The Plague of Plagues
. The success these several
Plagues
met with, probably gave Occasion to the above-mentioned Poem on an
empty Purse
. However that be, the same Noise so frequently repeated under my Window, drew me insensibly to think on some of those Inconveniences and Mortifications which usually attend on Poverty, and in short, gave Birth to the present Speculation: For after my Fancy had run over the most obvious and common Calamities which Men of mean Fortunes are liable to, it descended to those little Insults and Contempts, which though they may seem to dwindle into nothing when a Man offers to describe them, are perhaps in themselves more cutting and insupportable than the former.
Juvenal
with a great deal of Humour and Reason tells us, that nothing bore harder upon a poor Man in his Time, than the continual Ridicule which his Habit and Dress afforded to the Beaus of
Rome
.