often takes occasion to mention as his very good friends and old acquaintances. Nothing is more pedantic than to seem too much concerned about wit or knowledge, to talk much of it, and appear too critical in it. All he can possibly arrive to is but like the monkeys dancing on the rope, to make men wonder how 'tis possible for art to put nature so much out of her play. His learning is like those letters on a coach, where, many being writ together, no one appears plain. When the King happens to be at the university and degrees run like wine in conduits at public triumphs, he is sure to have his share; and though he be as free to choose his learning as his faculty, yet, like St. Austin's soul, _Creando infunditur, infundendo creatur_. Nero was the first emperor of his calling, though it be not much for his credit. He is like an elephant that, though he cannot swim, yet of all creatures most delights to walk along a river's side; and as, in law, things that appear not and things that are not are all one, so he had rather not be than not appear. The top of his ambition is to have his picture graved in brass and published upon walls, if he has no work of his own to face with it. His want of judgment inclines him naturally to the most extravagant undertakings, like that of making old dogs young, telling how many persons there are in a room by knocking at a door, stopping up of words in bottles, &c. He is like his books, that contain much knowledge, but know nothing themselves. He is but an index of things and words, that can direct where they are to be spoken with, but no farther. He appears a great man among the ignorant, and, like a figure in arithmetic, is so much the more as it stands before ciphers that are nothing of themselves. He calls himself an antisocordist, a name unknown to former ages, but spawned by the pedantry of the present. He delights most in attempting things beyond his reach, and the greater distance he shoots at, the farther he is sure to be off his mark. He shows his parts as drawers do a room at a tavern, to entertain them at the expense of their time and patience. He inverts the moral of that fable of him that caressed his dog for fawning and leaping up upon him and beat his ass for doing the same thing, for it is all one to him whether he be applauded by an ass or a wiser creature, so he be but applauded. AN INTELLIGENCER