ent judge declared, that he did not like to form his nion of any author till he previously knew hers.' aves had been long attached to her, but from motives prudence broke off an intercourse with this interesting man, who sunk under this severe disappointment.hen her prudent lover, Graves, inscribed the urn, her and Shenstone, perhaps more feelingly commemorated virtues and her tastes. Such, indeed, was the friendly ercourse between Shenstone and Utrecia, that in Elegy VIII, written long after her death, she still lingered in 3 reminiscences. Composing this Elegy on the calamias close of Somerville's hfe, a brother bard, and victim narrow circumstances, and which he probably contemated as an image of his own, Shenstone tenderly recolcis that he used to read Somerville's poems to Utre

Oh, lost Ophelia ! smoothly flow'd the day
To feel his music with my flames agree;
To taste the beauties of his melting lay,

To taste, and fancy it was dear to Thee!

dow true is the feeling! how mean the poetical expresIon!

The Seventh Elegy describes a vision, where the shaow of Wolsey breaks upon the author:

A graceful form appear'd,

White were his locks, with awful scarlet crown'd.' Even this fanciful subject was not chosen capriciously, out sprung from an incident. Once, on his way to ChelMenham, Shenstone missed his road, and wandered till late at night among the Cotswold Hills; on this occasion he appears to have made a moral reflection, which we find in his Essays.' How melancholy is it to travel late upon any ambitious project on a winter's night, and observe the light of cottages, where all the unambitious people are warm and happy, or at rest in their beds.' While the benighted poet, lost among the lonely hills, was meditating con ambitious projects,' the character of Wolsey arose before him; the visionary cardinal crossed his path, and -busied his imagination. Thou,' exclaims the poet, 'Like a meteor's fire,

プ

Shot'st blazing forth, disdaining dull degrees.'

ELEGY VII.

And the bard, after discovering all the miseries of unhapgrandeur, and murmuring at this delay to the house of his friend, exclaims,

'Oh if these ills the price of power advance, Check not my speed where social joys invite! The silent departure of the poetical sceptre is fine: The troubled vision cast a mournful glance, And sighing, vanished in the shades of night.'

And to prove that the subject of this Elegy thus arose to the poet's fancy, he has himself commemorated the incident

that gave occasion to it, in the opening:

'On distant heaths, beneath autumnal skies,

Pensive I saw the circling shades descend;

Weary and faint, I heard the storm arise,
While the sun vanish'd like a faithless friend.'
ELEGY VII.

The Fifteenth Elegy, composed in memory of a private family in Worcestershire,' is on the extinction of the ancient family of the Penns in the male line.* Shenstone's mother was a Penn; and the poet was now the inhabitant of their ancient mansion, an old timber-built house of the age of Elizabeth. The local description was a real scene the shaded pool,'-'the group of ancient elms,'-the flocking 1ooks,' and the picture of the simple manners of his own ancestors, were realities, the emotions they excited were therefore genuine, and not one of those mockeries' of amplification from the crowd of verse

writers.

The tenth Elegy, To Fortune, suggesting his Motive for repining at her Dispensations,' with his celebrated 'Pastoral Ballad, in four parts,' were alike produced by what one of the great minstrels of our own times has so finely indicated when he sung

"The secret woes the world has never known; While on the weary night dawn'd wearier day, And bitterer was the grief devour'd alone." In this Elegy, SHENSTONE repines at the dispensations of fortune, not for having denied him ber higher gifts, nor that she compels him to

'Check the fond love of Art that fir'd my veins,' *This we learn from Dr Nash's History of Worcestershire.

nor that some dull dotard with boundless wealth,' finds
hisgrating reed' preferred to the bard's, but that the
tawdry shepherdess' of this dull dotard, by her' pride,'
makes the rural thane,' despise the poet's Delia.
'Must Delia's softness, elegance, and ease,

Submit to Marian's dress? to Marian's gold?
Must Marian's robe from distant India please?
The simple fleece my Delia's limbs infold!
Ah! what is native worth esteemed of clowns?
'Tis thy false glare, O Fortune! thine they see;
'Tis for my Delia's sake I dread thy frowns,

And my last gasp shall curses breathe on thee!' The Delia of our poet was not an Iris en air.' SHENSTONE was early in life captivated by a young lady, whom Graves describes with all those mild and serene graces of pensive melancholy, touched by plaintive love-songs and elegies of wo, adapted not only to be the muse, but the mistress of a poet. The sensibility of this passion took entire possession of his heart for some years, and it was in parting from her that he first sketched his exquisite 'Pastoral Ballad.' As he retreated more and more into solitude, his passion felt no diminution. Dr Nash informs us, that Shenstone acknowledged that it was his own fault that he did not accept the hand of the lady whom he so tenderly loved; but his spirit could not endure to be a perpetual witness of her degradation in the rank of society, by an inconsiderate union with poetry and poverty. That such was his motive, we may infer from a passage in one of his letters. Love' as it regularly tends to matrimony, requires certain favours from fortune and circumstances to render it proper to be indulged in.' There are perpetual allusions to these secret woes' in his correspondence; for, although he had the fortitude to refuse marriage, he had not the stoicism to contract his own heart, in cold and sullen celibacy. He thus alludes to this subject, which so often excited far other emotions than those of humourIt is long since I have considered myself as undone. The world will not, perhaps, consider me in that light entirely till I have married my maid!'

It is probable that our poet had an intention of marrying his maid. I discovered a pleasing anecdote among the late Mr Bindley's collections, which I transcribed from the original. On the back of a picture of Shenstone himself, of which Dodsley published a 'print in 1780, the following energetic inscription was written by the poet on his new year's gift.

This picture belongs to Mary Cutler, given her by her master, William Shenstone, January 1st, 1754, in acknowledgment of her native genius, her magnanimity, her tenderness, and her fidelity. W. S.'

The Progress of Taste; or the fate of Delicacy,' is a poem on the temper and studies of the author; and Economy; a Rhapsody, addressed to young Poets,' abounds with self-touches. If Shenstone created little from the imagination, he was at least perpetually under the influence of real emotions. This is the reason why his truths so strongly operate on the juvenile mind, not yet matured and thus we have sufficiently ascertained the fact, as the poet himself has expressed it, that he drew his pictures from the spot, and he felt very sensibly the affections he communicates.'

All the anxieties of a poetical life were early experienced by Shenstone. He first published some juvenile perhaps too of pride.* And his motto of Contentus paucis productions, under a very odd title, indicative of modesty, lectoribus, even Horace himself might have smiled at, for it only conceals the desire of every poet, who pants to deserve many! But when he tried at a more elaborate poetical labour, The judgment of Hercules', it failed to attract notice. He hastened to town, and he beat about literary coffee-houses; and returned to the country from the chase of Fame, wearied without having started it.

*While at college he printed, without his name, a small volume of verses, with this title, Poems upon various Occasions, written for the Entertainment of the Author, and printed for the Amusement of a few Friends, prejudiced in his Favour.' Oxford, 1737. 12 mo.-Nash's History of Worcestershire, Vol. i, p. 528.

I find this notice of it in W. Lowndes's Catalogue: 4433 Shenstone (W.) Poems, 37, 138, Cd.-(Shenstone took un. common pains to suppress this book, by collecting and destroy. ing copies wherever he met with them.)-In Longman's Bibliotheca Anglo-Poetica. it is valued at 15. Oxf 1787! Mr Harris informs me, that about the year 1770, Fletcher, the bookseller, at Oxford, had many copies of this first edition, which he sold at Eigteen pence each. The prices are amusing ! The prices of books are connected with their history

A breath revived him-but a breath o'erthrew.' Even the judgment of Hercules' between Indolence and Industry, or Pleasure and Virtue, was a picture of his own feelings; an argument drawn from his own reasonings; indicating the uncertainty of the poet's dubious disposition: who finally, by siding with Indolence, lost that triumph by which his hero obtained a directly opposite

course.

In the following year begins that melancholy strain in his correspondence, which marks the disappointment of the man who had staked too great a quantity of his happiness on the poetical die. This was the critical moment of life when our character is formed by habit, and our fate is decided by choice. Was Shenstone to become an active, or contemplative being? He yielded to Nature!*

It was now that he entered into another species of poetry, working with too costly materials, in the magical composition of plants, water, and earth; with these he created those emotions, which his more strictly poetical ones failed to excite. He planned a paradise amidst his solitude.

When we consider that Shenstone, in developing his fine pastoral ideas in the Leasowes, educated the nation into that taste for landscape-gardening, which has become the model of all Europe, this itself constitutes a claim on the gratitude of posterity. Thus the private pleasures of a man of genius may become at length those of a whole people. The creator of this new taste appears to have received far less notice than he merited. The name of Shenstone does not appear in the Essay on Gardening, by Lord Orford even the supercilious Gray only bestowed a ludicrous image on these pastoral scenes, which, however, his friend Mason has celebrated; and the genius of Johnson, incapacitated by nature to touch on objects of rural fancy, after describing some of the offices of the landscape designer, adds, that he will not inquire whether they demand any great powers of mind." Johnson, however, conveys to us his own feelings, when he immediately expresses them under the character of a sullen and surly speculator.' The anxious life of Shenstone would indeed have been remunerated, could he have read the enchanting eulogium of Wheatley on the Leasowes; which, said he, is a perfect picture of his mind-simple, elegant and amiable; and will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verse, or whether in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs.' Yes! Sheustone had been delighted could he have heard that Montesquieu, on his return home, adorned his Chateau Gothique, mais ornés de bois chardont j'ai pris l'idée en Angleterre;' and Shenstone, even with his modest and timid nature, had been proud to have witnessed a noble foreigner, amidst memorials dedicated to Theocritus and Virgil, to Thomson and Gesner, raising in his grounds an inscription, in bad English, but in pure taste, to Shenstone himself; for having displayed in his writings a mind natural,' and in his Leasowes laid Arcadian greens rural; and recently Pindemonte has traced the taste of English gardening to Shenstone. A man of genius sometimes receives from foreigners, who are placed out of the prejudices of his compatriots, the tribute of posterity!

mans,

Amidst these rural elegancies which Shenstone was raising about him, his muse has pathetically sung his melancholy feelings

But did the Muses haunt his cell,

Or in his dome did Venus dwell?

When ail the structures shone complete
Ah me! 'twas Damon's own confession,
Came Poverty and took possession.

THE PROGRESS OF TASTE.

Why treads my friend with melancholy step That beauteous lawn? Why pensive strays his eye O'er statues, grottoes, urns, by critic art Proportion'd fair? or from his lofty dome Returns his eye unpleased disconsolate?" The cause is criminal expense,' and he exclaims, Sweet interchange

Of river, valley, mountain, woods, and plains,
How gladsome once he ranged your native turf,
Your simple scenes how raptur'd! ere expense
Had lavish'd thousand ornaments, and taught
Convenience to perplex him, Art to pall,
Pomp to deject, and Beauty to displease.

ECONOMY. While Shenstone was rearing hazels and hawthorns, opening vistas, and winding waters;

And having shown them where to stray,
Threw little pebbles in their way;'

while he was pulling down hovels and cow-houses, to compose mottoes and inscriptions for garden-seats and urns; while he had so finely obscured with a tender gloom the grove of Virgil, and thrown over, in the midst of a plantation of yew, a bridge of one arch, built of a dusty-coloured stone, and simple even to rudeness,'* and invoked Oberon in some Arcadian scene;

Where in cool grot and mossy cell The tripping fawns and fairies dwell;" the solitary magician, who had raised all these wonders, was, in reality, an unfortunate poet, the tenant of a dilapi dated farm-house, where the winds passed through, and the rains lodged, often taking refuge in his own kitchenFar from all resort of mirth.

Save the cricket on the hearth!

In a letter of the disconsolate founder of landscapegardening, our author paints his situation with all its misery-lamenting that his house is not fit to receive 'polite friends, were they so disposed;' and resolved to banish all others, he proceeds:

But I make it a certam rule, "arcere profanum vulgus." Persons who will despise you for the want of a good set of chairs, or an uncouth fire-shovel, at the same time that they can't taste any excellence in a mind that overlooks those things; with whom it is in vain that your mind is furnished, if the walls are naked; indeed one loses much of one's acquisitions in virtue by an hours converse with such as judge of merit by money-yet I am now and then impelled by the social passion to sit half an hour in my kitchen.'

But the solicitude of friends and the fate of Somerville, a neighbour and a poet, often compelled Shenstone to start amidst his reveries; and thus he has preserved his feelings and his irresolutions. Reflecting on the death of Somerville, he writes,

To be forced to drink himself into pains of the body, in order to get rid of the pains of the mind, is a misery which I can well conceive, because I may, without vanity, esteem myself his equal in point of economy, and consequently ought to have an eye on his misfortunes-(as you kindly hinted to me about twelve o'clock, at the Fea thers.)-I should retrench-I will-but you shall not see me-I will not let you know that I took it in good part-I will do it at solitary times as I may.'

6

Such were the calamities of great taste with little fortune; but in the case of Shenstone, these were com bined with the other calamity of mediocrity of genius.'

Here, then, at the Leasowes, with occasional trips to town in pursuit of fame, which perpetually eluded his grasp; in the correspondence of a few delicate minds, whose admiration was substituted for more geninne cele brity; composing diatribes against economy and taste, while his income was diminishing every year; our neg lected author grew daily more indolent and sedentary, and Wheatley on Modern Gardening, p. 172. Edition sch + In Hull's Collect on, Vol. ii, Leuer ii.

hdrawing himself entirely into his own hermitage, aned and despaired in an Arcadian solitude.* The cries d the secret sorrows' of Shenstone have come down us--those of his brothers have not always! And shall Il men, because they have minds cold and obscure, like Lapland year which has no summer, be permitted to cult over this class of men of sensibility and taste, but of oderate genius and without fortune? The passions and notions of the heart are facts and dates, only to those ho possess them.

To what a melancholy state was our author reduced, hen he thus addressed his friend:

I suppose you have been informed that my fever was u a great measure hypochondriacal, and left my nerves o extremely sensible, that even on no very interesting ubject, I could readily think myself into a vertigo; I had almost said an epilepsy: for surely I was oftentimes

jear it.'

The features of this sad portrait are more particularly made out in another place.

Now I am come home from a visit, very little uneasiness is sufficient to introduce my whole train of melancholy considerations, and to make me utterly dissatisfied with the life I now lead, and the life which I foresee I shall lead. I am angry and envious, and dejected and frantic, and disregard all present things, just as becomes a madman to do. I am infinitely pleased (though it is a gloomy joy) with the application of Dr Swift's complaint that he is forced to die in a rage, like a poisoned rat in a hole.' My soul is no more fitted to the figure I make, than a cable rope to a cambric needle; I cannot bear to see the advantages alienated, which I think I could deserve and relish so much more than those that have them.'

There are other testimonies in his entire correspondence. Whenever forsaken by his company he describes the horrors around him, delivered up to winter, silence, and reflection ever forseeing himself returning to the same series of melancholy hours.' His frame shattered by the whole train of hypochondriacal symptoms, there was nothing to cheer the querulous author, who with half the consciousness of genius, lived neglected and unpatronised,-His elegant mind had not the force, by his productions, to draw the celebrity he sighed after, to his hermitage.

Shenstone was so anxious for his literary character, that he contemplated on the posthumous fame which he might derive from the publication of his Letters: see Letter LXXIX, on hearing his letters to Mr Whistler were destroyed. The act of a merchant, his brother, who being a very sensible man, as Graves describes, yet with the stupidity of a Goth, destroyed the whole correspondence of Shenstone, for its sentimental intercourse.'-Shenstone bitterly regrets the loss, and says, I would have given more money for the letters than it is allowable for me to mention with decency. I look upon my letters as some of my chef d'œuvres-they are the history of my mind for these twenty years past.' This, with the loss of Cowley's correspondence, should have been preserved in the article of suppressors and dilapidators of manuscripts.'

Towards the close of life, when his spirits were exhausted, and the silly clue of hopes and expectations,' as he termed them, was undone, the notice of some persons of rank began to reach him. Shenstone, however, deeply colours the variable state of his own mind-Recovering from a nervous fever, as I have since discovered by many concurrent symptoms, I seem to anticipate a little of that "vernal delight" which Milton mentions and thinks

-able to chase

All sadness, but despair

at least I begin to resume my silly clue of hopes and expectations.'

In a former letter he had, however, given them up; 'I begin to wean myself from all hopes and expectations whatever. I feed my wild-ducks, and I water my carnations. Happy enough if I could extinguish my ambition quite, to indulge the desire of being something more bene

• Graves was supposed to have glanced at his friend Shenstone in his novel of Columella; or the Distressed Anchoret. The aim of this work is to convey all the moral instruction I could wish to offer here to youthful genius. It is written to show the consequence of a person of education and talents retiring to solitude and indolence in the vigour of youth. Nich ois's Literary anecdotes, vol. iii, p. 134. Nash's History of Worcestershire, vol. i, p. 627.

ficial in my sphere.-Perhaps some few other circumstances would want also to be adjusted.'

What were these hopes and expectations,' from which sometimes be weans himself, and which are perpetually revived, and are attributed to an ambition he cannot extinguish ?' This article has been written in vain, if the reader has not already perceived, that they had haunted him in early life; sickening his spirit after the possession of a poetical celebrity, unattainable by his genius; some expectations too he might have cherished from the talent he possessed for political studies, in which Graves confidently says, that he would have made no inconsiderable figure, if he had had a sufficient motive for applying his mind to them.' Shenstone has left several proofs of this talent.* But his master-passion for literary fame had produced little more than anxieties and disappointments; and when he indulged his pastoral fancy in a beautiful creation on his grounds, it consumed the estate which it adorned. Johnson forcibly expressed his situation: His death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said, that if he had lived a little longer, he would have been assisted by a pension.'

SECRET HISTORY OF THE BUILDING OF BLENHEIM.

The secret history of this national edifice derives importance from its nature, and the remarkable characters involved in the unparalleled transaction. The great architect when obstructed in the progress of his work, by the irregular payments of the workmen appears to have practised one of his own comic plots to put the debts on the hero himself; while the duke who had it much at heart to inhabit the palace of his fame, but tutored into wariness under the vigilant and fierce eye of Atossa would neither approve nor disapprove, silently looked on in hope and in grief, from year to year, as the work proceeded, or as it was left at a stand. At length we find this comedie larmoyante wound up by the duchess herself, in an attempt utterly to ruin the enraged and insulted architect !†

Perhaps this was the first time that it had ever been resolved in parliament to raise a public monument of glory and gratitude-to an individual! The novelty of the attempt may serve as the only excuse for the loose arrangements which followed after parliament had approved of the design, without voting any specific supply for the purpose! The queen always issued the orders at her own expense, and commanded expedition; and while Anne lived, the expenses of the building were included in her majesty's debts, as belonging to the civil list sanctioned by parlia

ment.

When George the First came to the throne, the parliament declared the debt to be the debt of the and the queen, king granted a privy seal as for other debts." The crown and the parliament had hitherto proceeded in perfect union respecting this national edifice. However, I find that the workmen were greatly in arrears; for when George the First ascended the throne, they gladly accepted a third part of their several debts!

The great architect found himself amidst inextricable difficulties. With the fertile invention which amuses in his comedies, he contrived an extraordinary scheme, by which he proposed to make the duke himself responsible for the building of Blenheim!

However much the duke longed to see the magnificent edifice concluded, he showed the same calm intrepidity in the building of Blenheim as he had in its field of action. Aware that if he himself gave any order, or suggested any alteration, he might be involved in the expense of the building, he was never to be circumvented,-never to be surprised into a spontaneous emotion of pleasure or disapprobation; on no occasion, he declares, had he even entered into conversation with the architect (though his friend) or with any one acting under his orders,-about Blenheim House! Such impenetrable prudence on all sides had often blunted the subdolous ingenuity of the architect and plotter of comedies!

In the absence of the duke, when abroad in 1705, Sir John contrived to obtain from Lord Godclphin the friend

* See his Letters XL, and XLI, and more particularly-XLII, and XLIII, with a new theory of political principles.

+I draw the materials of this secret history from an unpub. lished Case of the Duke of Marlborough and Sir John Van. brugh, as also from some confidential corespondence of Van. brugh with Jacob Tonson, his friend and publisher.

and relative of the duke of Marlborough, and probably his agent in some of his concerns, a warrant, constituting Vanbrugh surveyor, with power of contracting on the behalf of the Duke of Marlborough. How he prevailed on Lord Godolphin to get this appointment does not appear-his lordship probably conceived it was useful, and might assist in expediting the great work, the favourite object of the hero. This warrant, however, Vanbrugh kept entirely to himself; he never mentioned to the duke that he was in the possession of any such power; nor on his return, did he claim to have it renewed.

The building proceeded with the same delays, and the payments with the same irregularity; the veteran now foresaw what happened, that he should never be the inhabitant of his own house! The public money issued from the Treasury was never to be depended on; and after 1712, the duke took the building upon himself, for the purpose of accommodating the workmen. They had hitherto received what was called crown pay,' which was high wages and uncertain payment-and they now gladly abated a third of their prices. But though the duke had undertaken to pay the workmen, this could make no alteration in the claims on the Treasury. Blenheim was to be built for Marlborough, not by him; it was a monument raised by the nation to their hero, not a palace to be built by their mutual contributions.

Whether Marlborough found that his own million might be slowly injured while the Treasury remained still obdurate, or that the architect was still more and more involved, I cannot tell; but in 1715, the workmen appear to have struck, and the old delays and stand-still again renewed. It was then Sir John, for the first time, produced the warrant he had extracted from Lord Godolphin, to lay before the Treasury; adding, however, a memorandum, to prevent any misconception, that the duke was to be considered as the paymaster, the debts incurred devolving on the crown. This part of our secret history requires more development than I am enabled to afford as my information is drawn from the Case' of the duke of Marlborough in reply to Sir John's depositions, it is possible Vanbrugh may suffer more than he ought in this narration; which, however, incidentally notices his own

statements.

A new scene opens! Vanbrugh not obtaining his claims from the Treasury, and the workmen becoming more clamorous, the architect suddenly turns round on the duke, at once to charge him with the whole debt.

The pitiable history of this magnificent monument of public gratitude, from its beginnings, is given by Vanbrugh in his deposition. The great architect represents himself as being comptroller of her majesty's works; and as such was appointed to prepare a model, which model of Blenheim House her majesty kept in her palace, and gave her commands to issue money according to the direction of Mr Travers, the queen's surveyor-general; that the lord treasurer appointed her majesty's own officers to supervise these works; that it was upon defect of money from the Treasury that the workmen grew uneasy; that the work was stopped, till further orders of money from the Treasury; that the queen then ordered enough to secure it from winter weather; that afterwards she ordered more for payment of the workmen; that they were paid in part; and upon Sir John's telling them the queen's resolution to grant them a further supply, (after a stop put to it by the dutchess's order) they went on and incurred the present debt; that this was afterwards brought into the house of cominons as the debt of the crown, not owing from the queen to the Duke of Marlborough, but to the workmen, and this by the queen's officers.

During the uncertain progress of the building, and while the workmen were often in deep arrears, it would seem that the architect often designed to involve the Mariboroughs in its fate and his own; he probably thought that some of their round million might bear to be chipped, to finish his great work, with which, too, their glory was so intimately connected. The famous dutchess had evidently put the duke on the defensive; but once, perhaps, was the duke on the point of indulging some generous architectural fancy, when lo! Atossa stepped forwards and 'put a stop to the building.'

When Vanbrugh at length produced the warrant of Lord Godolphin, empowering him to contract for the duke, this instrument was utterly disclaimed by Marlborough; the duke declares it existed without his knowledge; and

that if such an instrument for a moment was to be held valid, no man would be safe, but might be ruined by the act of another!

Vanbrugh seems to have involved the intricacy of his plot, till it fell into some contradictions. The queen he had not found difficult to manage; but after her death, when the Treasury failed in its golden source, he seems to have sat down to contrive how to make the duke the great debtor. Vanbrugh swears that He himself looked upon the crown, as engaged to the Duke of Marlborough for the expense; but that he believes the workmen always looked upon the duke as their paymaster.' He advances so far, as to swear that he made a contract with particular workmen, which contract was not unknown to the duke. This was not denied; but the duke in his reply observes, that he knew not that the workmen were employed for has account, or by his own agent:'-never having heard till Sir John produced the warrant from Lord Godolphin, that Sir John was his surveyor which he disclaims.

6

Our architect, however opposite his depositions appear, contrived to become a witness to such facts as tended to conclude the duke to be the debtor for the building; and in his depositions has taken as much care to have the guilt of perjury without the punishment of it, as any man could do.' He so managed, though be has not sworn to contradictions, that the natural tendency of one part of his evidence presses one way, and the natural tendency of another part presses the direct contrary way. Jo his former memorial, the main design was to disengage the duke from the debt; in his depositions, the main design was to charge the duke with the debt. Vanbrugh, it must be confessed, exerted not less of his dramatic than his architectural genius in the building of Blenheim!

The Case' concludes with an eloquent reflection, where Vanbrugh is distinguished as the man of genius, though not, in this predicament, the man of honour. If at last the charge run into by order of the crown must be upon the duke, yet the infamy of it must go upon another, who was perhaps the only Architect in the world capable of building such a house; and the only friend in the world capable of contriving to lay the debt upon one to whom he was so highly obliged.'

There is a curious fact in the depositions of Vanbrugh, by which we might infer that the idea of Blenheim House might have originated with the duke himself; he swears that in 1704, the duke met him, and told him he designed to build a house, and must consult him about a model, &e; but it was the queen who ordered the present house to be built with all expedition.'

The whole conduct of this national edifice was unworthy of the nation, if in truth the nation ever entered heartily into it. No specific sum had been voted in parliament for so great an undertaking; which afterwards was the occa sion of involving all the parties concerned in trouble and litigation, threatened the ruin of the architect; and I think we shall see, by Vanbrugh's letters, was finished at the sole charge, and even under the superintendence, of the duchess herself! It may be a question, whether this magnificent monument of glory did not rather originate in the spirit of party, in the urgent desire of the queen to allay the pride and jealousies of the Marlboroughs. From the cir cumstance to which Vanbrugh has sworn, that the dake had designed to have a house built by Vanbrugh, before Blenheim had been resolved on, we may suppose that this intention of the duke's afforded the queen a suggestion of

a national edifice.

Archdeacon Coxe, in his life of Marlborough, has ob scurely alluded to the circumstances attending the build. ing of Blenheim. The illness of the duke, and the tedious litigation which ensued, caused such delays, that little progress was made in the work at the time of his decease. In the interim, a serious misunderstanding arose between the duchess and the architect, which forms the subject of a voluminous correspondence. Vanbrugh was in conse quence removed, and the direction of the building confided to other hands, under her own immediate superintend

ence.

This voluminous correspondence' would probably afford' words that burn' of the lofty insolence of Aussa, and 'thoughts that breathe' of the comic wit; it might too re late, in many curious points, to the stupendous fabric itself. If her grace condescended to criticise its parts with the frank roughness she is known to have done to the s chitect himself, his own defence and explanations might

serve to let us into the bewildering fancies of his magical architecture. Of that self-creation for which he was so much abused in his own day as to have lost his real avocation as an architect, and stand condemned for posterity in the volatile bitterness of Lord Orford, nothing is left for us but our own convictions-to behold, and to be for ever astonished! But this voluminous correspondence?' Alas! the historian of war and politics overlooks with contempt the little secret histories of art, and of human nature!and a voluminous correspondence' which indicates so much, and on which not a solitary idea is bestowed, has only served to petrify our curiosity!

Of this quarrel between the famous duchess and Vanbrugh I have only recovered several vivacious extracts from confidential letters of Vanbrugh's to Jacob Tonson. There was an equality of the genius of invention, as well as rancour, in her grace and the wit: whether Atossa, like Vanbrugh, could have had the patience to have composed a comedy of five acts I will not determine; but unquestionably she could have dictated many scenes with equal spirit. We have seen Vanbrugh attempting to turn the debts incurred by the building of Blenheim on the duke; we now learn, for the first time, that the duchess, with equal aptitude, contrived a counter-plot to turn the debts on Vanbrugh!

"I have the misfortune of losing, for I now see little hopes of ever getting it, nearly 20004. due to me for many years' service, plague, and trouble, at Blenheim, which that wicked woman of Marlborough' is so far from paying me, that the duke being sued by some of the workmen for work done there, she has tried to turn the debt due to them upon me, for which I think she ought to be hanged.'

In 1722, on occasion of the duke's death, Vanbrugh gives an account to Tonson of the great wealth of the Marlboroughs, with a caustic touch at his illustrious victims.

The Duke of Marlborough's treasure exceeds the most extravagant guess. The grand settlement, which it was suspected her grace had broken to pieces, stands good, and hands an immense wealth to Lord Godolphin and his successors, A round million has been moving about in loans on the land-tax, &c. This the Treasury knew before he died, and this was exclusive of his land; his 5000l. a year upon the post-office; his mortgages upon a distressed estate; his South Sea stock; his annuities, and which were not subscribed in, and besides what is in foreign banks; and yet this man could neither pay his workmen the'r bills, nor his architect his salary.

6

'He has given his widow (mav a Scottish ensign get her!) 10,000. a year to spoil Blenheim her own way; 12,000l. a year to keep herself clean and go to law; 2,000l. a year to Lord Rialton for present maintenance; and Lord Godolphin only 5,000l. a year jointure, if he outlives my lady; this last 18 a wretched article. The rest of the heap, for these are but snippings, goes to Lord Godolphin, and so on. She will have 40,000l. a year in present.' Atossa, as the quarrel heated and the plot thickened, with the maliciousness of Puck, and the haughtiness of an Empress of Blenheim, invented the most cruel insult that ever architect endured!-one perfectly characteristic of that extraordinary woman. Vanbrugh went to Blenheim with his lady, in a company from Castle Howard, another magnificent monument of his singular genius.

We staid two nights in Woodstock: but there was an order to the servants, under her grace's own hand, not to let me enter Blenheim! and lest that should not mortify me enough, she having somehow learned that my wife was of the company, sent an express the night before we came there, with orders that if she came with the Castle Howard ladies, the servants should not suffer her to see either house, gardens, or even to enter the park: so she was forced to sit all day long and keep me company at the inn!'

This was a coup de theatre in this joint comedy of Atossa and Vanbrugh! The architect of Blenheim, lifting his eyes towards his own massive grandeur, exiled to a dull inn, and imprisoned with one who required rather to be consoled, than capable of consoling the enraged architect

!

In 1725, Atossa still pursuing her hunted prey, had driven it to a spot which she flattered herself would enclose it with the security of a preservatory. This produced the following explosion!

'I have been forced into chancery by that B. B. B. the Duchess of Marlborough, where she has got an injunction upon me by her friend the late good chancellor (Earl of Macclesfield,) who declared that I was never employed

by the duke, and therefore had no demand upon his estate for my services at Blenheim. Since my hands were thus tied up from trying by law to recover my arrear, I have prevailed with Sir Robert Walpole to help me in a scheme which I proposed to him, by which I got my money in spite of the hussy's teeth. My carrying this point enrages her much, and the more because it is of considerable weight in my small fortune, which she has heartily endeavoured so to destroy as to throw me into an English bastile, there to finish my days, as I began them, in a French one.'

Plot for plot! and the superior claims of one of practised invention are vindicated! The writer, long accustomed to comedy-writing, has excelled the self-taught genius of Atossa. The scheme' by which Vanbrugh's fertile invention, aided by Sir Robert Walpole, finally circumvented the avaricious, the haughty, and the capricious Atossa, remains untold, unless it is alluded to by the passage in Lord Orford's Anecdotes of Painting,' where he informs us that the duchess quarrelled with Sir John and went to law with him; but though he proved to be in the right, or rather because he proved to be in the right, she employed Sir Christopher Wren to build the house in St. James's Park.'

I have to add a curious discovery respecting Vanbrugh himself, which explains a circumstance in his life not hitherto understood.

Cibber's Lives of the Poets, the early part of the life of In all the biographies of Vanbrugh, from the time of this man of genius remains unknown. It is said he descended from an ancient family in Cheshire, which came originally from France, though by the name, which properly written would be Van Brugh, he would appear to be of Dutch extraction. A tale is universally repeated that Sir John once visiting France in the prosecution of his architectural studies, while taking a survey of some fortifications, excited alarm, and was carried to the Bastile; where, to deepen the interests of the story, he sketched a variety of comedies, which he must have communicated to the governor, who, whispering it doubtless as an affair of state to several of the noblesse, these admirers of 'sketches of comedies-English ones no doubt-procured the release of this English Moliere. This tale is farther confirmed by a very odd circumstance. Sir John bunit at Greenwich, on the spot still called 'Vanbrugh's Fields,' two whimsical houses; one on the side of Greenwich Park is still called the Bastile-House,' built on its model, to commemorate this imprisonment.

Not a word of this detailed story is probably true! that the Bastile was an object which sometimes occupied the imagination of our architect, is probable; for, by the letter we have just quoted, we discover from himself the singu lar incident of Vanbrugh's having been born in the Bastile.

Desirous probably of concealing his alien origin, this circumstance cast his early days into obscurity. He felt that he was a Briton in all respects but that of his singular birth. The ancestors of Vanbrugh, who was of Cheshire, said to be of French extraction, though with a Dutch name, married Sir Dudley Carleton's daughter. We are told he had political connexions; and one of his 'political' tours had probably occasioned his confinement in that state-dungeon, where his lady was delivered of her burden of love. The odd fancy of building a 'Bastile-House' at Greenwich, a fortified prison! suggested to his first life-writer the fine romance; which must now be thrown aside among those literary fictions the French distinguish by the softening and yet impudent term of 'Anecdotes hazardées with which formerly Varillas and his imitators furnished their pages; lies which looked like facts!

SECRET HISTORY OF SIR WALTER RAWLEIGH.* Rawleigh exercised in perfection incompatible talents, and his character connects the opposite extremes of our nature! His book of life,' with its incidents of prosperity and adversity, of glory and humiliation, was as chequered as the novelist would desire for a tale of fiction. Yet in this mighty genius there lies an unsuspected disposition, which requires to be demonstrated, before it is possible to conceive its reality. From his earliest days in his character to the latest; and it often involved him he betrayed the genius of an adventurer, which prevailed

Rawleigh, as was practised to a much later period, wrote his name various ways. In the former series of this work I have discovered at least how it was pronounced in his time -thus, Rawly. See in First Series, art. Orthography of Proper Names.'