That's sad, I think

English author and wit Horace Walpole died on this day in 1797. He coined the term serendipity, from a story he had read, The Three Princes of Serendip.

Walpole's most famous line, written in a letter to a woman friend of his, is:

"The world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel."

When Walpole's beloved cat Selma died, poet Thomas Gray wrote a poem of remembrance, called Ode on the Death of a Favorite Cat, Drowned in a Tub of Gold Fishes.

Here's one side of the argument

And here's the other: