’T IS 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; | 5 |
| 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 alone, | |
| And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane. | 10 |
| 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? | 15 |
| Some demon whisper’d, ‘Visto! have a Taste.’ | |
| Heav’n visits with a Taste the wealthy fool, | |
| And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule. | |
| See! sportive Fate, to punish awkward pride, | |
| Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide: | 20 |
| A standing sermon at each year’s expense, | |
| That never coxcomb reach’d Magnificence! | |
| You show us Rome was glorious, not profuse, | |
| And pompous buildings once were things of use; | |
| Yet shall, my Lord, your just, your noble rules | 25 |
| 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; | 30 |
| Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all | |
| On some patch’d 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 thro’ long arcades to roar, | 35 |
| Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door: | |
| 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: | 40 |
| Something there is more needful than expense, | |
| And something previous ev’n to Taste—’t is Sense; | |
| Good Sense, which only is the gift of Heav’n, | |
| And tho’ no science, fairly worth the sev’n; | |
| A light which in yourself you must perceive; | 45 |
| Jones and Le Nôtre 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. | 50 |
| But treat the Goddess like a modest Fair, | |
| Nor overdress, 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, | 55 |
| 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 th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale, | |
| Or scoops in circling theatres the vale, | 60 |
| Calls in the country, catches opening glades, | |
| Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades, | |
| Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines; | |
| Paints as you plant, and as you work designs. | |
| Still follow Sense, of every art the soul; | 65 |
| Parts answering parts shall slide into a whole, | |
| Spontaneous beauties all around advance, | |
| Start ev’n from difficulty, strike from chance: | |
| Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow | |
| A work to wonder at—perhaps a Stowe. | 70 |
| 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 thro’ mountains to the plain, | 75 |
| You ’ll wish your hill or shelter’d seat again. | |
| Ev’n in an ornament its place remark, | |
| Nor in a hermitage set Dr. Clarke. | |
| Behold Villario’s ten years’ toil complete: | |
| His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet, | 80 |
| 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 quiv’ring rills meander’d o’er— | 85 |
| Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more: | |
| Tired of the scene parterres and fountains yield, | |
| He finds at last he better likes a field. | |
| Thro’ his young woods how pleased Sabinus stray’d, | |
| Or sat delighted in the thick’ning shade, | 90 |
| With annual joy the redd’ning shoots to greet, | |
| Or see the stretching branches long to meet. | |
| His son’s fine Taste an opener vista loves, | |
| Foe to the dryads of his father’s groves; | |
| One boundless green or flourish’d carpet views, | 95 |
| With all the mournful family of yews; | |
| The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made, | |
| Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade. | |
| At Timon’s villa 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 Brobdingnag before your thought. | |
| To compass this, his building is a town, | 105 |
| His pond an ocean, his parterre a down: | |
| Who but must laugh, the master when he sees, | |
| A puny insect shiv’ring at a breeze! | |
| Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around! | |
| The whole a labour’d quarry above ground. | 110 |
| 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; | 115 |
| No artful wildness to perplex the scene; | |
| Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother, | |
| And half the platform just reflects the other. | |
| The suff’ring eye inverted Nature sees, | |
| Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees; | 120 |
| With here a fountain never to be play’d, | |
| And there a summer-house that knows no shade, | |
| Here Amphitrite sails thro’ myrtle bowers, | |
| There gladiators fight or die in flowers; | |
| Unwater’d, see the drooping seahorse mourn, | 125 |
| And swallows roost in Nilus’ dusty urn. | |
| My Lord advances with majestic mien, | |
| Smit with the mighty pleasure to be seen: | |
| But soft! by regular approach—not yet— | |
| First thro’ the length of yon hot terrace sweat; | 130 |
| And when up ten steep slopes you ’ve dragg’d your thighs, | |
| Just at his study door he ’ll bless your eyes. | |
| His study! with what authors is it stor’d? | |
| In books, not authors, curious is my lord. | |
| To all their dated backs he turns you round; | 135 |
| These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound; | |
| Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good, | |
| For all his lordship knows,—but they are wood. | |
| For Locke or Milton ’t is in vain to look; | |
| These shelves admit not any modern book. | 140 |
| And now the chapel’s silver bell you hear, | |
| That summons you to all the pride of prayer. | |
| Light quirks of music, broken and unev’n, | |
| Make the soul dance upon a jig to Heav’n: | |
| On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, | 145 |
| Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre, | |
| On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie, | |
| And bring all paradise before your eye: | |
| To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite, | |
| Who never mentions Hell to ears polite. | 150 |
| But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call: | |
| A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall; | |
| The rich buffet well-colour’d serpents grace, | |
| And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face. | |
| Is this a dinner? this a genial room? | 155 |
| No, ’t is a temple and a hecatomb; | |
| A solemn sacrifice perform’d in state; | |
| You drink by measure, and to minutes eat. | |
| So quick retires each flying course, you ’d swear | |
| Sancho’s dread doctor and his wand were there. | 160 |
| Between each act the trembling salvers ring, | |
| From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the King. | |
| In plenty starving, tantalized in state, | |
| And complaisantly help’d to all I hate, | |
| Treated, caress’d, and tired, I take my leave, | 165 |
| Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve; | |
| I curse such lavish Cost and little Skill, | |
| And swear no day was ever pass’d so ill. | |
| Yet hence the poor are clothed, the hungry fed; | |
| Health to himself, and to his infants bread | 170 |
| The lab’rer bears; what his hard heart denies, | |
| His charitable vanity supplies. | |
| Another age shall see the golden ear | |
| Imbrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, | |
| Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann’d, | 175 |
| And laughing Ceres reassume the land. | |
| Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil? | |
| Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle? | |
| ’T is use alone that sanctifies expense, | |
| And splendour borrows all her rays from sense. | 180 |
| His father’s acres who enjoys in peace, | |
| Or makes his neighbours glad if he increase; | |
| Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil, | |
| Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil; | |
| Whose ample lawns are not ashamed to feed | 185 |
| The milky heifer and deserving steed; | |
| Whose rising forests, not for pride or show, | |
| But future buildings, future navies, grow: | |
| Let his plantations stretch from down to down, | |
| First shade a country, and then raise a town. | 190 |
| You, too, proceed! make falling arts your care; | |
| Erect new wonders, and the old repair; | |
| Jones and Palladio to themselves restore | |
| And be whate’er Vitruvius was before, | |
| Till kings call forth th’ ideas of your mind | 195 |
| (Proud to accomplish what such hands design’d), | |
| Bid harbours open, public ways extend, | |
| Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend, | |
| Bid the broad arch the dangerous flood contain, | |
| The mole projected break the roaring main, | 200 |
| Back to his bounds their subject sea command, | |
| And roll obedient rivers thro’ the land. | |
| These honours Peace to happy Britain brings; | |
| These are imperial works, and worthy Kings. | |
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