The remarks concerning the English need for guidance in "right thinking" are obviously intended to prepare a public for Oldmixon's translation of Bouhours' _La Manière De Bien Penser_. Following the method of Bouhours, who was in turn following Longinus, Oldmixon gives examples from English literature of the various divisions of "right thinking" and, also like Bouhours, he includes specimens of failures in this art. The bad examples he presents provide ample evidence that the Essay was also serving a Whig polemical purpose, for they are drawn from such writers as Clarendon, Pope and, in particular, Laurence Echard. The tone and nature of Oldmixon's remarks on Echard, whose History he had already criticized at length in the second volume of the _Critical History_, can be seen in this explanation of his general treatment of that author: I must sincerely acknowledge, that it was not for Want of Will, that I did not mention what is beautiful in our Historian, but for Want of Opportunity. Oldmixon's remarks on Pope's _Homer_ are sometimes laudatory, but more often patronizing; the criticism of Pope's _Essay on Criticism_ is quite pointed: I dare not say any Thing of the last _Essay on Criticism_ in Verse, but that if any more curious Reader has discovered in it something new, which is not in Dryden's _Prefaces_, _Dedications_, and his _Essay on Dramatick Poetry_, not to mention the _French_ Criticks, I should be very glad to have the Benefit of the Discovery. The rift between Pope and Oldmixon can perhaps be dated from the publication by the latter in 1714 of the "Receipt to make a cuckold" with great apologies for its indecency. Oldmixon continued to tempt satiric fate in the ensuing years, and one wonders if, when seeking a substitute for the _Dunciad_ in the "last" _Miscellany_ of 1728, Pope may not have remembered Oldmixon's announcement in 1726 of his intention to publish an _Essay on Criticism_ which was to be written after the manner of Bouhours. It is not impossible that this was one of many influences acting upon Pope to organize the "high flights of poetry" he had been collecting over the years for a Scriblerian project. Oldmixon appears, with Gildon and Dennis, among the porpoises in Chapter VI of _Peri Bathous_, and the presentation of some of the material in the _Bathous_, although more directly indebted to Longinus, does bring Oldmixon's _Essay_ to mind.