nothing, at least finished nothing, since I published, except a certain facetious history of John Gilpin, which Mrs. Unwin would send to the "Public Advertiser," perhaps you might read it without suspecting the author.
My book procures me favours, which my modesty will not permit me to specify, except one, which, modest as I am, I cannot suppress, a very handsome letter from Dr. Franklin at Passy. These fruits it has brought me.
I have been refreshing myself with a walk in the garden, where I find that January (who according to Chaucer was the husband of May) being dead, February has married the widow.
Yours, &c.
W. C.
TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.
Olney, Jan. 20, 1783.
Suspecting that I should not have hinted at Dr. Franklin's encomium under any other influence than that of vanity, I was several times on the point of burning my letter for that very reason. But, not having time to write another by the same post, and believing that you would have the grace to pardon a little self-complacency in an author on so trying an occasion, I let it pass. One sin naturally leads to another and a greater, and thus it happens now, for I have no way to gratify your curiosity, but by transcribing the letter in question. It is addressed, by the way, not to me, but to an acquaintance of mine, who had transmitted the volume to him without my knowledge.