In matter of taste, the public, for the most part, suffers itself to
be led by a few who perhaps are really no judges; but who, under the
favour of some advantages of title, place, or fortune, set up for
judges, and are implicitly followed even by those who have taste.
These washy dictators have learnt at school to admire such authors as
have for ages been possessed of an indisputed renown: but they would
never have been the first to have discovered strokes of true genius in
a co-temporary writer, though they had lived at the court of AUGUSTUS
or of Q. ELIZABETH.
So undistinguishing is our taste, that if the most torpid dunce this
fruitful age can boast of, could by some artful imposture prepossess
the public, that the most insipid of all his own bread-sauce
compositions, to be published next winter, was a piece MILTON's, or
any other celebrated author, recovered from dust and obscurity, it
would be received with universal applause; and perhaps be translated
into _French_ before the town had doated six weeks upon it. One might
venture to say too, that if a work of true spirit and genius was to
be introduced into the world, under the name of some writer of low
reputation, it would be rejected even by the greatest part of those
who pretend to lead the taste.
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