As for such, as either rashly condemn without judgment, or lavishly dislike without advice: I esteem them like feathers, soone disperst with every blast, accounting their discontent my content, not caring to please every _Momus_.[28] If Langbaine was such a _momus_, he certainly dipped his feather into ink, "the common Remedy" against attack (the Advertisement), giving the lie to his enemies the Poets. The third point of attack, that concerning the title of _esquire_, was perhaps intended as an insult to the humble origins of Langbaine's distinguished father and is certainly appropriate satire on a man so concerned with borrowing and on one who had left the university profligately to become "idle" and "a great jockey."[29] Langbaine was entitled to style himself a gentleman[30] as he does in _A New Catalogue_ (but not in the _Account_); ironically, Langbaine came to the address of esquire by his elections in 1690 and 1691 as inferior and then superior beadle of arts of Oxford University "in consideration of his ingenuity and loss of part of his estate."[31] Langbaine's reactions to the trick served to intensify his source studies (though this was already promised in the Preface) and to increase his attention and antagonism to Dryden. Moreover, in the _Account_ he added titles very carefully, including that of esquire to Dryden himself. This particular response to his satirists reaches its most amusing dimension with the preciseness of the unknown author listing of "R. A. _Gent_." (_Account_, p. 516). It is probably impossible ever to know if Dryden was involved in the trick played on Langbaine, and it is hard to imagine that Langbaine's criticisms would have engaged even so ardent a controversialist as Dryden, but whether the emotion is in any way mutual or not, Dryden is at the center of Langbaine's thoughts: Thus our _Laureat_ himself runs down the _French_ Wit in his _Marriage a la Mode_, and steals from _Molliere_ in his _Mock Astrologer_; and which makes it more observable, at the same time he does so, pretends in his _Epistle_ to justifie himself from the imputation of Theft ... [and] I cannot but blame him for taxing others with stealing Characters from him, (as he does _Settle_ in his _Notes on Morocco_) when he himself does _the same_, almost in all the Plays he writes; and for arraigning his Predecessours for stealing from the _Ancients_, as he does _Johnson_; which tis evident that he himself is guilty of the same (Preface, a2r-[a2v], italics reversed).