There are so many Artifices and Modes of false Wit, and such a Variety of Humour discovers it self among its Votaries, that it would be impossible to exhaust so fertile a Subject, if you would think fit to resume it.  The following Instances may, if you think fit, be added by Way of Appendix to your Discourses on that Subject.

That Feat of Poetical Activity mentioned by Horace, of an Author who could compose two hundred Verses while he stood upon one Leg, [3] has been imitated (as I have heard) by a modern Writer; who priding himself on the Hurry of his Invention, thought it no small Addition to his Fame to have each Piece minuted with the exact Number of Hours or Days it cost him in the Composition.  He could taste no Praise till he had acquainted you in how short Space of Time he had deserved it; and was not so much led to an Ostentation of his Art, as of his Dispatch.

   —­Accipe si vis,
    Accipe jam tabulas; detur nobis locus, hora,
    Custodes:  videamus uter plus scribere possit.

    Hor.

This was the whole of his Ambition; and therefore I cannot but think the Flights of this rapid Author very proper to be opposed to those laborious Nothings which you have observed were the Delight of the German Wits, and in which they so happily got rid of such a tedious Quantity of their Time.

I have known a Gentleman of another Turn of Humour, who, despising the Name of an Author, never printed his Works, but contracted his Talent, and by the help of a very fine Diamond which he wore on his little Finger, was a considerable Poet upon Glass.  He had a very good Epigrammatick Wit; and there was not a Parlour or Tavern Window where he visited or dined for some Years, which did not receive some Sketches or Memorials of it.  It was his Misfortune at last to lose his Genius and his Ring to a Sharper at Play; and he has not attempted to make a Verse since.

But of all Contractions or Expedients for Wit, I admire that of an ingenious Projector whose Book I have seen. [4] This Virtuoso being a Mathematician, has, according to his Taste, thrown the Art of Poetry into a short Problem, and contrived Tables by which any one without knowing a Word of Grammar or Sense, may, to his great Comfort, be able to compose or rather to erect Latin Verses.  His Tables are a kind of Poetical Logarithms, which being divided into several Squares, and all inscribed with so many incoherent Words, appear to the Eye somewhat like a Fortune-telling Screen.  What a Joy must it be to the unlearned Operator to find that these Words, being carefully collected and writ down in Order according to the Problem, start of themselves into Hexameter and Pentameter Verses?  A Friend of mine, who is a Student in Astrology, meeting with this Book, performed the Operation, by the Rules there set down; he shewed his Verses to the next of