Private Houses.
| Allaston’s, Lord, London. | Fawley Court, Oxon. |
| Bloomsbury, two in. | Marlborough’s, Duchess of, London. |
| Buckingham’s, Duchess of, London. | Oxford’s, Earl of, London. |
| Chichester, two at. | Sunderland’s, Lord, London. |
| Cooper’s, Madam, London. | Windsor, two at. |
This list, which is, I fear, imperfect, only professes to give such buildings as were actually built or repaired; there are, besides, a large number of unexecuted designs.
* Signifies that the building has been destroyed.
APPENDIX III.
Sir Christopher Wren left the rough drafts of four tracts on architecture, which are printed in the ‘Parentalia,’ and a few notes on Roman and Greek buildings, some of which Mr. Elmes transcribed in his ‘Life;’ they are for the most part very technical and are incomplete. The copy of the ‘Parentalia’ now in my hands contains the autograph draft of a Discourse on Architecture, which, as I think, has never been printed; it appears to me to be of great interest. It is therefore given entire, though I regret I cannot give the quaint prints of Noah’s Ark, the Tower of Babel, Babylon, &c., with which the original is illustrated. The two former prints tally so exactly with the descriptions in the ‘Discourse’—the print of the ark containing a small section, an elevation, and a vignette of a man feeding one of the creatures, besides a large drawing of the floating Ark—that I incline to think they were engraved, either by Wren himself, or from his drawings. Engraving was an art he well understood. He divides with Prince Rupert the honour of the invention of mezzo-tint. The prints are numbered Pl. IV. and V. respectively, and have no signature.
Discourse on Architecture.
Whatever a man’s sentiments are upon mature deliberation, it will be still necessary for him in a conspicuous Work to preserve his Undertaking from general censure, and so for him to accomodate his Designs to the gust of the Age he lives in, thô it appears to him less rational. I have found no little difficulty to bring Persons, of otherwise a good genius, to think anything in Architecture would be better then what they had heard commended by others, and what they had view’d themselves. Many good Gothick forms of Cathedrals were to be seen in our Country, and many had been seen abroad, which they liked the better for being not much differing from ours in England: this humour with many is not yet eradicated, and therefore I judge it not improper to endeavour to reform the Generality to a truer taste in Architecture by giving a larger Idea of the whole Art, beginning with the reasons and progress of it from the most remote Antiquity; and that in short touching chiefly on some things, which have not been remarked by others.
The Project of Building is as natural to Mankind as to Birds, and was practised before the Floud. By Josephus we learn that Cain built the first City, Enos, and enclosed it with Wall and Rampires; and that the Sons of Seth, the other son of Adam, erected two Columns of Brick and Stone to preserve their Mathematical Science to Posterity, so well built that thô ye one of Brick was destroy’d by the Deluge, ye other of Stone was standing in ye time of Josephus. The first Peece of Naval Architecture we read of in Sacred History was the Arke of Noah, a work very exactly fitted and built for the Purpose intended.