rules will but be perverted into something burdensome or ridi.
culous, ver. 65, &c., to 92. A description of the false taste of
magnificence; the first grand error of which is to imagine that
greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead of the
proportion and harmony of the whole, ver. 97, and the second,
either in joining together parts incoherent, or too minutely
resembling, or in the repetition of the same too frequently,
ver. 105, &c. A word or two of false taste in books, in music,
in painting, even in preaching and prayer, and lastly in enter-
tainments, ver. 133, &c. Yet Providence is justified in giving
wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is dispersed
to the poor and laborious part of mankind, ver. 169. What
are the proper objects of magnificence, and a proper field for
the expense of great men, ver. 177, &c., and finally, the great
and public works which become a prince, ver. 191, to the
end.
'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ
To gain those riches he can ne'er enjoy :
Is it less strange, the prodigal should waste
His wealth to purchase what he ne'er can taste?
Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats ;
Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats :
He buys for Topham, drawings and designs,
For Pembroke statues, dirty gods, and coins;
Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne 2 alone,
And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.3
Think we all these are for himself? no more
Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore.
For what has Virro painted, built, and planted?
Only to show, how many tastes he wanted.
What brought Sir Visto's ill got wealth to waste?
1A gentleman famous for a judicious collection of drawings.
2 Thomas Hearne, the antiquary.
3 Two eminent physicians; the one had an excellent library, the other the finest collection in Europe of natural curiosities; both men of great learning and humanity.
Some dæmon whispered, "Visto have a taste."
Heaven visits with a taste the wealthy fool,
And needs no rod but Ripley 1 with a rule.
See! sportive fate, to punish awkward pride,
Bids Bubo 2 build, and sends him such a guide:
A standing sermon, at each year's expense,
That never coxcomb reached magnificence!
You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,3
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 arcs of triumph to a garden-gate;
Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all
On some patched 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;4
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,
1 This man was a carpenter, employed by a first minister, who raised him to an architect, without any genius in the art; and after some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public buildings, made him comptroller of the Board of works.
3 The Earl of Burlington was then publishing the Designs of Inigo Jones, and the Antiquities of Rome by Palladio.
A door or window so called, from being much practised at Venice, by Palladio and others.
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 :1
A light, which in yourself you must perceive;
Jones and Le Nôtre 2 have it not to give.
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,
Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
Start even from difficulty, strike from chance;
Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
A work to wonder at-perhaps a Stowe.3
1 The seven sciences of the scholastic trivium and quadrivium. 2 Inigo Jones, the celebrated architect, and M. Le Nôtre, the designer of the best gardens of France.
3 The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham in Buckinghamshire.
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 sheltered seat again.1
Even in an ornament its place remark,
Nor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke.2
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 mæandered 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
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 opener vista loves,
Foe to the dyrads of his father's groves;
One boundless green, or flourished carpet views,3
1 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.
2 Dr. S. Clarke's busto placed by the Queen in the hermitage, while, the Dr. duly frequented the Court. [Dr. Clarke, one of Queen Caroline's chaplains, and the author of Evidences of Religion, was charged with Arian opinions.]
3 The two extremes in parterres, which are equally faulty; a
With all the mournful family of yews;1
The thriving plants ignoble broomsticks made,
Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade..
At Timon's villa 2 let us pass a day,
Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away!" 100
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 laboured quarry above ground;
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.
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.
1 Touches upon the ill taste of those who are so fond of evergreens (particularly yews, which are the most tonsile) as to destroy the nobler forest-trees, to make way for such little ornaments as pyramids of dark-green continually repeated, not unlike a funeral procession.
2 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.-See Note on Moral Essays, Ep. I. ver. 54.
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