While ev'ry trav❜ler in amaze,
Should on our little manfion gaze,
And pointing to the choice retreat,
Cry, that's Sir Thrifty's Country Seat.
No doubt her arguments prevail, For Madam's TASTE can never fail.
Bleft age! when all men may procure,
The title of a Connoiffeur;
When noble and ignoble herd,
Are govern'd by a fingle word;.
Though, like the royal German dames,
It bears an hundred Chriftian names;
As Genius, Fancy, Judgment, Goût,
Whim, Caprice, Je-ne-fcai-quoi, Virtù:
Which appellations all describe
TASTE, and the modern tafteful tribe.
Now bricklay'rs, carpenters, and joiners,
With Chinese artists, and defigners,
Produce their schemes of alteration,
To work this wond'rous reformation.
The useful dome, which fecret stood,
Embofom'd in the yew-tree's wood,
The trav❜ler with amazement fees
A temple, Gothic, or Chinese,
With many a bell, and tawdry rag on,
And crested with a sprawling dragon ;
A wooden arch is bent aftride
A ditch of water, four foot wide,
With angles, curves, and zigzag lines,
From Halfpenny's exact defigns.
In front, a level lawn is feen,
Without a fhrub upon the green,
Where Taste would want its first great law,
But for the skulking, fly ha-ha,
By whose miraculous affiftance,
You gain a profpect two fields distance.
And now from Hyde-Park Corner come
The Gods of Athens, and of Rome.
Here fquabby Cupids take their places,
With Venus, and the clumfy Graces :
Apollo there, with aim fo clever,
Stretches his leaden bow for ever;
And there, without the pow'r to fly,
Stands fix'd a tip-toe Mercury.
The Villa thus completely grac'd,
All own, that Thrifty has a Taste;
And Madam's female friends, and coufins,
With common-council-men, by dozens,
Flock ev'ry Sunday to the Seat,
To ftare about them, and to eat.
HLOE, that dear bewitching prude,
Still calls me faucy, pert, and rude,
And fometimes almoft ftrikes me; And yet, I fwear, I can't tell how, Spite of the knitting of her brow,
Ask you me, why I fancy thus ?
Why, I have call'd her jilt, and puss,
And thought myself above her;
I feel it, to my cost,
That when I rail against her most,
I'm very fure I love her.
An EPISTLE to Mr. GARRICK.
HANKS to much industry and pains,
T Much twifting of the wit and brains,
Translation has unlock'd the ftore,
And spread abroad the Grecian lore,
While Sophocles his scenes are grown
E'en as familiar as our own.
No more shall Taste presume to speak
From its enclosures in the Greek ;
But, all its fences broken down,
Lie at the mercy of the town.
Critic, I hear thy torrent rage, “ 'Tis blasphemy against that stage, "Which Æschylus his warmth defign'd, Euripides his tafte refin’d,
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