The Soane Museum.—[p. 424.]
The following squib is said to have been placed under the plates at an Academic dinner:—
“THE MODERN GOTH.
“Glory to thee, great artist soul of taste
For mending pigsties where a plank’s displaced,
Whose towering genius plans from deep research
Houses and temples fit for Master Birch
To grace his shop on that important day
When huge twelfth-cakes are raised in bright array.
Each pastry pillar shows thy vast design;
Hail! then, to thee, and all great works of thine.
Come, let me place thee in the foremost rank
With him whose dulness discomposed the Bank.”
The writer then, apostrophising Wren, adds—
“Oh, had he lived to see thy blessed work,
To see pilasters scored like loins of pork,
To see the orders in confusion move,
Scrolls fixed below and pedestals above,
To see defiance hurled at Rome and Greece,
Old Wren had never left the world in peace.
Look where I will—above, below is shown
A pure disordered order of thy own;
Where lines and circles curiously unite
A base compounded, compound composite,
A thing from which in turn it may be said,
Each lab’ring mason turns abash’d his head;
Which Holland reprobates and Dance derides,
While tasteful Wyatt holds his aching sides.”[788]
Soane foolishly brought an action against the bitter writer; but Lord Kenyon directed the jury to find for the defendant on the ground that the satire was not personal.