By the time of Jane Austen, of course, "taste" had developed away from the Addisonian rules, and indeed the whole tenor of the aesthetics of the imagination had changed. What had happened can be suggested by juxtaposing two significant statements about "taste" as metaphor. In his _Spectator_ essay (No. 409) Addison speaks of "a very great Conformity between that Mental Taste, which is the Subject of this Paper, and that Sensitive Taste which gives us a Relish of every different Flavour that affects the Palate." But in the Preface to _Lyrical Ballads_ (1802), Wordsworth deprecates those "who will converse with us as gravely about a _taste_ for Poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing indifferent as a taste for Rope-dancing, or Frontiniac or Sherry."[5] But the breakdown of the metaphor of "taste" is too large a subject to be explored here. * * * * * James Bramston (?1694-1743) was educated at Westminster School and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he took his B.A. in 1717 and his M.A. in 1720. He took orders, and was for a time a military chaplain. In 1724 he obtained the living of Lurgashall, and in 1739 those of Harting and Westhampnett.[6] He published (all anonymously) only three poems in English: 1. _The Art of Politicks, in Imitation of Horace's Art of Poetry._ London: Lawton Gilliver, 1729. 2. _The Man of Taste. Occasion'd by an Epistle of Mr. Pope's on that Subject._ London: Lawton Gilliver, 1733. 3. _The Crooked Six-pence. With a Learned Preface Found among Some Papers Bearing Date the Same Year in which Paradise Lost Was Published by the Late Dr. Bently._ London: Robert Dodsley, 1743. Bramston also wrote Latin verses, and at least two unpublished poems survive; but his reputation rests on _The Art of Politicks_ and _The Man of Taste_. Both poems are of interest to the political and cultural historian, but from a literary point of view _The Man of Taste_ is probably the better poem. This is largely because of Bramston's success in creating the persona of a self-consciously affected Man of Taste, who, however, exposes himself more than he intends. Joseph Warton mistook this effect for a failure of technique when he called Bramston "guilty of the indecorum and absurdity of making his hero laugh at himself and his own follies."[7] The poem is deliberately the "confessions" of a self-styled Man of Taste. It begins in a casual, cynical tone, but as the speaker is gradually seduced by his own rhetoric (especially when he imagines himself a nobleman) he strikes an almost rhapsodic note, so that he is revealed as the victim, not the exploiter, of "taste." Both in his targets and his techniques, Bramston is a disciple of Pope. Sometimes there is a conscious recollection of the master: I squal'd in Distichs, and in Triplets wept. (p. 6) Elsewhere the imitation is less happy: