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ndon: Lawton Gilliver, 1729. 2. _The Man of Taste. Occasion'd by an Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject._ London: Lawton Gilliver, 1733. 3. _The Crooked Six-pence. With a Learned Preface Found among Some Papers Bearing Date the Same Year in which Paradise Lost Was Published by the Late Dr. Bently._ London: Robert Dodsley, 1743. Bramston also wrote Latin verses, and at least two unpublished poems survive; but his reputation rests on _The Art of Politicks_ and _The Man of Taste_. Both poems are of interest to the political and cultural historian, but from a literary point of view _The Man of Taste_ is probably the better poem. This is largely because of Bramston's success in creating the persona of a self-consciously affected Man of Taste, who, however, exposes himself more than he intends. Joseph Warton mistook this effect for a failure of technique when he called Bramston "guilty of the indecorum and absurdity of making his hero laugh at himself and his own follies."[7] The poem is deliberately the "confessions" of a self-styled Man of Taste. It begins in a casual, cynical tone, but as the speaker is gradually seduced by his own rhetoric (especially when he imagines himself a nobleman) he strikes an almost rhapsodic note, so that he is revealed as the victim, not the exploiter, of "taste." Both in his targets and his techniques, Bramston is a disciple of Pope. Sometimes there is a conscious recollection of the master: I squal'd in Distichs, and in Triplets wept. (p. 6) Elsewhere the imitation is less happy: Sure wretched _Wren_ was taught by bungling _Jones_, To murder mortar, and disfigure stones! (p. 10) Here the stylistic habit of antithesis works against the meaning instead of reinforcing it. But there are many good things in the poem; Bramston's treatment of the idea of the stage as a "school of morality," for example, is clever and amusing. His hero derives his "Hereditary Taste" from being "tragi-comically got" by a player-poet and an orange-woman (p. 6). This gives point to his later claim: _Oxford_ and _Cambridge_ are not worth one farthing, Compar'd to _Haymarket_, and _Convent-garden_: Quit those, ye British Youth, and follow these, Turn players all, and take your Squires degrees. (p. 18) There are also a number of verbal successes, such as: Nor barb'rous birch e'er brush'd my brawny bum. (p. 6) Here insistent alliteration and str
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