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 to that
collection of 'Poems chiefly of the Lyric kind, in Three Books, sacred,
I. to Devotion and Piety. II. To Virtue, Honour, and Friendship. III. To
the Memory of the Dead,' he had argued that Poesy, whose original is
divine, had been desecrated to the vilest purpose, enticed unthinking
youth to sin, and fallen into discredit among some weaker Christians.
'They submit indeed to use it in divine psalmody, but they love the
driest translation of the Psalms best.' Watts bade them look into their
Bibles and observe the boldness of its poetic imagery, rejected the
dictum of Boileau, that

De la foy d'un Chretien les mysteres terribles
D'ornemens egayez ne sont point susceptibles;

and pointed to the way he