No doubt her arguments prevail,

For Madam's TASTE can never fail.

Blest age ! when all men may procure, The title of a Connoisseur;

When noble and ignoble herd
Are govern'd by a single word;
Though, like the royal German dames,
It bears an hundred Christian names;
As Genius, Fancy, Judgement, Goût,
Whim, Caprice, Je-ne-scai-quoi, Virtù:
Which appellations all describe
TASTE, and the modern tasteful tribe.

Now bricklay'rs, carpenters, and joiners, With Chinese artists, and designers, Produce their schemes of alteration, To work this wond'rous reformation. The useful dome, which secret stood, Embosom'd in the yew-tree's wood, The trav'ller with amazement sees A temple, Gothic, or Chinese, With many a bell, and tawdry rag on, And crested with a sprawling dragon; A wooden arch is bent astride

A ditch of water, four feet wide,

With angles, curves, and zigzag lines,
From Halfpenny's exact designs.

In front, a level lawn is seen,

Without a shrub upon the green,

Where Taste would want its first great law,

But for the skulking, sly-ha-ha,

By whose miraculous assistance,

You gain a prospect two fields distance.
And now from Hyde-Park Corner come
The Gods of Athens, and of Rome.
Here squabby Cupids take their places,
With Venus, and the clumsy Graces:
Apollo there, with aim so clever,
Stretches his leaden bow for ever;
And there, without the pow'r to fly,
Stands fix'd a tip-toe Mercury.

The Villa thus completely grac'd, All own that Thrifty has a Taste; And Madam's female friends, and cousins, With common-council-men, by dozens, Flock every Sunday to the Seat,

To stare about them, and-to eat.

SHAKESPEARE:

AN EPISTLE TO

DAVID GARRICK, Esq.

THANKS to much industry and pains,
Much twisting of the wit and brains,
Translation has unlock'd the store,
And spread abroad the Grecian lore,
While Sophocles his scenes are grown
E'en as familiar as our own.

No more shall taste presume to speak From its enclosures in the Greek ;

But, all its fences broken down,

Lie at the mercy of the town.

Critic, I hear thy torrent rage, ""Tis blasphemy against that stage,

"Which Eschylus his warmth defin'd, Euripides his taste resign'd,

66

"And Sophocles his last direction,

66

Stamp'd with the signet of perfection."

Perfection! 'tis a word ideal,

That bears about it nothing real:
For excellence was never hit

In the first essays of man's wit.

Shall ancient worth, or ancient fame

Preclude the Moderns from their claim?
Must they be blockheads, dolts, and fools,
Who write not up to Grecian rules?
Who tread in buskins or in socks,
Must they be damn'd as Heterodox,
Nor merit of good works prevail,
Except within the classic pale?

'Tis stuff that bears the name of knowledge,
Not current half a mile from college;
Where half their lectures yield no more
(Besure I speak of times of yore)
Than just a niggard light, to mark
How much we all are in the dark.
As rushlights in a spacious rocm,
Just burn enough to form a gloom..

When Shakespeare leads the mind a dance, From France to England, hence to France, Talk not to me of time and place;

I own I'm happy in the chace.

Whether the drama's here or there,

"Tis nature, Shakespeare, every where ;

The poet's fancy can create,
Contract, enlarge, annihilate,

Bring past and present close together,
n spite of distance, seas, or weather;
And shut up in a single action,

What cost whole years in its transaction.
So, ladies at a play, or rout,

Can flirt the universe about,

Whose geographical account

Is drawn and pictured on the mount.
Yet, when they please, contract the plan,

And shut the world up in a fan.

True Genius, like Armida's wand,
Can raise the spring from barren land.
While all the art of Imitation,

Is pilf'ring from the first creation;
Transplanting flowers, with useless toil,
Which wither in a foreign soil.