our
Eye; there necessarily results a Beauty or Deformity, according to
the different Measure, Arrangement and Disposition of their several
Parts. So in _Behaviour_ and _Actions_, when presented to our
Understanding, there must be found, of necessity, an apparent
Difference, according to the Regularity or Irregularity of the
Subjects.[2]

The correct training of this capacity would enable men to make the
right choices in both moral and aesthetic matters. This analogy is also
the basis of Francis Hutcheson's _Essay on the Nature and Conduct of
the Passions and Affections_ (1728).

It is against the philosophical background of the writings of Addison,
Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson that the satire on "taste" of Pope,
Bramston, and others must be seen. But by the time Pope wrote his
_Epistle to Burlington_, Addison's "Faculty of the Soul" had been
somewhat debased as a critical term, and the decline of "taste" was a
common topic. "Nothing is so common as the affectation of, nor any
thing so seldom found as Taste" was the complaint of the _Weekly
Register_ in 1731, deploring "the degeneracy of _Taste_ since Mr.
_Addison's_ time."[3]

The publication of Pope's _Epistle to Burlington_ in December 1731 was
a literary event of some importance, especially since it was his first
poem since the _Dunciad Variorum_ of 1729. The _Epistle_ gave "taste" a
renewed currency as a vogue word. "Of Taste" is found only on the
half-title of the first edition. But, significantly changed to "Of
False Taste" for the second edition, this designation found its way
onto the title-page of the third edition, and became the poem's popular
title (it is so described on the advertisement leaf of Bramston's _The
Man of Taste_).

Several attacks on Pope and his poem were published in the following
year or so. _A Miscellany on Taste_ (1732) reprinted Pope's _Epistle_
with combative critical notes. Pope himself was attacked, as "Mr.
Alexander Taste," in an anonymous pamphlet _Mr. Taste the Poetical Fop_
(1732), reissued in 1733 as _The Man of Taste_, apparently borrowing
the title of Bramston's poem.[4] Bramston's _The Man of Taste_ (1733)
is an early example of the more positive reaction to Pope's _Epistle_,
joining him rather than attempting to beat him. Bramston's poem in its
turn occasioned an anonymous _The Woman of Taste_ (1733), and suggested
some details for the character of Lord Apemode in James Miller's comedy
_The Man of