Friend and scholar, who, in charity, hast walked with me thus far, We have wandered in a wilderness of sweets, tracking beauty's footsteps: And ever as we rambled on among the tangled thicket, Many a startled thought hath tempted further roaming: Passion, sympathetic influence, might of imaginary haloes,-- Many the like would lure aside, to hunt their wayward themes. And, look you!--from his ferny bed in yonder hazel coppice, A dappled hart hath flung aside the boughs and broke away; He is fleet and capricious as the zephyr, and with exulting bounds Hieth down a turfy lane between the sounding woods; His neck is garlanded with flowers, his antlers hung with chaplets, And rainbow-coloured ribbons stream adown his mottled flanks: Should we follow?--foolish hunters, thus to chase afoot,-- Who can track the airy speed and doubling wiles of Taste? For the estimates of human beauty, dependent upon time and clime, Manifold and changeable, are multiplied the more by strange gregarious fashion: And notable ensamples in the great turn to epidemics in the lower, So that a nation's taste shall vary with its rulers. Stern Egypt, humbled to the Greek, fancied softer idols; Greece, the Roman province, nigh forgat her classic sculpture; Rome, crushed beneath the Goth, loved his barbarian habits; And Alaric, with his ruffian horde, is tamed by silken Rome. Columbia's flattened head, and China's crumpled feet,-- The civilized tapering waist,--and the pendulous ears of the savage,-- The swollen throat among the mountains, and an ebon skin beneath the tropics,-- These shall all be reckoned beauty: and for weighty cause. First, for the latter: Providence in mercy tempereth taste by circumstance, So that Nature's must shall hit her creature's liking; Second, for the middle: though the foolishness of vanity seek to mar proportion, Still, defects in those we love shall soon be counted praise; Third, for the first: a chief, and a princess, maimed or distorted from the cradle Shall coax the flattery of slaves to imitate the great in their deformity: Hence groweth habit: and habits make a taste, And so shall servile zeal deface the types of beauty. Whiles Alexander conquered, crookedness was comely: And followers learn to praise the scars upon their leader's brow. Youth hath sought to flatter age by mimicking grey hairs; Age plastereth her wrinkles, and is painted in the ruddiness of Youth. Fashion, the parasite of Rank, apeth faults and failings, Until the general Taste depraved hath warped its sense of beauty.