James Bramston

“ Addison's "taste" is an innate proclivity towards certain kinds of aesthetic experience that has been consciously cultivated in the approved direction. It is not enough to value and enjoy the right authors; they must be valued and enjoyed for the right reasons. When he holds up to ridicule the man who assured him that "the greatest Pleasure he took in reading Virgil, was in examining Aeneas his Voyage by the Map," Addison clearly expects his readers to agree that such a singular taste was in fact no taste at all. ”

“ There's no animus, no vehemence, no bite. Politics do not really engage any of Bramston's strong convictions. The self-portrait he offers us on pages 29-30 would be for many political satirists of the period a transparent facade of mock-innocence, but it seems to fit Bramston very accurately:
Alas Poor Me, you may my fortune guess: I write, and yet Humanity profess: [Pg viii] I love the King, the Queen, and Royal Race: I like the Government, but want no Place: Was never in a Plot, my Brain's not hurt; I Politicks to Poetry convert. ”

“ The cluster of works provoked by Pope's Epistle is evidence of the topicality of "taste" at the time Bramston wrote his poem, and it is his Man of Taste that retains most interest today. The later history of "taste" in eighteenth-century aesthetics and satire can only briefly be glanced at here. ”

“ By now Bramston's method should be clear: he is praising everyone, but the praise fits the Opposition (such as Carteret) much better than it does the Government (the Pelhams) . There is perhaps room for doubt about Walpole and George II, but Bramston's critic's failure to see the irony in the comparison of Pelhams to Scipios must be the result of sheer obtuseness. ”

“ Where's Troy, and where's the May-Pole [xii] in the Strand? ”

“ 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 ”

“ For a son of Christ Church, one of the most Tory Colleges of Tory Oxford, he seems remarkably non-partisan, though his Opposition biases do show through. When he says that "Addison's immortal Page" shows us how "to screen good Ministers from Publick rage" (p. 9) , he is clearly aiming at Walpole, known as the "Screenmaster General" since his success in shielding many of the perpetrators of the South Sea Bubble in 1720. (I have not been able to discover the passage of Addison that Bramston had in mind.) ”

“ Some Daemon whisper'd, "Visto! have a Taste."
(Pope, Epistle to Burlington)
The idea of "taste" and the ideal of the "man of taste" have fallen considerably in critical esteem since the eighteenth century. When F. R. Leavis calls Andrew Lang "a scholar and a man of taste, with a feeling for language and a desire to write poetry," [1] it is clear that for Leavis these attributes disqualify Lang from being taken seriously as a poet. But for the age of Pope, "taste" was a key term in its aesthetic thinking ”

“ I have been unable to determine whom Bramston means by "Maidston"—perhaps one of the Finches, the most prominent family in the area of Maidstone, Kent. Bramston's critic is certainly right about the Pelhams: they have nothing whatever in common with the Scipios. Scipio Africanus Major (236-184/3) was one of the most illustrious Roman heroes, consul during the Second Punic War and an outstanding military tactician. Scipio Africanus Minor (c. 185-129) was not only a consul and a military hero but a great patron of letters whom Cicero considered the greatest Roman of them all. ”

“ The social importance of "taste" as an index of wealth was reinforced by current philosophical thinking that gave "taste" a moral dimension too. In his Characteristicks (1711) , Shaftesbury postulated an innate moral sense, just as Addison did an innate aesthetic sense. ”

“ The rationale for Bramston's technique becomes clearer if we look again at Horace and recall that the basis of his advice is to follow conventional opinion. The conventional opinions that Bramston is by implication urging his pupil to follow are those of the politician's supporters and dependents. It just happens that Bramston has chosen his examples so that the Opposition conventions are closer to reality than the Government conventions. [P]
All this is fun, but it is quite inoffensive. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Horace closes with a humourously self-deprecating description of the "poetic itch": the afflicted poet stumbles into ditches as he babbles his verses aloud; people flee from him, and with good reason; if he catches anyone, [Pg iv] he hangs on like a leech and reads his victim to death. Bramston describes another "sort of itch," parliamenteering. Sir Harry Clodpole knows better than to make speeches to the electors; he solicits their votes by feasting them, and they run towards him (or his table) , not away. They, not he, are the leeches ”

“ I'd turn off Misaubin and take a Nurse.
How oft, when eminent physicians fail,
Do good old womens remedies prevail?
When beauty's gone, and Chloe's struck with years,
Eyes she can couch, or she can syringe ears. ”

“ Bramston's usual method falls somewhere between these extremes. He often uses the dignity of poetry to show up the indignity of politics or political writing, as on pp. 5-6 where Horace's advice on choice of subject is transformed into advice [Pg ii] to "Weekly Writers of seditious News," or on page 7, where the rise and fall of South Sea stock fills the place of Horace's famous comparison of archaic and new-coined words to the leaves of the forest. But Bramston's poem more often aspires to the same level as its model ”

“ 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. ”

“ How can Subjects give stronger Proofs of the high Esteem they have their Sovereign in, for Penetration and Wisdom, than those who entirely rely upon the Royal Discerning, and regulate their Conduct by the King's Direction? ”

“ Bramston's Man of Taste is a concertina-brow, enjoying Senesino, gaming, and Newmarket (pp. 13, 15, 17) .
The usefulness of notes for a full understanding of Bramston's satire was recognized as early as 1733, when a few were added to Faulkner's Dublin reprint. Faulkner's notes are remarkable for their xenophobic bias, for apart from those on Mrs. Oldfield ("Ophelia," p. 9) , they mostly call attention to evils of continental origin: Pasaran's recommendation of suicide (p. 9) ; Heidegger's role as corrupting entertainer (p. 13) ”

“ Sir Robert Fagg was better known for horse-racing and wenching than for politics; he appears in Hogarth's painting of The Beggar's Opera admiring Lavinia Fenton and in the ballad cited in my note to p. 20, line 8. Running for Parliament in the borough of Steyning, Sussex, in 1722, he came in third in a five-man race with nineteen votes. He also ran third in 1727; the vote is not recorded, unless Bramston's "two Voices" is to be taken literally. ”

“ Bramston is a minor poet, but there is no need to apologize for The Man of Taste. It is a lively and amusing poem in its own right, and its association with Pope and its place in the corpus of eighteenth-century satire on "taste" raise its claim to the attention of students of the period. ”

“ Instead of deploring the silencing of the chorus, Bramston applauds the silencing of Woolston. The contrast between Thespis and Defoe is clearly mock-heroic, but Bramston implies that Woolston's similarity to an ancient satyr is a decline from the character expected of a modern clergyman.
Sometimes the mere fact of changing from a poetic to a political context produces the satire or humour. What is praiseworthy in a poet—the ability to mingle fact and fiction skillfully (151) —becomes highly ironic when applied to a politician who ”

“ 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. ”

“ When the aspiring orator is urged not to "join with silver Tongue a brazen Face" (p. 24) , Walpole is again present by innuendo, for "brazen-face" was another of his nicknames. On the other hand, Bramston also makes fun of the "everlasting Fame" that results from quibbling on Sir Robert's name (p. 6) . ”

“ As far as their public image was concerned, then, no two men could be less like the Scipios. Most contemporaries agreed with Bramston's praise of John Carteret, Earl Granville (1690-1763) , though many of them also mention other, less admirable traits. [M] As for George II, it depends on whose hearts you consult. An anonymous journalist:
What an Assurance has the Kingdom already given of an unfeigned Affection to their Majesties Persons and Government? How do the People shew that none [Pg vii] are acceptable to them, but those that are so to their Majesties? ”

“ And therefore proper at a Sheriff's feast. ”

“ Horace's "ut pictura poesis" (361) produces this bland but destructive couplet:
Not unlike Paintings, Principles appear,
Some best at distance, some when we are near. (p. 36)
More humourous than satirical is the relation between Horace's declaration that there's no place for a mediocre poet (372-73) and Bramston's
The Middle way the best we sometimes call.
But 'tis in Politicks no way at all. There is no Medium: for the term in vogue
On either side is, Honest Man, or Rogue. (pp. 37-38)
The conclusion of the poem involves a somewhat more complex transformation. ”

“ Further evidence that Bramston was making additions to the poem as late as February 1733 (the poem was published on 8 March) are the lines:
Not so my mind, unsatisfied with hints,
Knows more than Budgel writes, or Roberts prints. (p. 10)
These lines hit at a new readers' digest, The Bee: or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet. Containing Something to Hit Every Man's Taste and Principles, which was edited by Budgell and published by Roberts. The first number came out in February 1733. There is a similar mixture of past and current with the musical satire (p. 13) . ”

“ In Acts of Parliament avoid Sublime,
Nor e'er Address his Majesty in Rhime;
An Act of Parliament's a serious thing,
Begins with Year of Lord and Year of King;
Keeps close to Form, in every word is strict,
When it would Pains and Penalties inflict.
Soft Words suit best Petitioners intent;
Soft Words, O ye Petitioners of Kent! [xviii]
[Pg 11] [10] Who e'er harangues before he gives his Vote,
Should send sweet Language from a tuneful Throat.
Pultney [xix] the coldest Breast with Zeal can fire,
And Roman Thoughts by Attick Stile inspire ”

“ What is Bramston trying to do in this passage? There is no problem with the second line: Sir Paul Methuen did indeed resign his office, and one gets the impression from Hervey (pp. 101-2, 250) that he never let anyone forget that he resigned. Thus we have here the most conventional of truisms. Walpole is more difficult. He was certainly no friend of the universities, which were Tory hotbeds. On the other hand, he was reluctant to try to reduce their privileges or bring them more closely under government control, for fear of rousing them to keener opposition. ”