It is against the philosophical background of the writings of Addison, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson that the satire on "taste" of Pope, Bramston, and others must be seen. But by the time Pope wrote his _Epistle to Burlington_, Addison's "Faculty of the Soul" had been somewhat debased as a critical term, and the decline of "taste" was a common topic. "Nothing is so common as the affectation of, nor any thing so seldom found as Taste" was the complaint of the _Weekly Register_ in 1731, deploring "the degeneracy of _Taste_ since Mr. _Addison's_ time."[3] The publication of Pope's _Epistle to Burlington_ in December 1731 was a literary event of some importance, especially since it was his first poem since the _Dunciad Variorum_ of 1729. The _Epistle_ gave "taste" a renewed currency as a vogue word. "Of Taste" is found only on the half-title of the first edition. But, significantly changed to "Of False Taste" for the second edition, this designation found its way onto the title-page of the third edition, and became the poem's popular title (it is so described on the advertisement leaf of Bramston's _The Man of Taste_). Several attacks on Pope and his poem were published in the following year or so. _A Miscellany on Taste_ (1732) reprinted Pope's _Epistle_ with combative critical notes. Pope himself was attacked, as "Mr. Alexander Taste," in an anonymous pamphlet _Mr. Taste the Poetical Fop_ (1732), reissued in 1733 as _The Man of Taste_, apparently borrowing the title of Bramston's poem.[4] Bramston's _The Man of Taste_ (1733) is an early example of the more positive reaction to Pope's _Epistle_, joining him rather than attempting to beat him. Bramston's poem in its turn occasioned an anonymous _The Woman of Taste_ (1733), and suggested some details for the character of Lord Apemode in James Miller's comedy _The Man of Taste_ (1735). Pope himself borrowed an idea from it (see p. 14, 11. 5-6) for a passage in the _Dunciad_ (the allusion to Free-Masons and F.R.S.; IV, 567-71). The cluster of works provoked by Pope's _Epistle_ is evidence of the topicality of "taste" at the time Bramston wrote his poem, and it is his _Man of Taste_ that retains most interest today. The later history of "taste" in eighteenth-century aesthetics and satire can only briefly be glanced at here. Important philosophical discussions are Hume's essay "Of the Standard of Taste" (in Four Dissertations, 1757), Burke's _Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful_ (1757; a "Discourse Concerning Taste" was prefaced to the second edition, 1759), and Alexander Gerard's _Essay on Taste_ (1759). Foote's farce _Taste_ (1752) exposed the sham taste for the antique. There are numerous satiric portraits of the "Man of Taste": Mr. Sterling in _The Clandestine Marriage_ (1766) is a good example clearly in the tradition of Pope's Timon, as is General Tilney in _Northanger Abbey_ (1818, but written much earlier).