"There are many unpertinent _Witlings_ at _Will_'s, that's certain; but then your Retailers of _Politicks_, or of second-hand Wit at _Tom_'s, are ten times more intolerable." * _Wits_ are generally the most dangerous Company a Woman can keep, for their Vanity makes 'em brag of more Favours than they obtain. "Some Women care not what becomes of their Honour, so they may secure the _Reputation_ of their _Wit_. "Those People generally talk _most_, who have the least to say; go to _Will_'s, and you'll hardly hear the Great _Wycherley_ speak two Sentences in a quarter of an Hour, whilst _Blatero_, _Hamilus_, _Turpinus_; and twenty more egregious Coxcombs, deafen the Company with their Political _Nonsense_. "There are at _Will_'s some _Wit-carriers_, whose business is, to export the fine Things they hear, from one Room to another, next to a Reciting-Poet; these Fellows are the most exquisite Plague to a Man of Sense. "In spight of the intrinsick Merit of _Wit_, we find it seldom brings a Man into the _Favour_, or even _Company_ of the _Great_, and the _Fair_, unless it be for a Laugh and away; never thought on, but when present; nor then neither, for the sake of the Man of _Wit_, but their own Diversion. The infallible way to ingratiate ones self with Quality, is that dull and empty Entertainment, called _Gaming_, for _Picket_, _Ombre_, and _Basset_, keep always Places even for a _quondam Foot-man,_ or a _Drawer_ at the _Assemblies_, _Apartments_, and _Visiting-days_. If you lose, you oblige with your Money; if you Win, you command with your Fortune; the _Lord_ is your _Bubble_, and the Lady what you please to make her." * _Flattery_ of our _Wit_, has the same Power over Us, which _Flattery_ of _Beauty_ has over a Woman; it keeps up that good Opinion of our selves which is necessary to beget _Assurance_; and _Assurance_ produces success both in _Fortune_ and _Love_. * Some Men take as much Pains to persuade the World that they have _Wit_, as _Bullies_ do that they have _Courage_, and generally with the same Success, for they seldom deceive any one but themselves. * Some _pert Coxcombs_, so violently affect the Reputation of _Wits_, that not a _French Journal_, _Mercury_, _Farce_, or _Opera_, can escape their Pillaging: yet the utmost they arrive at, is but a sort of _Jack-a-lanthorn Wit_, that like the Sun-shine which wanton Boys with fragments of Looking-glass reflect in Men's Eyes, dazles the Weak-sighted, and troubles the strong. These are the Muses _Black-Guard_, that like those of our Camp, tho' they have no share in the Danger or Honour, yet have the greatest in the Plunder; that indifferently strip all that lie before 'em, dead or alive, Friends or Enemies: Whatever they light on, is _Terra incognita_, and they claim the right of Discoverers, that is, of giving their Names to it. * I think the _Learned_, and _Unlearned Blockhead_ pretty Equal: For 'tis all one to me, whether a Man talk _Nonsense_, or _Unintelligible Sense_.