Kitobni o'qish: «The Man of Taste»
INTRODUCTION
For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?
Only to show, how many Tastes he wanted.
What brought Sir Visto's ill got wealth to waste?
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; the meaning and application of the term was a lively issue which engaged most of the ablest minds of the period.
Addison prefaced his series of Spectator papers on the "Pleasures of the Imagination" with a ground-clearing essay on "taste" (No. 409). In this classic account of the term, Addison defines "taste" as "that Faculty of the Soul, which discerns the Beauties of an Author with Pleasure, and the Imperfections with Dislike." 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. His account implies not only a standard of "taste," but also general agreement, at least among "men of taste," about what the standard was. It is this circularity that makes it essential to assume some innate faculty of "taste."
But Addison's prescription for the cultivation of taste was a laborious one, involving prolonged reading and study. The wealthy, and especially the newly wealthy, were tempted to confuse the correct appreciation of the objects of taste with the mere possession of them; so that, as with Pope's Timon in the Epistle to Burlington (1731), owning a library became a substitute for reading books. This false taste for ostentation – especially in buildings – is a frequent target of contemporary satire.
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. Shaftesbury draws this analogy between the moral and the aesthetic:
The Case is the same here [in the mental or moral Subjects], as in the ordinary Bodys, or common Subjects of Sense. The Shapes, Motions, Colours, and Proportions of these being presented to 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 Taste (1735). Pope himself borrowed an idea from it (see p. 14, 11. 5-6) for a passage in the Dunciad (the allusion to Free-Masons and F.R.S.; IV, 567-71).
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. Important philosophical discussions are Hume's essay "Of the Standard of Taste" (in Four Dissertations, 1757), Burke's Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757; a "Discourse Concerning Taste" was prefaced to the second edition, 1759), and Alexander Gerard's Essay on Taste (1759). Foote's farce Taste (1752) exposed the sham taste for the antique. There are numerous satiric portraits of the "Man of Taste": Mr. Sterling in The Clandestine Marriage (1766) is a good example clearly in the tradition of Pope's Timon, as is General Tilney in Northanger Abbey (1818, but written much earlier).
THE MAN OF TASTE
W hoe'er he be that to a Taste aspires,
Let him read this, and be what he desires.
In men and manners vers'd from life I write,
Not what was once but what is now polite.
Those who of courtly France have made the tour,
Can scarce our English awkwardness endure.
But honest men who never were abroad,
Like England only, and its Taste applaud.
Strife still persists, which yields the better goût;
Books or the world, the many or the few.
True Taste to me is by this touchstone known,
That's always best that's nearest to my own.
To shew that my pretensions are not vain,
My Father was a play'r in Drury-lane.
Pears and Pistachio-nuts my Mother sold,
He a Dramatick-poet, She a Scold.
His tragick muse could Countesses affright,
Her wit in boxes was my Lord's delight.
No mercenary Priest e'er join'd their hands,
Uncramp'd by wedlock's unpoetick bands.
Laws my Pindarick parents matter'd not,
So I was tragi-comically got.
My infant tears a sort of measure kept,
I squal'd in Distichs, and in Triplets wept.
No youth did in I education waste,
Happy in an Hereditary Taste.
Writing ne'er cramp'd the sinews of my thumb,
Nor barb'rous birch e'er brush'd my brawny bum.
My guts ne'er suffer'd from a college-cook,
My name ne'er enter'd in a buttery-book.
Grammar in vain the sons of Priscian teach,
Good Parts are better than Eight Parts of Speech:
Since these declin'd those undeclin'd they call,
I thank my Stars, that I declin'd 'em all.
To Greek or Latin Tongues without pretence,
I trust to mother Wit, and father Sense.
Nature's my guide, all Sciences I scorn,
Pains I abhor, I was a Poet born.
Yet is my goût for criticism such,
I've got some French, and know a little Dutch.
Huge commentators grace my learned shelves,
Notes upon books out-do the books themselves.
Criticks indeed are valuable men,
But hyper-criticks are as good agen.
Tho' Blackmore's works my soul with raptures fill,
With notes by Bently they'd be better still.
The Boghouse-Miscellany's well design'd,
To ease the body, and improve the mind.
Swift's whims and jokes for my resentment call,
For he displeases me, that pleases all.
Verse without rhyme I never could endure,
Uncouth in numbers, and in sense obscure.
To him as Nature, when he ceas'd to see,
Milton's an universal Blank to me.
Confirm'd and settled by the Nations voice,
Rhyme is the poet's pride, and peoples choice.
Always upheld by national Support,
Of Market, University, and Court:
Thompson, write blank; but know that for that reason,
These lines shall live, when thine are out of season.
Rhyme binds and beautifies the Poet's lays,
As London Ladies owe their shape to stays.
Had Cibber's self the Careless Husband wrote,
He for the Laurel ne'er had had my Vote:
But for his Epilogues and other Plays,
He thoroughly deserves the Modern Bays.
It pleases me, that Pope unlaurell'd goes,
While Cibber wears the Bays for Playhouse Prose.
So Britain's Monarch once uncover'd fate,
While Bradshaw bully'd in a broad-brimm'd hat.
Long live old Curl! he ne'er to publish fears,
The speeches, verses, and last wills of Peers.
How oft has he a publick spirit shewn,
And pleas'd our ears regardless of his own?
But to give Merit due, though Curl's the same?
Are not his Brother-booksellers the same?
Can Statutes keep the British Press in awe,
While that sells best, that's most against the Law?
Lives of dead Play'rs my leisure hours beguile,
And Sessions-Papers tragedize my stile.
'Tis charming reading in Ophelia's life,
So oft a Mother, and not once a Wife:
She could with just propriety behave,
Alive with Peers, with Monarchs in her grave:
Her lot how oft have envious harlots wept,
By Prebends bury'd and by Generals kept.
T'improve in Morals Mandevil I read,
And Tyndal's Scruples are my settled Creed.
I travell'd early, and I soon saw through
Religion all, e'er I was twenty-two.
Shame, Pain, or Poverty shall I endure,
When ropes or opium can my ease procure?
When money's gone, and I no debts can pay,
Self-murder is an honourable way.
As Pasaran directs I'd end my life,
And kill myself, my daughter, and my wife.
Burn but that Bible which the Parson quotes,
And men of spirit all shall cut their throats.
But not to writings I confine my pen,
I have a taste for buildings, musick, men.
Young travell'd coxcombs mighty knowledge boast,
With superficial Smatterings at Most.
Not so my mind, unsatisfied with hints,
Knows more than Budgel writes, or Roberts prints.
I know the town, all houses I have seen,
From High-Park corner down to Bednal-Green.
Sure wretched Wren was taught by bungling Jones,
To murder mortar, and disfigure stones!
Who in Whitehall can symmetry discern?
I reckon Convent-garden Church a Barn.
Nor hate I less thy vile Cathedral, Paul!
The choir's too big, the cupola's too small:
Substantial walls and heavy roofs I like,
'Tis Vanbrug's structures that my fancy strike:
Such noble ruins ev'ry pile wou'd make,
I wish they'd tumble for the prospect's sake.
To lofty Chelsea or to Greenwich Dome,
Soldiers and sailors all are welcom'd home.
Her poor to palaces Britannia brings,
St. James's hospital may serve for kings.
Building so happily I understand,
That for one house I'd mortgage all my land.
Dorick, Ionick, shall not there be found,
But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound.
From out my honest workmen, I'll select
A Bricklay'r, and proclaim him architect;
First bid him build me a stupendous Dome,
Which having finish'd, we set out for Rome;
Take a weeks view of Venice and the Brent,
Stare round, see nothing, and come home content.
I'll have my Villa too, a sweet abode,
Its situation shall be London road:
Pots o'er the door I'll place like Cits balconies,
Which4 Bently calls the Gardens of Adonis.
