SIR JOHN VANBRUGH.

No man who has been satirized by Swift and praised by Reynolds, could have much chance of being forgotten; but the fame of him who was at once the author of The Relapse and the Provoked Wife, and the architect of Castle Howard and Blenheim, stands independent of even such subsidiaries.

Of Sir John Vanbrugh much has been said, and yet little has been told; enemies spared his person and heaped ridicule on his works, while friends were solicitous only about his works, aware, perhaps, that his private character would take care of itself. We must be cautious how we impute the forbearance of malicious wit to mercy or to respect; Vanbrugh was eminently brave, and not likely to put a parliamentary construction on uncivil personality. Swift, who could easily hate any man, and Pope, seldom reluctant to abuse those whom the bitter Dean hated, confined their lampoons to his buildings and his plays. In process of time the latter publicly expressed his regret for having satirized a man of honour and a wit; and the liberal criticism of Reynolds ultimately

swayed the public opinion so strongly, that not all the clever spleen of Walpole could again disturb the position of Vanbrugh.

His lineage was foreign-his grandfather, a zealous Protestant, fled from the wrath of the cruel Duke of Alva, and found that safety in London which Ghent, his native city, had not afforded. Having established himself as a merchant in Walbrook, he lived there with credit till the year 1646; and on his death, his son, Giles Vanbrugh, found himself master of a fair fortune. Of the second Vanbrugh it is said, I know not on what authority, that he was a sugar-baker, and lived in the city of Chester. The first of these assertions is unlikely to be true; such a trade was better fitted for London than Chester-besides, Blome in his Brittania writes him gentleman, and he is elsewhere styled esquire; and though a man could not well be more honourably descended than from an honest merchant and a sufferer for conscience-sake-we must remember that such designations retained their technical heraldic import usually, if not always, until much more recent times. Whatever his earlier occupations may have been, his education and talents were such that he obtained the place of Comptroller of the Treasury Chamber. This was probably after his marriage with Elizabeth, the fifth and youngest daughter and co-heir of Sir Dudley Carleton, of Imber Court, Surrey. If we may credit the account given in the brief memoir which precedes the comedies of Vanbrugh, the Comptroller lived where his father had so long resided, in the parish of St. Stephen, Walbrook;

an uncourtly district in our day, but the dwelling place of very lordly people then. Here their second son, JOHN VANBRUGH, was born, in the year 1666. He had, it seems, seven brothers; his mother died in the year 1711, his father in 1715, both having lived long enough to rejoice in the fame of their

son.

Something of a mystery had always hung over the education of Vanbrugh-and this, since the publication of the Curiosities of Literature, has extended to the place of his birth. The legend which has received general credence relates, that Vanbrugh, during his architectural studies in France, was detected drawing some fortifications and imprisoned in the Bastile; that in this place of little ease he beguiled time by sketching comedies; how the governor informed the state authorities that a second Moliere was in his keeping; and that the generous ministers interposed and so dealt with the king that he was liberated. In a letter which he wrote in 1725, complaining of the conduct of that female fury, the Duchess of Marlborough, respecting the building of Blenheim, he seems to insinuate an earlier imprisonment than the story imputes. "Since my hands," he says, "were thus tied up from trying by law to recover my arrear, I have prevailed with Sir Robert Walpole to help me in a scheme by which I have got my money in spite of the hussey's teeth. My carrying this point enrages her much, and the more because it is of considerable weight in my small fortune, which she has heartily endeavoured so to destroy as to throw me into an English Bastile,

there to finish my days as I began them in a French one." Many will say these concluding words will bear any other construction than that he was born in the French Bastile: and no doubt such is their direct meaning; but no one has spoken of his father's having visited France or of his mother's confinement in that prison; it was an unlikely chamber for a lady in her condition; and indeed the story is scarcely credible. I suspect that Vanbrugh in saying he began his days in the Bastile, meant only that he was its tenant in early life--at the commencement of his manhood. It was probably out of desire to commemorate this event, that he gave the name of " Bastele House" to an odd whimsical dwelling which he built for himself at Greenwich, on a spot which is still called Vanbrugh's Fields.

"We have no account," says Chalmers, "of his education, but it probably was liberal." That it was liberal his works sufficiently show. One of his biographers says, "at the age of nineteen he was sent by his father to France, where he continued for some years." No place nor plan of education is named--and we are left to surmise that, whatever the intention of his parents had been, he soon joined the army. This step Chalmers imputes to his gay and lively disposition; but men who were neither gay nor lively did at that period the same; John Evelyn fought some time as a volunteer in Holland; the camp was the college where our young gentlemen of those days completed their education. But that, under whatever circumstances he joined it, he continued only a

short while with the army we have good evidence, and also that he was early distinguished for his knowledge of architecture. In 1695, when commissioners are appointed for completing Greenwich Palace and converting it into an hospital, Vanbrugh makes his appearance amongst them. He was then twenty-nine years old. "May 21," thus Evelyn writes in his Diary, we went to survey Greenwich, Sir Robert Clayton, Sir Christopher Wren, Mr. Travers the king's surveyor, Captain Sanders and myself. 24-We made report of the state of Greenwich house, and how the standing part might be made serviceable at present for £6000. 31-Met again. Mr. Vanbrugh was made secretary to the commission by my nomination of him to the lords, which was all done that day." This was two years before the appearance of any of his comedies--but indeed we could hardly require direct evidence to assure us that it was not his comic talents which recommended him to Evelyn.

That Vanbrugh had laid aside his heroic mania by 1695 is sufficiently plain; and the story is uniform that during his military duties he became acquainted with Sir Thomas Skipwith, who, besides holding rank in the army, was a sharer in a theatrical patent; that in the idleness of winter quarters the two soldiers fell into a conversation concerning the drama, on which Vanbrugh spoke with such cleverness as to gain him the esteem of his superior officer; that Vanbrugh, encouraged by Skipwith's commendations, first showed one scene, and then several others of the Relapse; that it was Sir Thomas's praise which induced him to finish the piece, and offer it to the stage. But if the Relapse

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