When he writes he never proposes any scope or purpose to himself, but gives his genius all freedom; for as he that rides abroad for his pleasure can hardly be out of his way, so he that writes for his pleasure can seldom be beside his subject.  It is an ungrateful thing to a noble wit to be confined to anything.  To what purpose did the ancients feign Pegasus to have wings if he must be confined to the road and stages like a pack-horse, or be forced to be obedient to hedges and ditches?  Therefore he has no respect to decorum and propriety of circumstance, for the regard of persons, times, and places is a restraint too servile to be imposed upon poetical license, like him that made Plato confess Juvenal to be a philosopher, or Persius, that calls the Athenians Quirites.

For metaphors, he uses to choose the hardest and most far-set that he can light upon.  These are the jewels of eloquence, and therefore the harder they are the more precious they must be.

He’ll take a scant piece of coarse sense and stretch it on the tenterhooks of half-a-score rhymes, until it crack that you may see through it and it rattle like a drumhead.  When you see his verses hanged up in tobacco-shops, you may say, in defiance of the proverb, “that the weakest does not always go to the wall;” for ’tis well known the lines are strong enough, and in that sense may justly take the wall of any that have been written in our language.  He seldom makes a conscience of his rhymes, but will often take the liberty to make “preach” rhyme with “cheat,” “vote” with “rogue,” and “committee-man” with “hang.”

He’ll make one word of as many joints as the tin-pudding that a juggler pulls out of his throat and chops in again.  What think you of glud-fum-flam-hasta-minantes? Some of the old Latin poets bragged that their verses were tougher than brass and harder than marble; what would they have done if they had seen these?  Verily they would have had more reason to wish themselves an hundred throats than they then had to pronounce them.

There are some that drive a trade in writing in praise of other writers (like rooks, that bet on gamesters’ hands), not at all to celebrate the learned author’s merits, as they would show but their own wits, of which he is but the subject.  The lechery of this vanity has spawned more writers than the civil law.  For those whose modesty must not endure to hear their own praises spoken may yet publish of themselves the most notorious vapours imaginable.  For if the privilege of love be allowed—­Dicere quiz puduit, scribere jussit amor—­why should it not be so in self-love too?  For if it be wisdom to conceal our imperfections, what is it to discover our virtues?  It is not likely that Nature gave men great parts upon such terms as the fairies used to give money, to pinch and leave them if they speak of it.  They say—­Praise is but the shadow of virtue, and sure that virtue is very foolish that is afraid of its own shadow.