A nymph of quality admires our knight; He marries, bows at court, and grows polite; Leaves the dull cits, and joins (to please the fair) The well-bred cuckolds in Saint James's air: First for his son a gay commission buys, Who drinks, whores, fights, and in a duel dies: His daughter flaunts a viscount's tawdry wife; She bears a coronet and p-x for life. In Britain's senate he a seat obtains, And one more pensioner Saint Stephen gains. My lady falls to play; so bad her chance, He must repair it; takes a bribe from France: The house impeach him; Coningsby harangues; The court forsake him, and Sir Balaam hangs. Wife, son, and daughter, Satan! are thy own, His wealth, yet dearer, forfeit to the crown: The devil and the king divide the prize, And sad Sir Balaam curses God and dies, EPISTLE IV. TO RICHARD BOYLE, EARL OF BURLINGTON. OF THE USE OF RICHES. ARGUMENT. The vanity of expense in people of wealth and quality. The abuse of the word taste.-That the first principle and foundation in this, as in every thing else, is good sense.The chief proof of it is to follow nature, even in works of mere luxury and elegance. Instanced in architecture and gardening, where all must be adapted to the genius and use of the place, and the beauties not forced into it, but resulting from it.-How men are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings for want of this true founda tion, without which nothing can please long, if at all; and the best examples and rules will but be perverted into something burdensome and ridiculous.-A description of the false taste of magnificence; the first grand error of which is to imagine that greatness consists in the size and dimension, instead of the proportion and harmony, of the whole. And the second, either in joining together parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or in the repetition of the same too frequently.-A word or two of false taste in books, in music, in painting, even in preaching and prayer, and lastly in entertainments.-Yet Providence is justified in giving wealth to be squandered in this manner, since it is dispersed to the poor and laborious part of mankind. [Recurring to what is laid down in the first book, ep. ii. and in the epistle preceding this.]-What are the proper objects of magnificence, and a proper field for the expense of great men.-And, finally, the great and public works which become a prince. 'Tis strange the miser should his cares employ Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats; For what has Virro painted, built, and planted? 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 Fill half the land with imitating fools; Who random drawings from your sheets shall take; That, lac'd with bits of rustic, makes a front; Oft have you hinted to your brother peer A certain truth, which many buy too dear; Something there is more needful than expense, And something previous ev'n to taste-'tis sense; Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven, And though no science, fairly worth the seven; A light which in yourself you must perceive; Jones and Le Nôtre have it not to give. To build, to plant, whatever you intend, Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls, The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make, [light: With silver-quivering rills meander'd o'er- Through his young woods how pleas'd Sabinus The thriving plants, ignoble broomsticks made, Where all cry out,' What sums are thrown away!' |