the front within was a small square of brick, not handsome; the out offices of brick and stone, very convenient and well disposed; the hall richly adorned with marble statues, busts, &c.; the ceiling of the staircase by Thornhill, the grand apartments finely adorned with paintings, sculpture, and furniture." In the "Gentleman's Tour through Great Britain," this is said to have been "one of the most magnificent palaces in England, built with a profusion of expense, and so well furnished within, that it had hardly its equal. The plastering and gilding were done by the famous Pargotti, an Italian. The great Salon, or Hall, was painted by Paolucci. The pillars supporting the building were all of marble: the great staircase was extremely fine, and the steps were of marble, every step being of one whole piece, about 22 feet in length. "The avenue was spacious and majestic, and as it gave you the view of two fronts, joined, as it were, in one, the distance not admitting you to see the angle, which was in the centre; so you were agreeably drawn in, to think the front of the house almost twice as large as it was. "And yet, when you came nearer, you were again surprised by seeing the winding passage opening, as it were, `a new front to the eye, of near 120 feet wide, which you had not seen before; so that you were lost awhile in looking near at hand for what you so plainly saw a great way off."* The building appeared to be designed for posterity, as the walls were "twelve feet thick below, and nine feet above." The whole expense of the structure, including the arrangement of the grounds, is stated at 250,000. † Dr. Blackwell, author of a Treatise on Agriculture, was employed in the disposal of the gardens and pleasure-grounds; but the bad taste of the age prevailed in every particular subject to his interference. Formal avenues, equally formal sheets of Gent's Tour through Great Britain, Vol. II. p. 164-5. t Gough's additions to Camden, article Canons. of water, together with numerous statues and urns, were here placed in temporary triumph over the simplicity of nature. The magnificence of the Duke's establishment was suited to the vast size and superb character of his mansion. It is said that he affected the style of a sovereign prince. He mimicked the royal custom of dining in public, and flourishes of music announced each change of dishes. When he repaired to chapel, he was attended by a military guard. This love of pomp did not fail to draw forth many satirical observations from the witty and the envious. At the head of those who indulged in sarcastic remarks was Alexander Pope, and his verses have condemned to lasting derision that weak fondness for show which would otherwise, in all probability, have been forgotten when the building, which was the great theatre of the Duke's harmless vanity, was levelled with the ground. The character of Timon, in Pope's satire on False Taste,* is generally believed to be intended for the Duke of Chandos. Pope denied the truth of such an application, in a letter written by him to Aaron Hill; and, in the Prologue to the Satires, he poetically mentions, as the most severe enemy of an honest muse, that fop "Who has the vanity to call you friend, Yet wants the honour, injur'd, to defend ; Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say, And, if he lie not, must at least betray: Who to the Dean and silver bell can swear, And sees at Canons what was never there." But the public would not give credit to either the prose or the poetry of Pope, when opposed to the palpable similitudes of circumstance contained in the satire; and as the Duke was highly * Moral Essays, Epistle IV. addressed to Richard Boyle, Earl of BurAington. highly respected for genuine worth of heart, and was said to have presented the poet with the sum of one thousand pounds, as a tribute to his extraordinary literary merits, considerable indignation was excited by the presumed libel. In the life of Pope by Dr. Johnson it is further observed on this subject that "The receipt of the thousand pounds Pope publicly denied; but, from the reproach which the attack on a character so amiable brought upon him, he tried all means of escaping. The name of Cleland was again employed in an apology, by which no man was satisfied; and he was at last reduced to shelter his temerity behind dissimulation, and endeavour to make that disbelieved which he never had confi. dence openly to deny. He wrote an exculpatory letter to the Duke, which was answered with great magnanimity, as by a man who accepted his excuse without believing his professions. He said, that to have ridiculed his taste, or his buildings, had been an indifferent action in another man; but that in Pope, after the reciprocal kindness that had been exchanged between them, it had been less easily excused." We present such passages in this celebrated Satire as are supposed to bear an immediate reference to Canons, with some brief remarks: " At Timon's villa let us pass a day, Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away Soft and agreeable come never there. 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! His His gardens next your admiration call, No artful wildness to perplex the scene; Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees." Although the building raised by this magnificent nobleman was of so great an extent that it might be poetically said to resemble "a Town;" and though he, perhaps, lived in some "pride," and certainly with much "Grandeur;" it must be observed that the economy of his vast household was regu lated with scrupulous and exemplary care. One of the most able accomptants of England, Mr. Watts, master of a celebrated commercial academy in London, was employed by his Grace to form a scheme of expenditure for a certain yearly sum, divided into classes for months, weeks, and days. This plan was engraved on a very large copper plate,* and it does not appear that the rules laid down were ever seriously violated in the most gaudy season of family splendour. The license assumed by poetry might convert Lilliput into Brobdignag, without fear of censure for a want of topographieal correctness. No "Pond," formed by the Duke of Chandos, was of proportions unusually great; nor were the grounds sufficiently extensive to admit of a parterre comprising the amplitude of " A Down." On the authority of the author of a "Journey through England," it has been observed in several publications that there was on this domain no wall to intercept the sight," the division of the whole gardens being made by balustrades of iron." "His study with what authors, is it stor'd? In books, not authors, curious is my Lord; • Hawkins's Hist. of Music, Vol. V. p. 198. Ta To all their dated backs he turns you round; We are not prepared to assert that the Duke of Chandos did not entertain a predilection for those rare and fine books which form the curious, rather than the instructive, portion of a costly library; but it is known that his collection contained numerous printed works of genuine merit, and some MSS. of great value. Among the latter were the manuscripts formerly belonging to Sir James Ware, and purchased by the Earl of Clarendon when Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. These chiefly relate to Irish affairs, and were deemed of so much importance by Dean Swift that he wished them to be placed in the Public Library at Dublin.* "And now the Chapel's silver bell you hear, Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, Or gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, The graceless saints with which Laguerre disfigured the chapel-walls of Canons, probably identify the satire of Pope more unequivocally than any other circumstance of allusion in his Essay; but, assuredly, the Poet should have omitted to eensure the Duke of Chandos for a want of correct taste as to music. Gough's Topography, p. 545. |