One is insensibly reminded of a quotation from P.L. Courier, made in the _Cornhill_ many years since by the once famous "Jacob Omnium" when replying controversially to the author of _Ionica_, "_Je vois_"--says Courier, after recapitulating a string of abusive epithets hurled at him by his opponent--"_je vois ce qu'il veut dire: il entend que lui et moi sont d'avis different; et c'est la sa maniere de s'exprimer_." It was also the manner of our Man of Taste. The second line of the above quotation from Bramston gives us four of the things upon which his hero lays down the law. Let us see what he says about literature. As a professing critic he prefers books with notes:-- Tho' _Blackmore's_ works my soul with raptures fill, With notes by _Bently_ they'd be better still. Swift he detests--not of course for detestable qualities, but because he is so universally admired. In poetry he holds by rhyme as opposed to blank verse:-- 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 ... _Thompson _[_sic_] 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. In this the Man of Taste is obviously following the reigning fashion. But if we may assume Bramston himself to approve what his hero condemns, he must have been in advance of his age, for blank verse had but sparse advocates at this time, or for some time to come. Neither Gray, nor Johnson, nor Goldsmith were ever reconciled to what the last of them styles "this unharmonious measure." Goldsmith, in particular, would probably have been in exact agreement with the couplet as to the controlling powers of rhyme. "If rhymes, therefore," he writes, in the _Enquiry into Polite Learning_,[6] "be more difficult [than blank verse], for that very reason, I would have our poets write in rhyme. Such a restriction upon the thought of a good poet, often lifts and encreases the vehemence of every sentiment; for fancy, like a fountain, plays highest by diminishing the aperture."[7] Notes: [6] Ed. 1759, p. 151. [7] Montaigne has a somewhat similar illustration: "As _Cleanthes_ The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is said, that as the voice being forciblie pent in the narrow gullet of a trumpet, at last issueth forth more strong and shriller, so me seemes, that a sentence cunningly and closely couched in measure-keeping Posie, darts it selfe forth more furiously, and wounds me even to the quicke". (_Essayes_, bk. i. ch. xxv. (Florio's translation). The Man of Taste's idol, in matters dramatic, is Colley Cibber, who, however, deserves the laurel he wears, not for _The Careless Husband_, his best comedy, but for his Epilogues and other Plays.