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 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, 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. 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, 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: In the first essays of man's wit. Shall ancient worth, or ancient fame Preclude the Moderns from their claim? 'Tis stuff that bears the name of knowledge, 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, Bring past and present close together, What cost whole years in its transaction. Can flirt the universe about, Whose geographical account Is drawn and pictured on the mount. And shut the world up in a fan. True Genius, like Armida's wand, Is pilf'ring from the first creation; |