ABSTRACT
There is perhaps no country in the world more subordinate to the power of fashion than our own. Every Whim, every Word, every Vice, every Virtue, in its turn becomes the mode and is followed with a certain rage of approbation for a time. The favourite style in all the polite Arts, and the reigning taste in Letters, are as notoriously objects of caprice as Architecture and Dress. A new Poem, or Novel, or Farce are as inconsiderately extolled or decried as a Ruff or a Chinese Rail, a Hoop or a Bow Window. Hence it happens that the publick taste is often vitiated: or if by chance it has made a proper choice becomes partially attached to one Species of Excellence, and remains dead to the Sense of all other Merit, however equal or superior.
