Note 150 — AN ESSAY ON CRITICISM.
Reading edition
This had been the practice of some artists. "Their heroes," says Reynolds, speaking of the French painters in 1752, "are decked out so nice and fine that they look like knights-errant just entering the lists at a tournament in gilt armour, and loaded most unmercifully with silk, satin, velvet, gold, jewels, &c." Pope had in his mind a passage of Cowley's Ode on Wit:
Yet 'tis not to adorn, and gild each part; That shows more cost than art. Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear; Rather than all things wit, let none be there.