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Bramston also wrote Latin verses, and at least two unpublished poems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