Some of my readers may possibly imagine that the tribe of Matchmakers, like the race of wolves, is extinct in England; but this is so far from being the case, that there is now in the neighbourhood of Piccadilly a regular office,[101] where any gentleman or gentlewoman, first paying a stipulated sum for entrance money, may disclose their virtuous wishes, and be provided with partners for life,--or as long as they can agree. THE MAN OF TASTE. [Illustration: THE MAN OF TASTE.] The circumstance on which this print is built is thus described by Dr. Johnson:-- "Mr. Pope published in 1731 a poem called _False Taste_, in which he very particularly and severely criticises the house, the furniture, the gardens, and the entertainments of Timon, a man of great wealth and little taste. By Timon he was universally supposed, and by the Earl of Burlington, to whom the poem is addressed, was privately said, to mean the Duke of Chandos, a man perhaps too much delighted with pomp and show, but of a temper kind and beneficent, and who had consequently the voice of the public in his favour. A violent outcry was therefore raised against the ingratitude and treachery of Pope, who was said to have been indebted to the patronage of Chandos for a present of a thousand pounds, and who gained the opportunity of insulting him by the kindness of his invitation. The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publicly denied; but from the reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was employed in an apology[102] by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavoured to make that disbelieved which he never had confidence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the Duke, which was answered with great magnanimity by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste or his buildings had been an indifferent action in another man, but that in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between them, it had been less easily excused."--Johnson's _Life of Pope_.