POPE AND LORD BURLINGTON
ation. To us that may seem, a functional error, Vanbrugh and his
clients would have called such arguments extremely low- Of ser-
vants they had plenty. And what we call comfort mattered less than a
self-imposed etiquette more rigid than we can imagine. The function
of a building is not only utilitarian. There is also an ideal function,
and that Blenheim did fulfil. However, not all Vanbrugh's contem-
poraries agreed that it did. There is, e.g. Pope with his famous, often
quoted " 'tis very fine, But where d'ye sleep, or where d'ye dinee"
"What did he mean by that? Critics to-day interpret it as referring
to a lack of material comfort. Pope was more philosophical than that.
What, in the name of good sense, he asked for, is that a room and a
building should look what they are. He disliked Vanbrugh's colossal
scale and decorative splendour as unreasonable and unnatural. For
"splendour", he insists, should borrow "all her rays from sense",
and again:
"Something there is more needful than expense,
And something previous een to taste—9tis sense".
In this he gave expression to the feelings of his generation, the
generation following Vanbrugh's. For Pope was born in 1688,
whereas Vanbrugh was of almost the same age as Swift and Defoe
(and Wren as Dryden).
The architecture that corresponds to Pope's poetry is that of Lord
Burlington and his circle. Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington, was
some years younger than Pope (1694-1753). He went on his
Grand Tour as a very young man, and brought back with him a
promising young painter, William Kent. Full of the new Italian
impression, he was, it seems, converted to the beauties of strict
Palladianism by Colin Campbell, who in 1715 had begun to
publish Vitruvius Britannicus, a book of illustrations of the best
modern buildings of Britain. In the same year the Italian architect
Leoni, who lived in England, had brought out a sumptuous
English edition of Palladio. So Burlington went back to Italy in
1719, this time to study Palladio's works in and around Vicenza.
Under his influence Kent turned Architect and edited at Burling-
ton's expense in 1727 a folio of engravings from Inigo Jones's
buildings and supposed buildings. These publications and Burling-
ton's personality and propaganda set a Palladian fashion in British
country houses that lasted almost unchallenged for fifty years, and
with certain modifications for nearly a hundred.
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