If he understands Latin or Greek he ranks himself among the learned, despises the ignorant, talks criticisms out of Scaliger, and repeats Martial’s bawdy epigrams, and sets up his rest wholly upon pedantry.  But if he be not so well qualified, he cries down all learning as pedantic, disclaims study, and professes to write with as great facility as if his Muse was sliding down Parnassus.  Whatsoever he hears well said he seizes upon by poetical license, and one way makes it his own; that is, by ill-repeating of it.  This he believes to be no more theft than it is to take that which others throw away.  By this means his writings are, like a tailor’s cushion of mosaic work, made up of several scraps sewed together.  He calls a slovenly, nasty description great Nature, and dull flatness strange easiness.  He writes down all that comes in his head, and makes no choice, because he has nothing to do it with that is judgment.  He is always repealing the old laws of comedy, and, like the Long Parliament, making ordinances in their stead, although they are perpetually thrown out of coffee-houses and come to nothing.  He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected.  He is but a copier at best, and will never arrive to practise by the life; for bar him the imitation of something he has read, and he has no image in his thoughts.  Observation and fancy, the matter and form of just wit, are above his philosophy.  He appears so over-concerned in all men’s wits as if they were but disparagements of his own, and cries down all they do as if they were encroachments upon him.  He takes jests from the owners and breaks them, as justices do false weights and pots that want measure.  When he meets with anything that is very good he changes it into small money, like three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions.  He disclaims study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which appears to be very true by his often missing of his mark.  His wit is much troubled with obstructions, and he has fits as painful as those of the spleen.  He fancies himself a dainty, spruce shepherd, with a flock and a fine silken shepherdess, that follow his pipe as rats did the conjurers in Germany.

As for epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense.  Such matches are unlawful, and not fit to be made by a Christian poet, and therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two; and if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a letter, it is a work of supererogation.

For similitudes, he likes the hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity make it appear clearer than it did, for contraries are best set off with contraries.