 After Montesquieu, the other philosophers of the Enlightenment borrowed from the theories mentioned above to come up with their descriptions of taste as a combination of three elements: sentiment, reason, and a knowledge of rules. Simultaneously, they distanced themselves from both the refined world of salons that had promoted their careers and the academics who had developed theories of beauty. Even Montesquieu criticized salons as having a feminizing influence that discouraged serious scholarship. Meanwhile, Voltaire describes scholars as myopic and dust-covered in his poem The Temple of Taste (1733). The majority of Enlightenment philosophers saw themselves as erudite, serious thinkers who also lived in society. In terms of taste, they set themselves off as a caste of professional critics who claimed the right to make artistic judgments that were more authoritative than the potentially wayward preferences of the general public.