But I cannot tell of the half he wrote. Now it was upon management of families; again an _Essay on Projects_--from which Dr. Franklin used to say he derived a great many valuable hints--then upon a standing army; then upon the villainies of stock-jobbery. What he called poems, too, he wrote, with a harsh jingle of rhymes; one specially, showing that-- “as the world goes, and is like to go, the best way for Ladies is to keep unmarried, for I will ever expose,” he says, “these infamous, impertinent, cowardly, censorious, sauntering _Idle wretches_, called _Wits_ and _Beaux_, the _Plague_ of the nation and the _Scandal_ of mankind.” But, he continues, “if Lesbia is sure she has found a man of _Honor_, _Religion_ and _Virtue_, I will never forbid the _Banns_: Let her love him as much as she pleases, and value him as an _Angel_, and be married to-morrow if she will.” Again, he has a whole volume of _Advice to English Tradesmen_, as to how to manage their shops and bargainings; and it gives one a curious notion of what was counted idle extravagance in that day to read his description of the extraordinary and absurd expenditure of a certain insane pastry-cook: “It will hardly be believed,” he says, “in ages to come, that the fitting of his shop has cost 300 pounds! I have good authority for saying that this spendthrift has sash-windows all of looking-glass plate twelve inches by sixteen--two large pier looking-glasses, and one very large pier-glass seven feet high; and all the walls of the shop are lined up with galley tiles.” He advises a young apothecary who has not large acquaintance to hire a stout man to pound in a big mortar (though he may have nothing to pound) all the early hours of the morning, and all the evening, as if he were a man of great practice. Then, in his _Family Instructor_, he advises against untruth and all hypocrisies; and he compresses sharp pamphlets into the shape of a leading article--is, in fact, the first man to design “leading articles,” which he puts into his _Review_ or _Indicator_, in which periodicals he saves a corner for well-spiced gossip and scandal, to make--he says--the “paper relished by housewives.” He interviews all the cut-throats and thieves encountered in prison, and tells stories of their lives. I think he was the first and best of all interviewers; but not the last! Fifty of these pages of mine would scarce take in the mere titles of the books and pamphlets he wrote. His career stretched far down throughout Queen Anne’s days, and was parallel with that of many worthy men of letters, I shall have to mention; yet he knew familiarly none of them. Swift, who knew everybody he thought worth knowing, speaks of him as an illiterate fellow, whose name he has forgotten; and our pamphleteer dies at last--in hiding--poor, embroiled with his family, and sought by very few--unless his creditors.