But their dogmatic impudence, and
something like a scientific air of talking the most palpable
nonsense, imposes upon great numbers of people, who really possess a
considerable share of natural Taste; of which at the same time they
are so little conscious as to suffer themselves passively to be misled
by those blundering guides.
A Taste worth cultivating is to be improved and preserved by reading
_only_ the best writers. But whoever, after perusing a satire of
Horace, even in the dullest English translation, can relish the
stupid abuse of a blackguard rhymster, may as well indulge the natural
depravity of his Taste, and riot for life upon distiller's grains.
But the Taste in writing is not, cannot be worse, than it is in music,
as well as in all theatrical entertainments. In architecture indeed
there are some elegant and magnificent works arising, at a very proper
time to restore the nation to some credit with its neighbours in this
article; after its having been exposed to such repeated disgraces by
a triumvirate of awkward clumsey piles, that are not ashamed to shew
their stupid heads in the neighbourhood of Whitehall: and one more,
that ought to be demolished; if it was for no other reason but to
restore the view of an elegant church, which has now for many years
been buried alive behind the Mansion-house.
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