* One of the most remarkable Fools that resort to Will’s, is the Fop-Poet, who is one that has always more Wit in his Pockets than any where else, yet seldom or never any of his own there. AEsop’s Daw was a Type of him, for he makes himself fine with the Plunder of all Parties; He is a smuggler of Wit, and steals French Fancies, without paying the customary Duties; Verse is his Manufacture; for it is more the Labour of his Fingers, than his Brain:  He spends much time in writing, but ten times more in reading what he has written:  He asks your Opinion, yet for fear you should not jump with him, tells you his own first:  He desires no Favour, yet is disappointed if he is not Flatter’d, and is always offended at the Truth.  He is a Poetical Haberdasher of small Wares, and deals very much in Novels, Madrigals, Funeral and Love Odes, Panegyricks, Elegies, and other Toys of Parnassus, which he has a Shop so well furnish’d with, that he can fit you with all sorts in the twinkling of an Eye.  He talks much of Wycherley, Garth, and Congreve, and protests, he can’t help having some Respect for them, because they have so much for him and his Writings, otherwise he could make it appear that they understand little of Poetry in comparison of himself, but he forbears ’em meerly out of Gratitude and Compassion.  He is the Oracle of those that want Wit, and the Plague of those that have it; for he haunts their Lodgings, and is more terrible to them than their Duns.

* Brutus for want of Wit, sets up for Criticism; yet has so much ambition to be thought a Wit, that he lets his Spleen prevail against Nature, and turns Poet.  In this Capacity he is as just to the World as in the other injurious.  For, as the Critick wrong’d every Body in his Censure, and snarl’d and grin’d at their Writings, the Poet gives ’em opportunity to do themselves Justice, to return the Compliment, and laugh at, or despise his.  He takes his Malice for a Muse, and thinks himself Inspir’d, when he is only Possess’d, and blown up with a Flatus of Envy and Vanity.  His Works are Libels upon others, but Satyrs upon himself; and while they bark at Men of Sense, call him Fool that writ ’em.  He has a very great Antipathy to his own Species, and hates to see a Fool any where but in his Glass; for, as he says, they provoke him, and offend his Eyes.  His Fund of Criticism, is a set of Terms of Art, pick’d out of the French Criticks, or their Translators; and his Poetical Stock, is a common Place of certain Forms and manners of Expression.  He writes better in Verse than Prose; for in that there is Rhime, in this, neither Rhime nor Reason.  He rails both at the French Writers, “whom he does not