Perhaps Baker could never afford to study law as those well off did: there
may be a tinge of sour grapes in the observation in _Tunbridge-Walks_ that
"since the Lawyers are all turn'd Poets, and have taken the Garrets in
Drury Lane, none but Beaus live in the Temple now, who have sold all
their Books, burnt all their Writings, and furnish'd the Rooms with
Looking-glass and China." But this is light-hearted, as becomes a man who
has not yet had a setback as a stage-poet. Two years later, after the
stopping of _An Act at Oxford_ had put him to much trouble, he is souring
somewhat, for the poor Oxford scholar says in _Hampstead Heath_ that no
profession nowadays offers much prospect of success for a man trained
as he, and, as for poetry, one can only expect to be "two years writing
a Play, and sollicit three more to get it acted; and for present
Sustenance one's forc'd to scribble _The Diverting Post, A Dialogue
between Charing-Cross and Bow Steeple_, and Elegies upon People that are
hang'd."

When in December 1708 _The Fine Lady's Airs_ gained only a moderate
success Baker must have thought of a living in the Church as a _pis
aller_, for he enrolled at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, March 8,
1709, and took an M.A. there the same year. In a final attempt to succeed
with his pen he seems to have tried periodical journalism in the guise of
"Mrs. Crackenthorpe" in _The Female Tatler. The British Apollo_, at least,
pinned this on him. "The author poses as a woman," it says, in effect,
"and some may thus be taken in,"

But others will swear that this wise Undertaker
By Trade's an At--ney, by Name is a B--r,
Who rambles about with a Female Disguise on
And lives upon Scandal, as Toads do on Poyson.[9]