poetry than the mathematics, for they all submit to the same rules without dispute or controversy. But whosoever shall please to look into the records of antiquity shall find their title so unquestioned that the greatest princes in the whole world have been glad to derive their pedigrees, and their power too, from poets. Alexander the Great had no wiser a way to secure that empire to himself by right, which he had gotten by force, than by declaring himself the son of Jupiter; and who was Jupiter but the son of a poet? So Cæsar and all Rome was transported with joy when a poet made Jupiter his colleague in the empire; and when Jupiter governed, what did the poets that governed Jupiter?

A ROMANCE WRITER

Pulls down old histories to build them up finer again, after a new model of his own designing. He takes away all the lights of truth in history to make it the fitter tutoress of life; for truth herself has little or nothing to do in the affairs of the world, although all matters of the greatest weight and moment are pretended and done in her name; like a weak princess, that has only the title, and falsehood all the power. He observes one very fit decorum in dating his histories in the days of old, and putting all his own inventions upon ancient times; for when the world was younger, it might, perhaps, love and fight, and do generous things at the rate he describes them; but since it is grown old, all these heroic feats are laid by and utterly given over, nor ever like to come in fashion again; and therefore all his images of those virtues signify no more than the statues upon dead men's tombs, that will never make them live again. He is like one of Homer's gods, that sets men together by the ears,

and fetches them off again how he pleases; brings armies into the field like Janello's leaden soldiers; leads up both sides himself, and gives the victory to which he pleases, according as he finds it fit the design of his story; makes love and lovers too, brings them acquainted, and appoints meetings when and where he pleases, and at the same time betrays them in the height of all their felicity to miserable captivity, or some other horrid calamity; for which he makes them rail at the gods, and curse their own innocent stars, when he only has done them all the injury. Makes men villains, compels them to act all barbarous inhumanities by his own directions, and after inflicts the cruelest punishments upon them for it. He makes all his knights fight in fortifications, and storm one another's armour, before they can come to encounter body for body; and always matches them so equally one with another, that it is a whole page before they can guess which is likely to have the better; and he that has it so mangled, that it had been better for them both to have parted fair at first; but when they encounter with those that are no knights, though ever so well armed and mounted, ten to one goes for nothing. As for the ladies, they are every one the most beautiful in the whole world, and that is the reason why no one of them, nor altogether with all their charms have power to tempt away any knight from another. He differs from a just historian as a joiner does from a carpenter, the one does things. plainly and substantially for use, and the other carves and polishes merely for show and ornament.

A MODERN CRITIC

Is a corrector of the press, gratis; and as he does it for

He fancies himself clerk of

nothing, so it is to no purpose. Stationers' Hall, and nothing must pass current that is not entered by him. He is very severe in his supposed office, and cries, "Woe to ye scribes," right or wrong. He supposes all writers to be malefactors without clergy, that claim the privilege of their books, and will not allow it, where the law of the land and common justice do. He censures in gross, and condemns all without examining particulars. If they will not confess and accuse themselves, he will rack them until they do. He is a committee man in the Commonwealth of Letters, and as great a tyrant; so is not bound to proceed but by his own rules, which he will not endure to be disputed. He has been an apocryphal scribbler himself; but his writings wanting authority he grew discontent, and turned apostate, and thence becomes so severe to those of his own profession. He never commends anything but in opposition to something else, that he would undervalue, and commonly sides with the weakest, which is generous anywhere but in judging. He is worse than an index expurgatorius; for he blots out all, and, when he cannot find a fault, makes one. He "demurs " to all writers, and when he is " overruled," will run into "contempt." He is always bringing "writs of error," like a pettifogger, and "reversing of judgments," though the case be never so plain. He is a mountebank, that is always quacking of the infirm and diseased parts of books, to shew his skill; but has nothing at all to do with the sound. He is a very ungentle reader, for he reads sentences on all authors that have the unhappiness to come before him; and therefore pedants, that stand in fear of him, always appeal from him beforehand, by the name of Momus and Zoilus, complain sorely of his extrajudicial proceedings, and protest against

him as corrupt, and his judgment "void and of none effect;" and put themselves into the protection of some powerful patron, who, like a knight-errant, is to encounter with the magician, and free them from his enchantments.

A HUNTER

Is an auxiliary hound, that assists one nation of beasts to subdue and overrun another. He makes mortal war with the fox for committing acts of hostility against his poultry. He is very solicitous to have his dogs well descended of worshipful families, and understands their pedigree as learnedly as if he were a herald; and is as careful to match them according to their rank and qualities, as high Germans are of their own progenies. He is both cook and physician to his hounds, understands the constitutions of their bodies, and what to administer in any infirmity or disease, acute or chronic, that can befall them. Nor is he less skilful in physiognomy, and from the aspects of their faces, shape of their snouts, falling of their ears and lips, and make of their barrels, will give a shrewd guess at their inclinations, parts, and abilities, and what parents they are lineally descended from; and by the tones of their voices and statures of their persons, easily discover what country they are natives of. He believes no music in the world is comparable to a chorus of their voices, and that when they are well matched they will hunt their parts as true at first scent as the best singers of catches that ever opened in a tavern; that they understand the scale as well as the best scholar that ever learned to compose by the mathematics; and that when he winds his horn to them, it is the very same thing with a cornet in a choir; that they will run down the hare with a

fugue, and a double d-sol-re-dog hunt a thorough-bass to them all the while; that when they are at a loss they do but rest, and then they know by turns who are to continue a dialogue between two or three of them, of which he is commonly one himself. He takes very great pains in his way, but calls it game and sport, because it is to no purpose; and he is willing to make as much of it as he can; and not be thought to bestow so much labour and pains about nothing. Let the hare take which way she will, she seldom fails to lead him at long running to the alehouse, where he meets with an aftergame of delight, in making up a narrative, how every dog behaved himself; which is never done without long dispute, every man inclining to favour his friend as far as he can; and if there be anything remarkable to his thinking in it, he preserves it to please himself; and, as he believes, all people else with, during his natural life, and after leaves it to his heirs-male entailed upon the family, with his bugle-horn and seal-ring.

A BUMPKIN,

Or country squire, is a clown of rank and degree. He is the growth of his own land, a kind of autocthanus, like the Athenians, that sprung out of their own ground; or barnacles that grow upon trees in Scotland. His homely education has rendered him a native only of his own soil, and a foreigner to all other places from which he differs in language, manner of living, and behaviour, which are as rugged as the coat of a colt that has been bred upon a common. The custom of being the best man in his own territories has made him the worst everywhere else. He assumes the upper end of the table at an ale-house as his birthright; re