One day being at the billiard table, which is permitted to be set up here for the recreation of _Gentlemen_, I recognized the person of my ingenious companion the sharper, who it seems, had been excelled in his own way, and outwitted by a bailiff; I must confess, says Sable, if it should have happened, that I should ever have had occasion to have enquired for this genius, I should have applied to this place, if I had not found him in the _printed Register of Deaths_ published by the _Ordinary of Newgate_: And it is more than probable the latter will be yet honoured with his name.—But to return to my fellow prisoner Mr. Stanza, who had, I learned, been in his youth a man of gaiety, and had with great facility run through a pretty fortune, and afterwards run through the several characters of gamester, fortunehunter, and sharper, but with very indifferent success, and had now taken up the _lucrative_ calling of a poet. The bard, continued Sable, whose happy disposition was superior to fate, in two or three days, began to be reconciled to his situation, and applied very closely to his profession, consuming much ink and paper; and in three months, that I continued with him there, he had written three acts of a tragedy, two acts of a comedy, almost finished a dramatic pastoral entertainment, and drawn many characters for farces, besides several poetical essays, which from the want of taste in the publishers, had been rejected and lay dead upon his hands; but the publick will have the pleasure of perusing them in his works, which he intends to publish by subscription, having already written thirty pages of a preface: add to these, continued Sable, he was an excellent _Handycraftsman_, and three times a week, furnished the carpenters and joiners of a certain periodical work with _easy chairs, wooden spoons, &c. &c. &c._[A] the materials for which, he pilfered from the storehouses of several eminent Parnassian merchants, and sold as _new cut_ from the _Forest of Parnassus_, daubing it over by way of disguise, with a nasty composition of his own making.—You will think, continued Sable, from what I have related to you concerning Mr. Stanza, that he was a man of great erudition and genius, as well as industry and perseverance. It must be confessed, says Sable, that if he could not boast so much of the former, as some authors, it is certain that he excelled most of them in the latter, so that what was deficient in quality, was amply made up by the quantity; and though it might be alledged against him, that his labours did not any way contribute to the improvement of his readers; yet, should he be arraigned by some ill-natured critick, for not having answered the intention of his profession, he might, with great propriety, plead his _head_, as women at the Old Bailey, sometimes in arrest of judgment plead their _belly_; and if the court should direct a jury of criticks to enquire, if he had neither _wit_ or