not dispense with. This is evident, from his rider
bringing in a silver punch-bowl, which one of his horses is supposed to
have won, and his saloon being ridiculously ornamented with the
portraits of celebrated cocks. The figures in the back part of this
plate represent tailors, peruke-makers, milliners, and such other
persons as generally fill the antichamber of a man of quality, except
one, who is supposed to be a poet, and has written some panegyric on the
person whose levee he attends, and who waits for that approbation he
already vainly anticipates. Upon the whole, the general tenor of this
scene is to teach us, that the man of fashion is too often exposed to
the rapacity of his fellow creatures, and is commonly a dupe to the more
knowing part of the world.

"How exactly," says Mr. Ireland, "does Bramston describe the
character in his _Man of Taste_:--

'Without Italian, and without an ear,
To Bononcini's music I adhere.----
To boon companions I my time would give,
With players, pimps, and parasites I'd live;
I would with jockeys from Newmarket dine,
And to rough riders give my choicest wine.
My evenings all I would with sharpers spend,
And make the thief-taker my bosom friend;
In Figg, the prize-fighter, by day delight,
And sup with Colley Cibber every night.'

"Of the expression in this print, we cannot speak more highly than
it deserves. Every character is marked with its proper and
discriminative stamp. It has been said by a very judicious critic
(the Rev. Mr. Gilpin) from whom it is not easy to differ without
being wrong, that the hero of this history, in the first plate of
the series, is _unmeaning_, and in the second _ungraceful_. The fact
is admitted; but, for so delineating him, the author is entitled to
our praise, rather than our censure. Rakewell's whole conduct proves
he was a fool, and at that time he had not learned how to perform an
artificial character; he therefore looks as he is, unmeaning, and
uninformed. But in the second plate he is _ungraceful_.--Granted.
The ill-educated son of so avaricious a father could not have been
introduced into very good company; and though, by the different
teachers who surround him, it evidently appears that he wishes to
_assume_ the character of a gentleman, his internal feelings tell
him he has not attained