 Poetry, and a few of our modern Poets, may suffice; for
the second, a moderate Heap of Plays; and for the last, an indifferent
Collection of political Journals.
    To say the Truth, I require no more than that a Man should have some little
Knowledge of the Subject on which he treats, according to the old Maxim of Law,
Quam quisque norit artem in ea se exerceat. With this alone a Writer may
sometimes do tolerably well; and indeed without this, all the other Learning in
the World will stand him in little stead.
    For Instance, let us suppose that Homer and Virgil, Aristotle and Cicero,
Thucydides and Livy could have met all together, and have clubbed their several
Talents to have composed a Treatise on the Art of Dancing; I believe it will be
readily agreed they could not have equalled the excellent Treatise which Mr.
Essex hath given us on that Subject, entitled, The Rudiments of genteel
Education. And, indeed, should the excellent Mr. Broughton be prevailed on to
set Fist to Paper, and to complete the abovesaid Rudiments, by delivering down
the true Principles of Athletics, I question whether the World will have any
Cause to lament, that none of the great Writers, either ancient or modern, have
ever treated about that noble and useful Art.
    To avoid a Multiplicity of Examples in so plain a Case, and to come at once
to my Point, I am apt to conceive, that one Reason why many English Writers have
totally failed in describing the Manners of upper Life, may possibly be, that in
Reality they know nothing of it.
    This is a Knowledge unhappily not in the Power of many Authors to arrive at.
Books will give us a very imperfect Idea of it; nor will the Stage a much
better: The fine Gentleman formed upon reading the former will almost always
turn out a Pedant, and he who forms himself upon the latter, a Coxcomb.
    Nor are the Characters drawn from these Models better supported. Vanbrugh
and Congreve copied Nature; but they who copy them draw as unlike the present
Age, as Hogarth would do if he was to paint a Rout or a Drum in the Dresses of
Titian and of Vandyke. In short, Imitation here will not do the Business. The
Picture must be after Nature herself. A true Knowledge of the World is gained
only by Conversation, and the Manners of every Rank must be seen in order to be
known.
    Now it happens that this higher Order of Mortals is not to be seen, like all
the rest of the Human Species, for nothing, in the
