ders-by as to himself. How many
pretenders to learning expose themselves, by choosing to discourse on
those very parts of science wherewith they are least acquainted! It is
the same case in every other qualification. By the multitude of those
who deal in rhymes, from half a sheet to twenty, which come out every
minute, there must be at least five hundred poets in the city and suburbs
of London: half as many coffeehouse orators, exclusive of the clergy,
forty thousand politicians, and four thousand five hundred profound
scholars; not to mention the wits, the railers, the smart fellows, and
critics; all as illiterate and impudent as a suburb whore. What are we
to think of the fine-dressed sparks, proud of their own personal
deformities, which appear the more hideous by the contrast of wearing
scarlet and gold, with what they call toupees[1] on their heads, and all
the frippery of a modern beau, to make a figure before women; some of
them with hump-backs, others hardly five feet high, and every feature
of their faces distorted: I have seen many of these insipid pretenders
entering into conversation with persons of learning, constantly making
the grossest blunders in every sentence, without conveying one single
idea fit for a rational creature to spend a thought on; perpetually
confounding all chronology, and geography, even of present times. I
compute, that London hath eleven native fools of the beau and puppy kind,
for one among us in Dublin; besides two-thirds of ours transplanted
thither, who are now naturalized: whereby that overgrown capital exceeds
ours in the articles of dunces by forty to one; and what is more to our
farther mortification, there is no one distinguished fool of Irish birth
or education, who makes any noise in that famous metropolis, unless the
London prints be very partial or defective; whereas London is seldom
without a dozen of their own educating, who engross the vogue for half a
winter together, and are never heard of more, but give place to a new
set. This has been the constant progress for at least thirty years past,
only allowing for the change of breed and fashion.

The poem is grounded upon the universal folly in mankind of mistaking
their talents; by which the author does a great honour to his
own species, almost equalling them with certain brutes; wherein, indeed,
he is too partial, as he freely confesses: and yet he has gone as
low as he well could, by specifying four animals; the wolf, t