uch as his Parts
will give him leave. He has got about half a dozen common-place Topicks,
into which he never fails to turn the Conversation, whatever was the
Occasion of it: Tho' the matter in debate be about _Doway_ or _Denain_,
it is ten to one but half his Discourse runs upon the Unreasonableness
of Bigottry and Priest-craft. This makes Mr. _Puzzle_ the Admiration of
all those who have less Sense than himself, and the Contempt of those
who have more. There is none in Town whom _Tom_ dreads so much as my
Friend _Will Dry_. _Will_, who is acquainted with _Tom's_ Logick, when
he finds him running off the Question, cuts him short with a _What then?
We allow all this to be true, but what is it to our present Purpose?_ I
have known _Tom_ eloquent half an hour together, and triumphing, as he
thought, in the Superiority of the Argument, when he has been non-plus'd
on a sudden by Mr. _Dry's_ desiring him to tell the Company what it was
that he endeavoured to prove. In short, _Dry_ is a Man of a clear
methodical Head, but few Words, and gains the same Advantage over
_Puzzle_, that a small Body of regular Troops would gain over a
numberless undisciplined Militia.

C.

[Footnote 1: [its]]

[Footnote 2: It is said of Colon in the second Canto,

'Hourly his learn'd Impertinence affords
A barren Superfinity of Words.']

* * * * *

No. 477. Saturday, September 6, 1712. Addison.

'--An me ludit amabilis
Insania? audire et videor pios
Errare per lucos, amoenae
Quos et aquae subeunt et aurae.'

Hor.

_SIR_,

Having lately read your Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination, I
was so taken with your Thoughts upon some of our _English_ Gardens,
that I cannot forbear troubling you with a Letter upon that Subject. I
am one, you must know, who am looked upon as an Humorist in Gardening.
I have several Acres about my House, which I call my Garden, and which
a skilful Gardener would not know what to call. It is a Confusion of
Kitchin and Parterre, Orchard and Flower-Garden, which lie so mixt and
interwoven with one another, that if a Foreigner who had seen nothing
of our Country should be convey'd into my Garden at his first landing,
he would look upon it as a natural Wilderness, and one of the
uncultivated Parts of our Country. My Flowers grow up in several Parts
of the Garden in the greatest Luxurian