ink it is so many words lost: It is a torment to the
hearers, as much as to themselves, to see them upon the rack for
invention, and in perpetual constraint, with so little success. They
must do something extraordinary, in order to acquit themselves, and
answer their character, else the standers-by may be disappointed and be
apt to think them only like the rest of mortals. I have known two men
of wit industriously brought together, in order to entertain the
company, where they have made a very ridiculous figure, and provided
all the mirth at their own expense.

I know a man of wit, who is never easy but where he can be allowed to
dictate and preside: he neither expecteth to be informed or
entertained, but to display {55} his own talents. His business is to
be good company, and not good conversation; and, therefore, he chooseth
to frequent those who are content to listen, and profess themselves his
admirers. And, indeed, the worst conversation I ever remember to have
heard in my life was that at Will's coffeehouse, where the wits (as
they were called) used formerly to assemble; that is to say, five or
six men, who had writ plays, or at least prologues, or had share in a
miscellany, came thither, and entertained one another with their
trifling composures, in so important an air, as if they had been the
noblest efforts of human nature, or that the fate of kingdoms depended
on them; and they were usually attended with an humble audience of
young students from the inns of court, or the universities, who, at due
distance, listened to these oracles, and returned home with great
contempt for their law and philosophy, their heads filled with trash,
under the name of politeness, criticism and _belles lettres_.

By these means the poets, for many years past, were all overrun with
pedantry. For, as I take it, the word is not properly used; because
pedantry is the too frequent or unreasonable obtruding our own
knowledge in common discourse, and placing too great a value upon it;
by which definition, men of the court or the army may be as guilty of
pedantry as a philosopher or a divine; and, it is the same vice in
women, when they are over copious upon the subject of their petticoats,
or their fans, or their china. For which reason, although it be a
piece of prudence, as well as good manners, to put men upon talking on
subjects they are best versed in, yet that is a liberty a wise man
could hardly take; {56} because, beside th