elty to
recommend it. Swift's darling motto was, _Vive la bagatelle_--a good
wish for a philosopher of his complexion, the greater part of whose
wisdom, whencesoever it came, most certainly came not from above. _La
bagatelle_ has no enemy in me, though it has neither so warm a friend,
nor so able a one, as it had in him. If I trifle, and merely trifle,
it is because I am reduced to it by necessity--a melancholy, that
nothing else so effectually disperses, engages me sometimes in the
arduous task of being merry by force. And, strange as it may seem,
the most ludicrous lines I ever wrote have been written in the saddest
mood, and, but for that saddest mood, perhaps had never been written
at all. To say truth, it would be but a shocking vagary, should
the mariners on board a ship buffeted by a terrible storm, employ
themselves in fiddling and dancing; yet sometimes much such a part act
I....

To THE REV. JOHN NEWTON

_Village politicians_

_26 Jan. 1783._

MY DEAR FRIEND,

It is reported among persons of the best intelligence at Olney--the
barber, the schoolmaster, and the drummer of a corps quartered at
this place,--that the belligerent powers are at last reconciled, the
articles of the treaty adjusted, and that peace is at the door. I saw
this morning, at nine o'clock, a group of about twelve figures very
closely engaged in a conference, as I suppose, upon the same subject.
The scene of consultation was a blacksmith's shed, very comfortably
screened from the wind, and directly opposed to the morning sun. Some
held their hands behind them, some had them folded across their bosom,
and others had thrust them into their breeches pockets. Every man's
posture bespoke a pacific turn of mind; but the distance being too
great for their words to reach me, nothing transpired. I am willing,
however, to hope that the secret will not be a secret long, and that
you and I, equally interested in the event, though not, perhaps,
equally well-informed, shall soon have an opportunity to rejoice in
the completion of it. The powers of Europe have clashed with each
other to a fine purpose; that the Americans, at length declared
independent, may keep themselves so, if they can; and that what the
parties, who have thought proper to dispute upon that point, have
wrested from each other in the course of the conflict, may be, in the
issue of it, restored to the proper owner. Nations may be guilty of
a conduct that would render an indiv