BRITAIN AND FRANCE. l6TH TO l8TH CENTURY

from what it was to the French. But while these houses of about
1700 are, whatever French critics might have said against them, as
serviceable to-day as at the time when they were built, there are
indeed certain English 18th-century country houses on a larger
scale which—from our point of view at least—seem to be designed

93. FENTON HOUSE, HAMPSTEAJD, LONDON, 1693.

for display and not for comfort. This is an argument heard frequently
against Blenheim, near Oxford (pis. xci, xcn, xcm and fig. 94),
the palace which the nation presented to Marlborough. It was
designed by Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726) in 1705. His style
derives from Wren at his grandest and most Baroque—the Wren
of Greenwich Hospital—but is always of a distinctly personal
character. Wren never seems to forget himself. He is never carried
away by forces stronger than his reason. Vanbrugh's designs are of
a violence and ruthless directness that could not but offend the ration-
alists of his age. His family came from Flanders; his expansive tem-
perament seems more of Rubens's country than of Wren's and
Reynolds's. He studied art in France, was arrested and put into the
Bastille, After his release he returned to England and began to write
plays. They were a huge success. Then suddenly one finds him
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