Then why not Kent as well our treaties draw,
Bridgman explain the gospel, Gibbs the law?”[[15]]
Kent was a painter, architect and general designer, and nobody has been found to oppose Hogarth’s dictum that neither England nor Italy ever produced a more contemptible dauber. Hogarth satirizes him in two of his prints: Masquerades and Operas (1724), and The Man of Taste (1732). In the former, the statue of Kent surmounts Burlington Gate, and supported on a lower level by the statues of Raphael and Michael Angelo; in the latter, he again towers above the same two artists over the gate (of taste), which is being whitewashed. On a scaffolding Alexander Pope’s diminutive form is wielding the brush and spattering passers-by with the whitewash. The Duke of Chandos gets most of it. The Earl of Burlington is mounting the ladder with more material.
Burlington House, Piccadilly, was practically rebuilt about 1716 from the Earl’s plans. It formed a striking exception to the mixed and commonplace architecture of the period, and aroused the enthusiasm of contemporary writers. Gay writes: “Beauty within, without proportion reigns.” Lord Hervey, however, sneers at its lack of accommodation:
“Possessed of one great hall of state
Without a room to sleep or eat.”
This mordant wit also satirizes another residence at Chiswick owned by Lord Burlington, which was built about 1730 after the model of the celebrated villa of the worshipped Palladio. According to Hervey’s, “It was too small to live in and too large to hang to a watch.” Burlington designed mansions for others also. One of these, belonging to General Wade, in Cook Street, provoked Walpole to say: “It is worse contrived in the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty in front.” Lord Chesterfield also suggested: “As the general could not live in it to his ease, he had better take a house over against it and look at it.”
The discomfort of the interior arrangement of even the most magnificent houses built at the beginning of this period is attested by more than one writer. Pope sneers at Blenheim as follows:
“See, sir, here’s the grand approach,
This way is for his Grace’s coach;