Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start e'en from difficulty, strike from chance :
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at-perhaps a Stowe.* 70
Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls, And Nero's terraces desert their walls:
The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make;
Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake:
Or cut wide views through mountains to the
plain,
You'll wish your hill or shelter'd seat again.
E'en in an ornament its place remark,
Nor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke.+
Behold Villario's ten years' toil complete;
His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet;
The wood supports the plain, the parts unite,
And strength of shade contends with strength of
light;
A waving glow the bloomy beds display,
Blushing in bright diversities of day,
With silver-quivering rills meander'd o'er :
Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more:
Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield,
He finds, at last, he better likes a field.
Through his young woods how pleased Sabinus stray'd,
Or sat delighted in the thickening shade,
With annual joy the reddening shoots to greet,
Or see the stretching branches long to meet !
His son's fine taste an opening vista loves,
Foe to the Dryads of his father's groves;
One boundless green, or flourish'd carpet views,
With all the mournful family of yews:
The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade.
* In Buckinghamshire. Then the seat of Lord Cobham, now of the Duke of Buckingham.
+"Dr. S. Clarke's busts, placed by Queen Caroline in the Hermitage."
At Timon's villa let us pass a day, Where all cry out, 'What sums
So proud, so grand; of that stupendous air;
Soft and agreeable come never there.
Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught,
As brings all Brobdignag before your thought:
To compass this, his building is a town,
His pond an ocean, his parterre a down.
Who but must laugh, the master when he sees,
A puny insect, shivering at a breeze!
Lo! what huge heaps of littleness around!
The whole, a labour'd quarry above ground. 110
Two Cupids squirt before: a lake behind
Improves the keenness of the northern wind
His gardens next your admiration call;
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
The suffering eye inverted nature sees;
Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
With here a fountain, never to be play'd;
And there a summer-house, that knows no shade:
Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers;
There gladiators fight, or die in flowers;
Unwater'd see the drooping sea-horse mourn,
And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.
My lord advances with majestic mien,
Smit with the mighty pleasure, to be seen:
But, soft! by regular approach! not yet!
First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;
It is supposed that lines 99-176 are a satire on the Duke of Chandos' seat, Cannons, near Edgeware, Middlesex. On their publication, general indignation was excited at the ingratitude of the poet, who had taken advantage of that Looleman's hospitality to satirize him and his mansion. Pope always denied any such intention.
And when up ten steep slopes you've dragg'd your thighs, Just at his study-door he'll bless your eyes.
His study with what authors is it stored? In books, not authors, curious is my lord: To all their dated backs he turns you round; These Aldus* printed, those Du Suëil has bound! Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good For all his lordship knows, but they are wood. For Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look ; These shelves admit not any modern book. And now the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of prayer : Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
Where sprawl the saints of Verriot or Laguerre ;†
On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
And bring all paradise before your eye.
To rest the cushion and soft dean invite,
Who never mentions hell to ears polite.‡
But, hark! the chiming clocks to dinner
A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall :
The rich buffet well-colour'd serpents grace,
And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.
Is this a dinner? this a genial room?
No, 'tis a temple and a hecatomb;
A solemn sacrifice, perform'd in state;
You drink by measure, and to minutes eat:
So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear,
Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there.
* A celebrated Venetian printer, and the introducer of that style still called Italic printing.
+ Verrio (Antonio)'painted many ceilings, &c. at Windsor, Hampton Court, &c.; and Laguerre at Blenheim Palace, and other places.
It is said that a dean preaching at Court threatened sinners with punishment in that place he thought it "not decent to name in so polite an assembly."
Between each act the trembling salvers ring, 161
From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the king.
In plenty starving, tantalised in state,
And complaisantly help'd to all I hate,
Treated, caress'd, and tired, I take my leave,
Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve:
I curse such lavish cost and little skill,
And swear no day was ever pass'd so ill.
Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed;
Health to himself, and to his infants bread
The labourer bears. What his hard heart denies,
His charitable vanity supplies.
Another age shall see the golden ear
Imbrown the slope and nod on the parterre,
Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann'd,
And laughing Ceres reassume the land.
Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil? Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle.
'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,
And splendour borrows all her rays from sense. 180
His father's acres who enjoys in peace,
Or makes his neighbours glad if he increase;
Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,
Yet to their lord owe more than to the soil;
Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed
The milky heifer and deserving steed;
Whose rising forests, not for pride or show,
But future buildings, future navies, grow:
Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
First shade a country, and then raise a town. 190
You too proceed! make falling arts your care,
Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,
And be whate'er Vitruvius was before;
Till kings call forth the ideas of your mind,
Proud to accomplish what such hands design'd.
Bid harbours open, public ways extend;
Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend;
Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain ;
The mole projected break the roaring main; 200
Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
And roll obedient rivers through the land:
These honours, peace to happy Britain brings;
These are imperial works, and worthy kings.
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