to take a place every evening among the ingenious, in the corner of a certain coffeehouse in this town, where you will receive a turn equally right as to wit, religion, and politicks; as likewise to be as frequent at the playhouse as you can afford, without selling your books. For, in our chaste theatre, even Cato himself might sit to the falling of the curtain: besides, you will sometimes meet with tolerable conversation among the players: they are such a kind of men as may pass, upon the same sort of capacities, for wits off the stage, as they do for fine gentlemen upon it. Besides, that I have known a factor deal in as good ware, and sell as cheap, as the merchant himself that employs him.
Add to this the expediency of furnishing out your shelves with a choice collection of modern miscellanies, in the gayest edition; and of reading all sorts of plays, especially the new, and above all, those of our own growth, printed by subscription[1]; in which article of Irish manufacture, I readily agree to the late proposal, and am altogether for "rejecting and renouncing every thing that comes from England:" to what purpose should we go thither for coals or poetry, when we have a vein within ourselves, equally good and more convenient? Lastly,
A commonplace book is what a provident poet cannot subsist without, for this proverbial, reason, that "great wits have short memories;" and whereas, on the other hand, poets, being liars by profession, ought to have good memories; to reconcile these, a book of this sort, is in the nature of a supple-
- ↑ Alluding to the plays of Mr. Shadwell, whose father Thomas was poet laureat from the Revolution till his death.
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