See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride,
Bids Bubo build,5 and sends him such a guide :
A standing sermon, at each year's expense,
That never coxcomb reach'd magnificence!

;

You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
And pompous buildings once were things of use.
Yet shall (my lord) your just, your noble rules
Fill half the land with imitating fools;
Who random drawings from your sheets shall take,
And of one beauty many blunders make;
Load some vain church with old theatric state,
Turn acts of triumph to a garden-gate;
Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all
On some patch'd dog-hole eked with ends of wall
Then clap four slices of pilaster on 't,
That, laced with bits of rustic, makes a front.
Shall call the winds through long arcades to roar,
Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door;
Conscious they act a true Palladian part,
And, if they starve, they starve by rules of art.
Oft have you hinted to your brother peer
A certain truth, which many buy too dear:
Something there is more needful than expense,
And something previous even to taste-'tis sense :
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And, though no science, fairly worth the seven :
A light, which in yourself you must perceive;
Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give.7

20

25

30

335

40

45

Sir R. Walpole, in Norfolk, and of Woolterton, the house of the elder Horace Walpole, which his nephew praises highly. He also designed the front of the Admiralty. He owed the commencement of his success in life to the fact of his marrying a servant of Sir R. Walpole's. He died in 1758.]

5 [Bubo, Bubb Dodington, Lord Melcombe. See Notes.]

6 The Earl of Burlington was then publishing the Designs of Inigo Jones, and the Antiquities of Rome by Palladio.

After ver. 22, in the MS.

"Must bishops, lawyers, statesmen, have the skill
To build, to plant, judge paintings, what you will?
Then why not Kent as well our treaties draw,
Bridgman explain the gospel, Gibbs the law?"

7 Inigo Jones, the celebrated architect; and M. Le Nôtre, the designer of the best gardens in France. [Le Nôtre is said to have been engaged by Charles II. to aid in laying out and improving St. James's Park, London. All

To build, to plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot,
In all, let Nature never be forgot,
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over-dress, nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty everywhere be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.

Consult the genius of the place in all:
That tells the waters or to rise or fall;
Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades;
Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.
Still follow sense, of every art the soul,
Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole,

50

55

60

65

the royal parks and gardens attached to the French palaces were placed under Le Nôtre, by Louis XIV., who invested him with the honours of nobility. He died at Paris, in 1700. Inigo Jones-of whose architectural genius it would be idle to speak so long as the Banqueting House at Whitehall remainswas born about 1572; died 1652.]

Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start ev'n from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you; Time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at-perhaps a Stowe.8

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,o
You'll wish your hill or shelter'd seat again.
Even in an ornament its place remark,
Nor in an hermitage set Dr. Clarke.10
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.

20

75

80

85

90

Through his young woods how pleased Sabinus stray'd, Or sate 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 opener vista loves, Foe to the Dryads of his father's groves; One boundless green, or flourish'd carpet views,ll With all the mournful family of yews :

12

95

8 The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in Buckinghamshire.

9 This was done in Hertfordshire by a wealthy citizen, at the expense of above £5000, by which means, (merely to overlook a dead plain,) he let in the north wind upon his house and parterre, which were before adorned and defended by beautiful woods.

10 Dr. S. Clarke's busto, placed by the Queen in the Hermitage, while the Doctor duly frequented the Court.

11 The two extremes in parterres, which are equally faulty: a boundless green, large and naked as a field, or a flourished carpet, where the greatness and nobleness of the piece is lessened by being divided into too many parts, with scrolled works and beds, of which the examples are frequent.

12 Touches upon the ill taste of those who are so fond of evergreens,

The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade.
At Timon's villa let us pass a day,13

Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away!"
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!

On

Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
The whole, a labour'd quarry above ground,14
Two cupids squirt before: a lake behind
Improves the keenness of the northern wind.
His gardens next your admiration call,
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; 15

100

105

"Lie heavy on him, earth, for he

Laid many a heavy load on thee."]

15 The two statues of the Gladiator pugnans and Gladiator moriens.

110

115

120

(particularly yews, which are the most tonsile,) as to destroy the nobler foresttrees, to make way for such little ornaments as pyramids of dark green continually repeated, not unlike a funeral procession.

13 This description is intended to comprise the principles of a false taste of magnificence, and to exemplify what was said before, that nothing but good sense can attain it.

[Supposed to be a satire on the Duke of Chandos's seat of Canons, destroyed in 1747. See Additional Notes.]

14 [This phrase Pope applies in one of his letters to Blenheim House. The heaviness of Blenheim was often brought against Vanbrugh, its architect, and Dr. Evans, the Oxford epigrammatist, has embodied the charge in the lines,

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;16
And when up ten steep slopes you've dragg'd your thighs,
Just at his study-door he'll bless your eyes.

130

His study with what authors is it stored ? 17
In books, not authors, curious is my Lord;
To all their dated backs he turned you round;
These Aldus printed, those Du Sueïl 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,18
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,19
Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,20
Or 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.21

125

135

140

145

150

16 The approaches and communications of house with garden, or of one part with another, ill-judged, and inconvenient.

17 The false taste in books; a satire on the vanity of collecting them, more frequent in men of fortune than the study to understand them. Many delight chiefly in the elegance of the print, or of the binding; some have carried it so far, as to cause the upper shelves to be filled with painted -books of wood; others pique themselves so much upon books in a language they do not understand, as to exclude the most useful in one they do.

18 The false taste in music, improper to the subject, as of light airs in churches, often practised by the organists, &c.

19 And in painting (from which even Italy is not free) of naked figures in churches, &c., which has obliged some Popes to put draperies on some of those of the best masters.

20 Verrio (Antonio) painted many ceilings, &c., at Windsor, Hampton Court, &c., and Laguerre at Blenheim Castle and other places.

21 This is a fact; a reverend dean preaching at Court, threatened the