Besides Blenheim and Castle-Howard, Vanbrugh built Oulton-Hall in Cheshire, Easton-Neston in Northamptonshire, Seaton-Delaval in Northumberland, &c. &c., and doubtless a great variety of mansions, large and small, which must have brought him a considerable quantity of money; but he was probably no stinted liver. In 1714 he was knighted by the new sovereign, George the First, to whom he had taken the Garter when Elector. He was appointed comptroller of the royal works next year, and surveyor of the works at Greenwich Hospital the year after; and on the death of the then Garter King-at-arms, he was nominated to succeed him; but Anstis claimed the office on the strength of a promise from Queen Anne, and after long efforts obtained it. The wife mentioned in the extract from his Letters, was Henrietta Maria, daughter of Colonel Yarborough of Haslington, near York, whom, from a passage in the Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montague, we conjecture him to have married towards the close of the year 1710. He was then five-and-forty, and the lady perhaps ten or fifteen years younger-some say twenty. Lady Mary, in the insolence of eighteen, calls her a "ruin." The following is the passage in her Letters alluded to :

"I can't forbear entertaining you with our York lovers (strange monsters, you'll think, love being as much forced up here as melons). In the first form of these creatures is even Mr. Vanbrugh. Heaven, no doubt, compassionating our dulness, has inspired him with a passion that makes us all ready to die with laughing: 'tis credibly reported that he is endeavouring at the honourable state of matrimony, and vows to lead a single life no more. Whether pure holiness inspires his mind, or dotage turns his brain, is hard to find. 'Tis certain he keeps Monday and Thursday market (assemblyday) constantly; and for those that don't regard worldly muck, there's extraordinary good choice indeed. I believe last Monday there were two hundred pieces of women's flesh (fat and lean): but you know Van's taste was always odd: his inclination to ruins has given him a fancy for Mrs. Yarborough he sighs and ogles so, that it would do your heart good to see him; and she is not a little pleased, in so small a proportion of men amongst such a number of women, that a whole man should fall to her share. My dear, adieu. My service to Mr. Congreve.

"M. P." (Mary Pierrepont.)*

This delicate epistle, written in her ladyship's maiden state and twentieth year, was addressed to the sister of her lover and future husband, Mr. Wortley Montague; but Mr. Wortley Montague was a "bold man," and he suffered for his bravery. Our author's marriage, on the other hand, is said to have been a happy one; and by the various dwellings he possessed, he must have passed the remainder of his life in a state of affluence. Besides his house in town, he built two at Greenwich, on a spot since called Vanbrugh Fields. He appears, at one time, to have been living in Berkshire, near the residence of his old friend Tonson,† for whom he had a great regard. In Rowe's parody upon the dialogue between Horace and Lydia, the warm-hearted bookseller (for such he seems to have been, in spite of occasional irritabilities between him and his authors) is thus represented as speaking of Vanbrugh :

"I'm in with Captain Vanbrugh at the present,

A most sweet-natured gentleman, and pleasant;

He writes your comedies, draws schemes, and models,
And builds dukes' houses upon very odd hills;

For him, so much I dote on him, that I

(If I was sure to go to heaven) would die."

It is more than probable, from the masterly nature of the piece which he left unfinished, and which promised to be his best, that Vanbrugh had resumed his stage enjoyments, and was still "writing your comedies," when he died in his sixtieth year, at his house in Scotland Yard, March 26, 1726. His disorder was a quinsey. He was interred in the family vault at St. Stephen's, Walbrook. Lady

Vanbrugh survived him for the space of forty years, not dying till April 1776. The biographies vary about the number of their children. One says they had three; another an only son. Two, however, appear to have died in infancy. The son became an ensign in the Guards, and died of the wounds he received at the battle of Fontenoy.

Vanbrugh had a character in society, such as might be expected from the account given of him by Rowe. "Garth, Vanbrugh, and Congreve" (says Spence, on the authorities of Tonson and Pope), were the three most honest-hearted, real good men, of the poetical members of the Kit-kat Club." He was a Whig, whose sincerity and good-nature enabled him to survive party animosity. Swift and Pope, when they published their Miscellanies, openly regretted their raillery against “a man of wit and of honour." He jested upon heraldry when he entered the herald's office, probably thinking his colleagues would jest too; and his only resentment on record is that against the Duchess of Marlborough, who was such a woman as his very love of the sex might have made him disgusted with. But he seems to have been happily constituted in mind and body. He had a "fine, elegant, manly person," says Noble; and the best engraved portraits of him, after Kneller, give him a face to match it.

Vanbrugh stands alone in the history of letters for combining the apparently incompatible geniuses of comic writer and architect. Yet surely they are not so, for a secret reason and proportion is at the bottom of all works of art; and while the men of letters, not unjealously perhaps, laughed at his architecture, the public discerned a grandeur in it; and an artist (Sir Joshua Reynolds) thought that it benefited by the aid of the writer's fancy, and possessed a pictorial and daring originality. The passage in his Lectures, in which the architect is vindicated, is so well felt and written, that we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of repeating it.

"In the buildings of Vanbrugh, who was a poet as well as an architect, there is a greater display of imagination," he says, "than we shall find, perhaps, in any other; and this is the ground of the effect we feel in many of his works, notwithstanding the faults with which many of them are charged. For this purpose, Vanbrugh appears to have had recourse to some principles of the Gothic architecture, which, though not so ancient as the Grecian, is more so to our imagination, with which the artist is more concerned than with absolute truth." To speak of him, "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, he 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 back-ground, by which the design and invention are set off to the greatest advantage. What the back-ground is in painting, in architecture is the real ground on which the building is erected; and no architect took greater care that his work should not appear crude and hard, that is, that 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 the time, who did not understand the principles of composition better than he, and who knew little or nothing of what he understood perfectly, the general ruling principles of architecture and painting. Vanbrugh's fate was that of the great Perrault. Both were the objects of the petulant sarcasms of factious men, and both have left some of the fairest monuments, which to this day decorate their several countries; the façade of the Louvre; Blenheim, and Castle-Howard.

We have ourselves never seen any of the great architectural works of Vanbrugh; to say nothing of our inability to pronounce judgment, if we had. But in common with others, we may state the impression which has been made upon us by pictures of them in books, and which is that of a bold and liberal will, desiring to produce a princely effect, and doing it.* On the other hand, we cannot help thinking, that in minor buildings, such as that, for instance, of the church of St. John's, Westminster, (which we have seen,) he is simply heavy and Dutch; and in his least of all, or the

* In Kensington there was lately a small but curious structure, which was originally intended to supply the palace with water, and strongly exemplified what may be called the no nonsense style of Vanbrugh; the ends of which were use, durability, and energetic appearance. The Parish School in the same suburb is also from the hand of Vanbrugh, and presents a similar character.

whims of his fancy, we suspect that Swift's jests about "mouse-traps" and "goose-pies" were hardly unwarranted. Swift describes people looking about Whitehall, to know where Vanbrugh's house was to be found, and making inquiries of the "watermen" and the "Thames :"

"At length they in the rubbish spy

A thing resembling a goose-pie."

Now Vanbrugh built another trifle of this sort at Greenwich, which was called, perhaps by himself, the "mince-pie house;" and another again at the same place, which he dubbed by the undomestic title of "The Bastile," probably in commemoration of the event in his life, whatever it was, which kept the original in his mind. But these whims and their christenings indicate a taste of no very good sort, on the lighter side; nothing like the magnificent will that "upheaved " Blenheim. Perhaps, by an indulgence of the same will, however, in its unbendings, the comic writer was himself jesting in these instances with brick and mortar, not very happily. As to Walpole, who ridiculed his grander efforts, Walpole really had a solid judgment in most things, hardly to be expected from his effeminate temperament; but the latter predominated in his own Gothic toys of wood; and one fancies Vanbrugh, if he had had a mind to build on Strawberry Hill, putting his manly leg upon Horace's little pinnacles, and crushing them as he might have done a house in a toy-shop. There was a heavier though smaller wit in Vanbrugh's days, one Dr. Evans, who in echoing the jokes of the greater ones, had the luck to hit upon a couplet which has survived all his other writings and his very name, and even had the good fortune, in its way down to posterity, of dropping a superfluous fellow couplet; for the whole jest was originally in four lines, and stood thus:

Under this stone, reader, survey

Dead Sir John Vanbrugh's house of clay :
Lie heavy on him, earth! for he
Laid many heavy loads on thee !" *

After all, as there is undoubtedly a national as well as family blood in a stock, and the portraits of ancestors who lived centuries ago startle those who see the faces of their posterity, Vanbrugh may have derived the heavy portion of his architecture from the Flemish bridge-masters of his house, while to the daughter of the English diplomatist, assisted by a French education, may be owing the plot and gaiety of his drama

"There are more things, even in a turn for jesting,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

His character as a comic writer is clear and obvious. It is straightforward, cheerful, confident, and robust; something between Flemish and French; not over-nice in its decorums, not giving too much credit to conventional virtues, nor yet disbelieving in the virtues that will always remain such, and that are healthy and hearty; but as his jovial and sincere temperament gave him a thorough dislike of hypocrisy, the licence of the times allowed him to be plain-spoken to an extent which was perilous to his animal spirits; and an editor in these days is startled, not to say frightened, at sallies of audacity and exposure, which, however loath to call affrontery, he is forced to think such, and is only prevented by belief in the goodness of his heart from concluding to be want of feeling. Of feeling indeed, in the sentimental sense, Vanbrugh shows little or none. He seems to have thought it foreign to the satire and mirth of comedy. His plots are interesting, without having the teasing perplexity of Congreve's; and he is more uniformly strong than Farquhar, and cheerful than Wycherley. What he borrows, he seems to change at one blow into something better, by sleight, or rather force, of hand. He is easy in invention, and true and various in character. His style is

* For divers immemorabilia of Doctor Evans, the curious lover of books may consult Nichols's Collection of Poems, vol. iii. and iv.; and Dodsley's, vol. i. p 158. He was not destitute of humour; but it was rare in quantity, rather than quality. Gray, in a letter to Walpole, says of him, in reference to his poem in Dodsley, "Dr. Evans is a furious madman; and Pre-existence' is nonsense in all its altitudes."

so natural and straightforward, that Cibber says the actors preferred it to every other, it was so easy to learn by rote. What he wants (except at the bottom of his heart) is every species of refinement, but that of a freedom from all cant and nonsense. He has no more poetry in him, in a sense apart from what is common to everything artistic, than a sailor who would see nothing in Shakspeare's "Bermoothes," except the turtle. But in a superiority to circumstances sophisticate, the best-bred of gallants could not beat him, whether from absence of veneration, or presence of good health. His Lord Foppington is the quintessence of nullification, and of the scorn of things which he does not care for; while Miss Hoyden, without delay or "mistake," is for consolidating everything into the tangible and plenitudinous, for which she does care. In short, if Vanbrugh's father had had wit and perception enough in him to give him a right, he might have said to him, as Sir Anthony Absolute said to the Captain, his son, when he vented the height of his astonished and fatherly satisfaction at his having been a better love-maker than he took him for,—" Jack, you certainly are an impudent dog."

It was complained of, with regard to Vanbrugh's first comedy the "Relapse," that he had taken the penitent of Cibber's play ("Love's Last Shift"), and made him fall into his old ways again; which hurt the moral. But Vanbrugh laughed at the morals of Cibber. He knew that so flimsy and canting a teacher could only teach pretences; and in undoing his work he left society to find out something better. On the other hand, when Cibber took up the author's unfinished play, the "Journey to London," and fancied that he had improved it with his Lord Townly and Lady Grace, and his insipid perfect gentleman, Mr. Manly, he made a blunder of such dull vanity and timeserving self-love, as it is melancholy to think of in the sprightly Colley, but much more to read, after reading Vanbrugh's three acts! It is worth the reader's while to refer to Cibber's play, and compare them. What a poor, pick-thank set of common-place usurpers of attention,-of pretenders to a "clear stage and no favour,”—after the heartier moral fair-play of Vanbrugh! What a half-sided lesson, taking it at its best, and a servile playing into the hands of the stronger sex, as if nothing could be more exemplary or further-sighted! The very name of Lord "Loverule" instead of "Townly," shows that the "reciprocity" was not to be all on one side in Vanbrugh's play. But everything is miserably washed down in Cibber, even to poor John Moody and the footmen.

Dick Amlet, Mrs. Amlet, and Brass, in the "Confederacy," are all perfection, after their kind,— the unfeeling son, whose legs are doted on by his mother; the peddling mother, hobbling about, with fine ladies in her debt; and Brass, exquisite Brass, whom one can hardly help fancying made of the metal that christens him, and with a voice that rings accordingly. We know of no better comic writing in the world than the earlier scenes of Lord Foppington in the "Relapse," and those between Dick Amlet and his mother, and of Brass securing his bargain with Dick, in the play before us.

We find we have passed over the "Provoked Wife," which, to say the truth, is a play more true than pleasant; and it is not so much needed as it was in Vanbrugh's days, when sottishness had not become infamous among decent people. So long do the vices of the stronger sex contrive to have themselves taken, if not for virtues, at least for something like manly privilege!

One reason has been given why “ Æsop” did not succeed. Another we take to be that the French, in their old levity, used to think themselves bound to sit out any gravity that appealed to their good sense; while the English never pretended to be able to dispense with something strong and stirring. Besides, morality of so very obvious and didactic a sort was too great a contradiction to the taste of the times, and to Vanbrugh's own previous indulgence of it. Rakes scouring the streets at night, and ladies carried off swooning with love from antechambers, had ill prepared the sons and daughters of Charles the Second for the lessons of the sage Grecian, adapting his "wise saws" to "modern instances."

:

"How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit!"

says Pope and it is true. Yet this graceless wit, often far less so than he appears, and covertly implying virtues superior to their common forms, has a passage in one of the coarsest of his plays, that preaches a love truer than any to be found in Pope :

66

"Constant. Though marriage be a lottery, in which there are a wondrous many blanks, yet there is one inestimable lot, in which the only heaven on earth is written. Would your kind fate but guide your hand

to that, though I were wrapt in all that luxury itself coud clothe me with, I should still envy you.

66

Heartfree. And justly too: for to be CAPABLE of loving one, is better than to possess a thousand.”
Provoked Wife, Act v., Scene 4.

But the old question may here be asked, "What signify one or two passages of this sort, when all the rest is so different?" To which it should long ago have been answered, everything; when the difference is more in appearance than reality, and fighting the battles of virtue itself by unmasking the pretenders to it.

With the exception of a defence of himself against Collier, which will be noticed in its proper place, and the disputes respecting Blenheim with the Duchess of Marlborough, we know not of a single miscellaneous piece of writing of Vanbrugh's, except the following sprightly verses in Nichols's collection. It possesses, we fear, not a little of his usual "face," without his usual good-nature; but let us hope the lady knew nothing of it. However, if she added "tyranny" to want of beauty, his own willingness to please her, which was not the most ill-natured thing in the world, may be allowed to have had some reason to be discontented.

TO A LADY MORE CRUEL THAN FAIR.

BY MR. AFTERWARDS SIR JOHN VANBRUGH.

Why d'ye with such disdain refuse

An humble lover's plea?

Since Heaven denies you power to chuse,

You ought to value me.

Ungrateful mistress of a heart,

Which I so freely gave,

Though weak your bow, though blunt your dart,

I soon resign'd, your slave.

Nor was I weary of your reign,

Till you a tyrant grew,

And seem'd regardless of my pain,

As Nature seem'd of you.

When thousands with unerring eyes

Your beauty would decry,

What graces did my love devise,
To give their truths the lie!
To every grove I told your charms,
In you my heaven I placed,
Proposing pleasures in your arms,
Which none but I could taste.

("Jack, you certainly are an impudent dog!")

For me t' admire, at such a rate,
So damn'd a face (/) will provo
You have as little cause to hate,
As I had cause to love.