Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject" [i.e. "Taste"]. This was what is
now known as No. 4 of the _Moral Essays_, "On the Use of Riches." But
its first title In 1731 was "Of Taste"; and this was subsequently
altered to "Of False Taste." It was addressed to Pope's friend, Richard
Boyle, Earl of Burlington; and, under the style of "Timon's Villa,"
employed, for its chief illustration of wasteful and vacuous
magnificence, the ostentatious seat which James Brydges, first Duke of
Chandos, had erected at Canons, near Edgware. The story of Pope's
epistle does not belong to this place. But in the print of _The Man of
Taste_, William Hogarth, gratifying concurrently a personal antipathy,
promptly attacked Pope, Burlington, and his own _bete noire_,
Burlington's architect, William Kent. Pope, to whom Burlington acts as
hodman, is depicted whitewashing Burlington Gate, Piccadilly, which is
labelled "Taste," and over which rises Kent's statue, subserviently
supported at the angles of the pediment by Raphael and Michelangelo. In
his task, the poet, a deformed figure in a tye-wig, bountifully
bespatters the passers-by, particularly the chariot of the Duke of
Chandos. The satire was not very brilliant or ingenious; but its meaning
was clear. Pope was prudent enough to make no reply; though, as Mr. G.S.
Layard shows in his _Suppressed Plates_, it seems that the print was, or
was sought to be, called in by those concerned. Bramston's poem, which
succeeded in 1733, does not enter into the quarrel, it may be because of
the anger aroused by the pictorial reply. But if--as announced on its
title-page,--it was suggested by Pope's epistle, it would also seem to
have borrowed its name from Hogarth's caricature.

It was first issued in folio by Pope's publisher, Lawton Gilliver of
Fleet Street, and has a frontispiece engraved by Gerard Vandergucht.
This depicts a wide-skirted, effeminate-looking personage, carrying a
long cane with a head fantastically carved, and surrounded by various