The reviewers were delighted with the poem, so distinguished by its good nature and wit amid the current tide of party polemics. The connoisseur in Horace Walpole was stronger than his Whiggism, and he found _The Project_ excellent.[2] Dr. Johnson, who disapproved of flippancy in politics, dissented. At a dinner party at Sir Joshua Reynolds’ on the 25th of April, Dr. Samuel Musgrave, the learned editor of Euripides, read the new poem. Johnson was not amused. “A temporary poem always entertains us,” urged Musgrave. “So,” replied Johnson, “does an account of the criminals hanged yesterday entertain us.”[3] Rather ungratefully, Tickell followed up his reception as a poet in the circles of _ton_ with a satire on one of society’s most conspicuous foibles. _The Wreath of Fashion, or, the Art of Sentimental Poetry_, said _The Critical Review_ in its notice, “is levelled at the same vice in the poetical world, at which the School for Scandal was aimed in the theatrical and moral worlds,—at the present fashionable strain of sentimental whining.”[4] It was an age of rhyming peers. Tickell declared in the preface that he was prompted to write his satire by reading a recent volume by a noble author (whom he did not name but who was the Earl of Carlisle, Byron’s “Lord, rhymester, petit-maître, pamphleteer”) containing one ode on the death of Mr. Gray and two on the death of his lordship’s spaniel. In _The Wreath of Fashion_ Tickell deplored, with Sheridan, the vogue of tearful comedies and gently rebuked the inanities of newspaper poets. His chief ridicule was reserved for the poetic salon of Mrs. “Calliope” Miller at Batheaston, where the quality from Bath wrote _bouts-rimés_ about buttered muffins and the like, dropped them into a classic vase, and applauded the winners crowned by Mrs. Miller with wreaths of myrtle.[5] Over these rites of poetic sensibility, said the satirist, the goddess Fashion presides, and thus she must be supplicated: On a spruce pedestal of _Wedgwood ware_, Where motley forms, and tawdry emblems glare, Behold she consecrates to cold applause, A Petrefaction, work’d into a _Vase_: The Vase of Sentiment!—to this impart Thy kindred coldness, and congenial art.... With votive song, and tributary verse, Fashion’s gay train her gentle rites rehearse. What soft poetic incense breathes around! What soothing hymns from Adulation sound! _The Wreath of Fashion_ went through a half-dozen editions. David Garrick wrote a puff for it in _The Monthly Review_ in which he ventured to prophesy that “elegant poetry, refined satire, and exquisite irony” would be revived by the new author;[6] and Samuel Rogers, belated Augustan that he was, always remembered _The Wreath_ as an early favorite.[7] _2_