“I have often had to thank you for kindly mention of my works, and I will not omit my acknowledgments when I find in the ‘Gazette’ all that man ought to wish for. ‘Man wants but little here below, nor wants that little long.’
“There are other arguments in favour of brevity besides its being the soul of wit—‘short accounts make long friends’—and I cannot but be flattered by a Lilliput account of the Comic from a friend of Brobdignag standing.
“I write this, dipping by turns into a glass of ink and a glass of sherry, poured out to your health, and I shall never take ‘something short,’ without dedicating it to the same toast.
“Friends ought to be friends, whether in Long Island or the Inch of Perth, and as even semibreves conduce to harmony, your little ‘taste,’ or rather sip ‘of my quality,’ still leaves me,
