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He would, of course, have done nothing of the kind; nor, for the matter of that, did his Piedmontese preceptor.[6]

[Note:

6: Count Passeran was a freethinking nobleman who wrote A Philosophical Discourse on Death, in which he defended suicide, though he refrained from resorting to it himself. Pope refers to him in the Epilogue to the Satires, Dialogue i. 124:–

If Blount despatch’d himself, he play’d the man,
And so may’st thou, illustrious Passeran!]

Nil admirari is the motto of the Man of Taste in Building, where he is naturally at home. He can see no symmetry in the Banqueting House, or in St. Paul’s Covent Garden, or even in St. Paul’s itself.

Sure wretched Wren was taught by bungling Jones,
To murder mortar, and disfigure stones!

“Substantial” Vanbrugh he likes-=chiefly because his work would make “such noble ruins.” Cost is his sole criterion, and here he, too, seems to glance obliquely at Canons:–

Dorick, Ionick, shall not there be found,
But it shall cost me threescore thousand pound.

But this was moderate, as the Edgware “folly” reached L250,000. In Gardening he follows the latest whim for landscape. Here is his burlesque of the principles of Bridgeman and Batty Langley:–

Does it not merit the beholder’s praise,
What’s high to sink? and what is low to raise?
Slopes shall ascend where once a green-house stood,
And in my horse-pond I will plant a wood.
Let misers dread the hoarded gold to waste,
Expence and alteration show a Taste.

As a connoisseur of Painting this enlightened virtuoso is given over to Hogarth’s hated dealers in the Black Masters:–

In curious paintings I’m exceeding nice,
And know their several beauties by their Price.
Auctions and Sales I constantly attend,
But chuse my pictures by a skilful Friend,
Originals and copies much the same,
The picture’s value is the painter’s name.[7]

Of Sculpture he says–

In spite of Addison and ancient Rome,
Sir Cloudesly Shovel’s is my fav’rite tomb.[8]
How oft have I with admiration stood,
To view some City-magistrate in wood?
I gaze with pleasure on a Lord May’r’s head
Cast with propriety in gilded lead,–

The allusion being obviously to Cheere’s manufactory of such popular garden decorations at Hyde Park Corner.

[Notes:

7: See post, “M. Ronquet on the Arts,” p. 51.

8: “Sir Cloudesly Shovel’s Monument has very often given me great Offence: Instead of the brave rough English Admiral, which was the distinguishing Character of that plain, gallant Man, he is represented on his Tomb [in Westminster Abbey] by the Figure of a Beau, dressed in a long Perriwig, and reposing himself upon Velvet Cushions under a Canopy of State” ( Spectator, March 30, 1711).]

In Coins and Medals, true to his instinct for liking the worst the best, he prefers the modern to the antique. In Music, with Hogarth’s Rake two years later, he is all for that “Dagon of the nobility and gentry,” imported song:–

Without Italian, or without an ear,
To Bononcini’s musick I adhere;–

though he confesses to a partiality for the bagpipe on the ground that your true Briton “loves a grumbling noise,” and he favours organs and the popular oratorios. But his “top talent is a bill of fare”:–

Sir Loins and rumps of beef offend my eyes,[9]
Pleas’d with frogs fricass[e]ed, and coxcomb-pies.
Dishes I chuse though little, yet genteel,
Snails [10] the first course, and Peepers [11] crown the meal.
Pigs heads with hair on, much my fancy please,
I love young colly-flowers if stew’d in cheese,
And give ten guineas for a pint of peas!
No tatling servants to my table come,
My Grace is Silence, and my waiter Dumb.