Est brevitate opus, ut currat sententia, neu se Impediat verbis lassas onerantibus aures:
Et sermone opus est modo tristi, saepe jocoso,
Defendente vicem modo Rhetoris atque Poetae,
Interdum urbani, parcentis viribus,
Extenuantis eas consulto. (Horace,
Satires,
I, x, 17-22) 'Tis 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; 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. Think we all these are for himself? no more Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore. For what his Virro painted, built, and planted? Only to show, how many tastes he wanted. What brought Sir Visto's ill got wealth to waste? Some daemon 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: 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 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; Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all On some patch'd dog-hole ek'd with ends of wall; Then clap four slices of pilaster on't, That lac'd with bits of rustic, makes a front. Or call the winds through long arcades to roar, 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: Something there is more needful than expense, And something previous ev'n to taste—'tis sense: Good sense, which only is the gift of Heav'n, And though no science, fairly worth the sev'n: A light, which in yourself you must perceive; Jones and Le Notre 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. But treat the goddess like a modest fair, Nor overdress, nor leave her wholly bare; Let not each beauty ev'rywhere be spied, Where half the skill is decently to hide. He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds, 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; 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 ev'ry art the soul, Parts answ'ring 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. 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 through mountains to the plain, You'll wish your hill or shelter'd seat again. Ev'n in an ornament its place remark, Nor in an hermitage set Dr.
Clarke. Behold Villario's ten years' toil complete; His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet; The wood supports the plain, the parts unite, And strength of shade contends with strength of light; A waving glow his bloomy beds display, Blushing in bright diversities of day, With silver-quiv'ring rills meander'd o'er— Enjoy them, you!
Villario can no more; Tir'd of the scene parterres and fountains yield, He finds at last he better likes a field. Through his young woods how pleas'd Sabinus stray'd, Or sat delighted in the thick'ning shade, With annual joy the redd'ning shoots to greet, Or see the stretching branches long to meet! His son's fine taste an op'ner vista loves, Foe to the dryads of his father's groves; One boundless green, or flourish'd carpet views, 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!" 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, 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. Two cupids squirt before: a lake behind Improves the keenness of the Northern wind. His gardens next your admiration call, On ev'ry side you look, behold the wall! No pleasing intricacies intervene, 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; With here a fountain, never to be play'd; And there a summerhouse, that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bow'rs; There gladiators fight, or die in flow'rs; Unwater'd see the drooping sea horse mourn, 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 through the length of yon hot terrace sweat; 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: 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 'tis in vain to look, These shelves admit not any modern book. And now the chapel's silver bell you hear, That summons you to all the pride of pray'r: Light quirks of music, broken and uneven, Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven. On painted ceilings you devoutly stare, 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. 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? No, 'tis 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. Between each act the trembling salvers ring, From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the King. In plenty starving, tantaliz'd in state, And complaisantly help'd to all I hate, Treated, caress'd, and tir'd,
I take my leave, 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 cloth'd, the hungry fed; Health to himself, and to his infants bread The lab'rer bears:
What his hard heart denies, His charitable vanity supplies. Another age shall see the golden ear Embrown the slope, and nod on the parterre, Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann'd, And laughing Ceres reassume the land. Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil? Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle. 'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense, And splendour borrows all her rays from sense. 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 asham'd to feed 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. 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, 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 dang'rous flood contain, The mole projected break the roaring main; Back to his bounds their subject sea command, And roll obedient rivers through the land; These honours, peace to happy Britain brings, These are imperial works, and worthy kings.
Form:
Composition Date:
April 17311.
Published in December 1731, though completed in April (that is, before Epistle II and therefore placed before it in this text).
The original title was An Epistle to the Right Honourable Richard Earl of Burlington,
Occasioned by his Publishing Palladio's Designs of the Bathes,
Arches, and Theatre's of Ancient Rome.
The half-title read Of Taste.
In the second edition, it was changed to Of False Taste.
In 1735 when it was included in the Works, it was changed again to Of the Use of Riches.
Each of these titles calls attention to an aspect of the poem.
The original title relates the poem to Burlington's 1730 volume of designs of ancient Roman buildings by the Renaissance architect,
Palladio.
Burlington and Pope shared similar views on architecture and gardening.
Later Pope related the Epistle to his scheme for the projected fourth book of the Essay on Man (q.v.) and published it as one of the four epistles in the Epistles to Several Persons, popularly called the four Moral Essays.
Pope's summary of Epistle IV is as follows. "The vanity of expense in people of wealth and quality.
The abuse of the word taste,
V.13.
That the first principle and foundation, in this as in everything else, is good sense,
V.40.
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,
V.50.
How man are disappointed in their most expensive undertakings, for want of this true foundation, without which nothing can please long, if at all; and the best examples and rules will but be perverted into something burdensome or ridiculous,
V.65.
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,
V.97, and the second, either in joining together parts incoherent, or too minutely resembling, or in the repetition of the same too frequently, v. 105 ff.
A word or two of false taste in books, in music, in painting, even in preaching and prayer, and lastly in entertainments,
V.133 ff.
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 [the Essay on Man],
Epistle II, and in the Epistle [to Bathurst] preceding this) v. 159 ff.
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, / 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.'7.
Topham. "[Pope] A gentleman famous for a judicious collection of drawings." Richard Topham (d. 1735), art collector. 8.
Pembroke:
Thomas Herbert, eighth Earl of Pembroke (1656-1733), a Whig politician and a collector of statues, pictures, and coins. dirty Gods:
Renaissance pseudo-antiques. 9.
Hearne:
Thomas Hearne (1678-1735), mediaevalist, issued numerous small editions of middle English historical texts. 10.
Mead ...
Sloone: "[Pope] Two eminent physicians; the one had an excellent library; the other the finest collection in Europe of natural curiosities; both men of great learning and humanity." Richard Mead (1673-1754) was physician to George II and his Queen, as well as Pope's physician in 1743.
He had a library of 30,000 volumes.
Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) was first physician to George II and President of the Royal College of Physicians, 1719-35. 13.
Virro: the point of the name is not known. 13-14. planted: rhymes with "wanted." 14. wanted: (1) desired, (2) lacked.15.
Visto: vista, the view at the ends of avenues of trees in Queen Anne's gardens.
Here it suggests one who devotes himself to gardening and building. 18.
Ripley. "[Pope] This man was a carpenter, employed by a first minister [Sir Robert Walpole, who raised him to an architect, without any genius in art, and after some wretched proofs of his insufficiency in public buildings, made him comptroller of the board of works." 20.
Bubo: see note to Epistle to Dr.
Arbuthnot, 299.
George Bubb Dodington spent £;140,000 completing a family mansion.22. magnifience: an Aristotelean virtue (see the Nichomean Ethics).
Pope's essay is centrally concerned with this virtue, which deals with the expenditure of large sums of money. 23. "[Pope] The Earl of Burlington was then publishing the Designs of Inigo Jones, and the Antiquities of Rome by Palladio." 34. rustic: artificially roughened or roughhewn surface. 36.
Venetian door: "[Pope] a door or window, so called, from being much practiced at Venice by Palladio and others." 37.
Palladian: after Palladio (1518-80), the Italian architect, who published the most famous of the Renaissance texts on classical architecture, and whose style of building became very popular in the eighteenth century.
It is well illustrated by the centre-piece of Chiswick House designed by Burlington and William Kent. 39. brother peer: a general, not a specific reference.44. the seven: the seven liberal arts. 46. "[Pope] Inigo Jones, the celebrated Architect, and M.
Le Nô;tre, the designer of the best gardens of France." Inigo Jones (d. 1652) was an English architect who used the Palladian style.
AndrÃ;
Le Nô;tre (1613-1700) laid out the gardens at Versailles and Fontainebleau. 47 ff.
Pope was a leader in the attack on the symmetrical style, favouring a more "natural" one where landscape and garden harmonized.
His essays on gardening (cf.
Guardian, 173) and his own garden at Twickenham were influential in the movement. 55-56.
Pope once told Spence: "All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads:-- the contrasts, the management of surprises, and the concealment of bounds ...
I have expressed them all in two verses; (after my manner, in very little compass) which are an imitation of Horace's Omne tulit punctum [De Arte Poetica, 343]." 70.
Stowe: "[Pope] the seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham in Buckinghamshire." Richard Temple (1675-1749),
Viscount Cobham, was a Whig politician and soldier to whom Pope had addressed Moral Epistle I,
On Man.
At Cobham's family seat,
Stowe, he entertained friends and erected monuments and temples to their memory in his elaborate landscape gardens.
He was a practitioner of the new style of gardening and architecture.
Pope said he esteemed Cobham "as well as any friend" he had.71.
Versailles: see note on line 46. 72.
Nero's terraces.
Suetonius tells us that Nero's Golden House contained fields, vineyards, pastures, and woods (see Life of Nero, ch. 21). 74. floats: flood. 75-76."[Pope] This was done in Hertfordshire, by a wealthy citizen, at the expense of above £;5,000 by which means (merely to overlook a dead plain) he let in the north wind upon his house and parterre, which were before adorned and defended by beautiful woods." 78. "[Pope] Dr.
S.
Clarke's busto placed by the Queen in the Hermitage, while the Dr. duly frequented the Court." 79.
Villario: probably adopted from "villa." A synthetic character. 89.
Sabinus: "Father Sabinus, planter of the vine" (Aeneid
II, 178-79).
The contemporary reference is not clear. 95. "[Pope] The two extremes in parterres, which are equally faulty; a boundless green, large and naked as a field, or a flourished carpet, where the greatness and nobleness of the piece is lessened by being divided into too many parts, with scrolled works and beds, of which the examples are frequent." 96. "[Pope] Touches upon the ill taste of those who are so fond of Evergreens (particularly Yews, which are the most tonsile) as to destroy the nobler Forest trees, to make way for such little ornaments as Pyramids of dark green continually repeated, not unlike a Funeral procession." 99.
Timon's villa: "[Pope] This description is intended to comprise the principles of a false taste of magnificence, and to exemplify what was said before, that nothing but good sense can attain it." Timon: a spendthrift Athenian patron of the arts who became a misanthropist after realizing the pointlessness of his activities (see Plutarch's life and Shakespeare's play). 104.
Brobdingnag: the kingdom of giants in Gulliver's Travels,
II. 103-4. drought: rhymed with "thought."123.
Amphitrite: a Nereid or sea-nymph and wife of Poscidon, the king of the sea gods. 124."[Pope] The two famous statues of the Gladiator pugnans and Gladiator motiens. 130."[Pope] The Approaches and Communications of house with garden, or of one part with another, ill judged and inconvenient." 133. "[Pope] The false Taste in Books; a satire on the vanity in collecting them, more frequent in men of Fortune than the study to understand them.... some have carried it so far, as to cause the upper shelves to be filled with painted books of wood . . ." 136.
Aldus:
Aldus Manutius,
Renaissance Venetian printer of Greek texts.
Du Sueil:
Abbé; du Sueil, famous eighteenth-century French binder. 138. wood: disguised through fashioning and lettering to look like a book.
Locke:
John Locke (1632-1704), philosopher and author of the extremely influential Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690). 143. "[Pope] The false taste in music, improper to the subjects, as of light airs in churches, often practiced by organists, etc." 145. "[Pope] And in painting (from which even Italy is not free) of naked figures in churches, etc., which has obliged some popes to put draperies on some of those of the best masters." 146. "[Pope] Verrio (Antonio) painted many ceilings, etc., at Windsor,
Hampton Court, etc., and Laguerre at Blenheim Castle, and other places." 148.
Cf.
Milton,
Il Penseroso, line 166: "And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes." Cf. line 104 above. 150."[Pope] This is a fact; a reverend Dean of Peterborough, preaching at Court, threatened the sinner with punishment in `a place which he thought it not decent to name in so polite an assembly'." 153."[Pope] Taxes the incongruity of Ornaments (though sometimes practised by the ancients) where an open mouth ejects the water into a fountain, or where the shocking images of serpents, etc., are introduced in Grottos or Buffets." 155."[Pope] The proud festivals of some men are here set forth to ridicule where pride destroys the ease, and formal regularity all the pleasurable enjoyment of the entertainment." 160.
Sancho's dread Doctor: "see Don Quixote, chap. xviii." In this section as Sancho is trying to eat a meal, the "doctor-magician" taking care of his health causes each dish to disappear just as Sancho is about to eat it. 169. "[Pope] The moral of the whole, where Providence is justified in giving wealth to those that squander it in this manner.
A bad taste employs more hands and diffuses expense more than a good one.
This recurs to what is laid down in Book I,
Ep.
II, v. 230-7 [Essay on Man II, lines 230 ff.] and in the Epistle preceding this [Moral Essay
II v. 161 etc." 176.
Ceres: goddess of the generative powers of nature. 178.
Bathurst:
Allan Bathurst (1685-1775), a Tory M.
P. and later peer, an enthusiastic landscape gardener, a man of worldly wisdom, and an intimate of Pope,
Congreve, and Swift.
Boyle:
Lord Burlington, to whom the poem is dedicated. 194.
Vitruvius:
Vitruvius Pollio (50-26 B.
C.),
Roman architect, whose ten-book treatise De Architectura dealt with the site, setting, and external decoration as well as the building itself.
It became the most important classical reference work for neo-classicists after the Renaissance. 195-204. "[Pope] The poet after having touched upon the proper objects of magnificence and expense in the private works of great men, comes to the great and public works which become a prince.
This poem was published in the year 1732, when some of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is satirically alluded to in our author's imitation of Horace,
Bk.
II,
Satire ii [line 119].
Shall half the new-built Churches round the fall); others were vilely executed through fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, etc.
Dagenham breach had done very great mischiefs.
Many of the Highways throughout England were hardly passable; and most of those which were repaired by Turnpikes were made jobs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrances of London itself.
The proposal of building a Bridge at Westminster had been petitioned against and rejected; but in two years after the publication of this poem, an Act for building a bridge passed through both houses.
After many debates in the committee, the execution was left to the carpenter above mentioned l. 18n who would have made it a wooden one; to which our author alludes in these lines; "Who builds a bridge that never drove a pile?/Should Ripley venture all the world would smile." See the notes on that place [To Augustus, note on line 186]."
