See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride, You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,6 On some patch'd dog-hole eked with ends of wall ; That, laced with bits of rustic, makes a front. Shall call the winds through long arcades to roar, 35 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? 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, 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, 60 Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades; Now breaks, or now directs, the intending lines; 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, Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls; The vast parterres à thousand hands shall make, Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain, The wood supports the plain, the parts unite, And strength of shade contends with strength of light; Blushing in bright diversities of day, With silver-quivering rills meander'd o'er 85 His son's fine taste an opener vista loves, One boundless green, or flourish'd carpet views,11 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. Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away!" 100 Greatness with Timon, dwells in such a draught 105 Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, 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, 110 115 And half the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted Nature sees, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees; 120 With here a fountain, never to be play'd; And there a summer-house, that knows no shade : Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers; 15 (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. 18 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, "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. Unwater'd see the drooping sea-horse mourn, My Lord advances with majestic mien, Smit with the mighty pleasure to be seen: First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;16 125 130 And when up ten steep slopes you've dragg'd your thighs, His study with what authors is it stored ? 17 135 140 And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,18 145 To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, 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 |