456 VANBRUGH. [1709-1742 commissions were for works of a similar character: he is not known to have erected a single public building, with the exception (if that can be called an exception) of a theatre in the Haymarket, which he built as a speculation of his own, and in which Congreve was his partner and Betterton his stagemanager. His chief work is Blenheim, of which he was appointed architect by the government, but in the execution of which he met with a long succession of vexations-first from the difficulty of obtaining supplies of money with sufficient regularity to carry on the work, and then, after the death of Marlborough, from the impetuous Duchess, who took the building out of his hands, and though she continued it according to his designs, would not pay him his salary, or permit him (or even his wife) to enter the grounds to see the outside of the structure he had designed. Among other of his last works may be named King's Weston, near Bristol; Grimsthorpe, Yorkshire, a very striking structure; Eastbury, Dorsetshire, now pulled down; Oulton Hall, Cheshire, and Seaton Delaval, Northumberland. Vanbrugh had to endure not only the censures of pompous dulness, but the keen shafts of the wits of his day, and perhaps even now his name is most commonly associated with one or other of their pungent epigrams. It cannot be denied that his works abound in incongruities, that the massiveness is often excessive, that the parts are too much broken up, that in aiming at picturesque variety he has produced a fritter of ill-connected parts: yet about them all there is richness, imagination, originality and power. Condemned by Swift, Pope, and Walpole, it became fashionable to sneer at Vanbrugh, till Reynolds, with the cordial fellow-feeling of genius saw that Vanbrugh had struck into a new path, and produced what may be called a pictorial style of architecture, and feeling so at once turned the current of popular opinion by boldly expressing his own. And after all that has been said of Vanbrugh, Reynolds's is the truest appreciation of the external character of his buildings: of their interiors we fear so much could scarcely be said with justice, unless it be of the halls which are always with him a magnificent feature. Reynolds says: "To speak of Vanbrugh in the language of a painter, he had originality of invention, he understood light and shadow, and had great skill in composition. To support his principal object, be produced his second and third groups or masses: he perfectly understood in his art what is the most difficult in ours, the conduct of the background; by which the design and invention is set off to the greatest advantage. What the background is in painting, in architecture is the real ground on which the building is erected; and no architect took greater care than he that his work should not appear crude and hard: that is, it did not abruptly start out of the ground without expectation or preparation. This is a tribute which a painter owes to an architect who composed like a painter; and was defrauded of the due reward of his merit by the wits of his time, who did not understand the principles of composition in poetry better than he; and who knew little or nothing, of what he understood perfectly, the general ruling principles of architecture and painting."* In church architecture Wren was succeeded by his pupil Hawksmoor and by Gibbs, for the exercise of whose talents a favourable opportunity was * Thirteenth Discourse. 1709-1742.] HAWKSMOOR AND GIBBS. 457 afforded by the Act of Anne, which provided for the erection of fifty new churches in London, though not nearly so many were built. Hawksmoor was a man of considerable original talent; but having been engaged to assist Vanbrugh in the erection of Castle Howard and some of his other works, he engrafted some of his new master's fancies upon the more masculine style of his original instructor. His best work is generally considered to be St. Mary's Woolnoth, Lombard-street, which has great merit both in the interior and exterior; but to our thinking Limehouse Church deserves at least to divide the crown with it. St. George's, Bloomsbury, also by him, has a portico of fine proportions; but though it has found defenders in our own day, the pyramidal steeple with its crowning statue is a huge absurdity. The chief work of Gibbs is the church of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields, the St. Martin's Church, portico of which has acquired much fame. But Gibbs, like Hawksmoor, failed to learn from Wren how to design, or where to place a tower and spire. Every one of Wren's towers rises directly from the ground, and has 458 BURLINGTON. [1709-1742 the lower part of a massive character. In this church of St. Martin's the spire rises behind the portico, and seemingly out of the roof. Lower in the scale of merit are the churches of St. George's, Hanover-square, St. Luke's, Old-street, with an obelisk for a spire, and Greenwich, the works of John James, a man of some reputation in his day; that "chef d'œuvre of absurdity," as Walpole well designates it, St. John the Evangelist, Westminster, looking, as has often been said, with its four turrets at the angles, like a table with its legs in the air-of which Thomas Archer was the architect; and St. Giles's-in-the-Fields, and St. Olave's, Southwark, by Flitcroft. The accession of the House of Brunswick inaugurated an epoch of ecclesiastical architecture as dreary as that of William had been glorious. And in secular architecture there was not much greater promise. The best works were Chatsworth, by Talman-a very different place to the Chatsworth of our own day, but still a work of considerable merit; Woburn Abbey, by Flitcroft; and Montague House (the old British Museum), for the erection of which M. Pouget was expressly imported from France. An evidence of the interest taken in architecture was the existence of amateur architects who erected buildings little inferior to those of their professional contemporaries. At the head of these was Dean Aldrich-the author of the famous Oxford Logic-who not only wrote a work on the "Elements of Civil Architecture," but carried his own precepts into practice by erecting from his own designs the church of All Saints, Oxford, and the building at Christ Church, known as Peckwater. The well-known library of Christ Church was the work of another amateur, Dr. Clarke, who represented Oxford in Parliament in the reign of Queen Anne. But the most celebrated of these amateur architects was lord Burlington, the great patron, if not the founder, of that new school which ripened under the Georges, and which looked up to Palladio as its head. Burlington was an ardent admirer of Inigo Jones, but acquired his knowledge of architecture, and formed his taste, in ItalyPalladio being the master whom he took for his model. On his return to England he devoted himself to the task of making Palladio known to his countrymen, whose taste he fancied had been corrupted by the splendid irregularities of Wren and Vanbrugh, the latter of whom he joined the wits in ridiculing. Burlington not only published the designs of Palladio, but, as illustrations of his manner, constructed the villa at Chiswick, in our own day the favourite residence of the duke of Devonshire, and Burlington House in Piccadilly, now in the occupation of the Royal Society. The villa at Chiswick was a copy on a reduced scale of the Villa Capsa, while Burlington House was modelled on the Viericarti Palace, both at Vicenza, and both by Palladio. Lord Burlington also erected a house for lord Harrington at Petersham, one for the duke of Richmond at Whitehall, another for general Wade in Cork-street, and the Assembly Rooms at York. All were greatly admired in their day, and all have a certain air of elegance; but they are wanting in the picturesqueness and vigour of those of Vanbrugh, and as it would seem wanting also in their convenience. What is good about them is borrowed. Burlington had no originality, and, despite the praises of Pope, no genius; and his influence and example did much to introduce that systematic imitativeness which for so long pressed heavily on English architecture. Burlington's assistant and disciple was Kent, "painter, 1709-1742.] SCULPTURE. 459 sculptor, architect," as he delighted to style himself, and who in painting, sculpture, and architecture, displayed equal want of taste. Kent, however, will be remembered as a landscape gardener, in which art he, with Pope, set the example of a return to a simpler and more natural style. Sculpture in the reign of William was the handmaid of architecture. In the decorations of St. Paul's Wren was able to avail himself of the best talent in the country. The wood carvings of the interior were executed by Grinling Gibbons, the phoenix over the south door was by Cibber, and the Conversion of St. Paul in the tympanum of the western portico, by Francis Bird. Gibbons is believed to have been an Englishman by birth, though of Dutch parentage. He was first brought into notice by Evelyn, who having discovered him by accident in a mean lodging, introduced him to Charles II., and to other lowlier but more liberal patrons. He executed a few statues, among others that of James II. behind the Banquetting House, Whitehall; but his great skill lay in carving birds, flowers, plants, &c., in wood, in which he still remains unequalled. The chief works of this kind executed by him are those in the choir of St. Paul's; those at Chatsworth, in which, however, he was largely assisted by others, and especially by a Derbyshire man named Watson, who possessed rare dexterity as a carver, but of whose power in designing we have no evidence; and those at Petworth, where the marvellous skill of Gibbons in this line of art is seen to most advantage. But, after all, Gibbons was rather a mechanic of matchless ability than an artist-a copyist of what he saw, and in no sense a creator. Cibber was a native of Holstein. Having studied at Rome he came to England to seek his fortune. For a while he was employed as an assistant by John Stone, a carver of architectural work. On the death of his master Cibber set up on his own account. Although undoubtedly a man of original power, he does not seem to have ventured much beyond the line of business of his predecessor Stone. For some years he was engaged in fabricating gods, goddesses, and Roman emperors, for the house and grounds at Chatsworth. One of the two large vases at Hampton Court, and the bas-reliefs on the London Monument, are also from his chisel. So also were several of the statues in the Royal Exchange. But the work on which his fame rests are the statues of Melancholy and Raving Madness, which stood over the gateway of Old Bedlam, and which may now be seen in the South Kensington Museum; but which have suffered too much by recarving and painting to admit of their original character being fairly estimated. Wren's other chief assistant in the sculptures of St. Paul's, Francis Bird, was an Englishman, but studied at Brussels under Cozins. His principal work is the rilievo of the Conversion of St. Paul-not one of the worst sculptural ornaments in the tympanum of a London portico; his also are the wellknown statues of queen Anne in St. Paul's Churchyard, Henry VI. at Eton, and Wolsey at Christ Church. A better work than either of these, perhaps, is the monument to Dr. Busby in Westminster Abbey: the huge mass of marble erected in the same place to the memory of the duke of Newcastle, is a joint production of Bird and Gibbs. The statues on Temple Bar are the work of John Bushnell. There were other sculptors, both British and foreign, practising in England at this time, but they are now mere names, and were never anything better than carvers in stone. 460 SCULPTURE. [1709-1742. A truer artist, but later in date, was Scheemakers, a Dutchman, to whom we are indebted for the admirable bust of Dryden in Westminster Abbey, and some other good busts in private collections, as well as for many worthless monuments. With his name may be associated that of another foreign sculptor, John Michael Rysbrack, who for some time was the most fashionable sculptor in this country. Like Scheemakers he was a skilful hand at a portrait-bust, and consequently found ample patronage. But he had also much skill in carving the monuments then in vogue-as may be seen in that prodigious work by him in the chapel at Blenheim, in memory of the duke and duchess of Marlborough. He also executed several very respectable portrait-statues. Rysbrack and Scheemakers were supplanted in the popular favour by Louis François Roubiliac, a Frenchman, who for many years enjoyed unquestioned supremacy as a sculptor in this country, and whose influence was traceable in English sculpture long after Englishmen had risen to eminence in the profession. The work which brought Roubiliac into celebrity was the monument of John duke of Argyle, in Westminster Abbey, of its kind one of the finest monuments in that building. Westminster Abbey contains many other monuments by him, that in memory of admiral Warren Statue of Newton. being perhaps the best, but that to Mr. and Mrs. Nightingale the most celebrated. In this, Death in the form of a skeleton is casting a dart at the lady whose husband is endeavouring to shield her from the blow. A less poetic conception it would be hard to find, but similar prosaic conceits disfigure |