From Butler's "Characters", a series of satirical portraits akin to
those of Theophrastus.
The Small Poet is one that would fain make himself that which nature
never meant him; like a fanatic that inspires himself with his own
whimsies. He sets up haberdasher of small poetry, with a very small
stock and no credit. He believes it is invention enough to find out
other men's wit; and whatsoever he lights upon, either in books or
company, he makes bold with as his own. This he puts together so
untowardly, that you may perceive his own wit as the rickets, by the
swelling disproportion of the joints. You may know his wit not to be
natural, 'tis so unquiet and troublesome in him: for as those that have
money but seldom, are always shaking their pockets when they have it,
so does he, when he thinks he has got something that will make him
appear witty. He is a perpetual talker; and you may know by the freedom
of his discourse that he came lightly by it, as thieves spend freely
what they get. He is like an Italian thief, that never robs but he
murders, to prevent discovery; so sure is he to cry down the man from
whom he purloins, that his petty larceny of wit may pass unsuspected.
He appears so over-concerned in all men's wits, as if they were but
disparagements of his own; and cries down all they do, as if they were
encroachments upon him. He takes jests from the owners and breaks them,
as justices do false weights, and pots that want measure. When he meets
with anything that is very good, he changes it into small money, like
three groats for a shilling, to serve several occasions. He disclaims
study, pretends to take things in motion, and to shoot flying, which
appears to be very true, by his often missing of his mark. As for
epithets, he always avoids those that are near akin to the sense. Such
matches are unlawful and not fit to be made by a Christian poet; and
therefore all his care is to choose out such as will serve, like a
wooden leg, to piece out a maimed verse that wants a foot or two, and
if they will but rhyme now and then into the bargain, or run upon a
letter, it is a work of supererogation. For similitudes, he likes the
hardest and most obscure best; for as ladies wear black patches to make
their complexions seem fairer than they are, so when an illustration is
more obscure than the sense that went before it, it must of necessity
make it appear clearer than it did; for contraries are best set off
with contraries. He has found out a new sort of poetical Georgics--a
trick of sowing wit like clover-grass on barren subjects, which would
yield nothing before. This is very useful for the times, wherein, some
men say, there is no room left for new invention. He will take three
grains of wit like the elixir, and, projecting it upon the iron age,
turn it immediately into gold. All the business of mankind has
presently vanished, the whole world has kept holiday; there has been no
men but heroes and poets, no women but nymphs and shepherdesses: trees
have borne fritters, and rivers flowed plum-porridge. When he writes,
he commonly steers the sense of his lines by the rhyme that is at the
end of them, as butchers do calves by the tail. For when he has made
one line, which is easy enough, and has found out some sturdy hard word
that will but rhyme, he will hammer the sense upon it, like a piece of
hot iron upon an anvil, into what form he pleases. There is no art in
the world so rich in terms as poetry; a whole dictionary is scarce able
to contain them; for there is hardly a pond, a sheep-walk, or a
gravel-pit in all Greece, but the ancient name of it is become a term
of art in poetry. By this means, small poets have such a stock of able
hard words lying by them, as dryades, hamadryades, aönides, fauni,
nymphæ, sylvani, &c. that signify nothing at all; and such a world of
pedantic terms of the same kind, as may serve to furnish all the new
inventions and "thorough reformations" that can happen between this and
Plato's great year.