Alexander Pope (1688-1744)

Epistles to Several Persons: Epistle IV

To Richard Boyle, Earl of Burlington

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, atque
Extenuantis eas consulto.
(Horace, Satires, I, x, 17-22)

1'Tis strange, the miser should his cares employ

2To gain those riches he can ne’er enjoy:
3Is it less strange, the prodigal should waste
4His wealth to purchase what he ne’er can taste?
5Not for himself he sees, or hears, or eats;
6Artists must choose his pictures, music, meats:
7He buys for Topham, drawings and designs,
8For Pembroke, statues, dirty gods, and coins;
9Rare monkish manuscripts for Hearne alone,
10And books for Mead, and butterflies for Sloane.
11Think we all these are for himself? no more
12Than his fine wife, alas! or finer whore.

13 For what his Virro painted, built, and planted?

14Only to show, how many tastes he wanted.
15What brought Sir Visto’s ill got wealth to waste?
16Some daemon whisper’d, "Visto! have a taste."
17Heav'n visits with a taste the wealthy fool,
18And needs no rod but Ripley with a rule.
19See! sportive fate, to punish awkward pride,
20Bids Bubo build, and sends him such a guide:
21A standing sermon, at each year's expense,
22That never coxcomb reach’d magnificence!
23You show us, Rome was glorious, not profuse,
24And pompous buildings once were things of use.
25Yet shall (my Lord) your just, your noble rules
26Fill half the land with imitating fools;
27Who random drawings from your sheets shall take,
28And of one beauty many blunders make;
29Load some vain church with old theatric state,
30Turn arcs of triumph to a garden gate;
31Reverse your ornaments, and hang them all
32On some patch’d dog-hole ek'd with ends of wall;
33Then clap four slices of pilaster on’t,
34That lac'd with bits of rustic, makes a front.
35Or call the winds through long arcades to roar,
36Proud to catch cold at a Venetian door;
37Conscious they act a true Palladian part,
38And, if they starve, they starve by rules of art.

39 Oft have you hinted to your brother peer,

40A certain truth, which many buy too dear:
41Something there is more needful than expense,
42And something previous ev’n to taste--'tis sense:
43Good sense, which only is the gift of Heav’n,
44And though no science, fairly worth the sev’n:
45A light, which in yourself you must perceive;
46Jones and Le Notre have it not to give.

47 To build, to plant, whatever you intend,

48To rear the column, or the arch to bend,
49To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;
50In all, let Nature never be forgot.
51But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
52Nor overdress, nor leave her wholly bare;
53Let not each beauty ev’rywhere be spied,
54Where half the skill is decently to hide.
55He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
56Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.

57 Consult the genius of the place in all;

58That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;
59Or helps th’ ambitious hill the heav’ns to scale,
60Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
61Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
62Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades,
63Now breaks, or now directs, th’ intending lines;
64Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.

65 Still follow sense, of ev’ry art the soul,

66Parts answ'ring parts shall slide into a whole,
67Spontaneous beauties all around advance,
68Start ev'n from difficulty, strike from chance;
69Nature shall join you; time shall make it grow
70A work to wonder at--perhaps a Stowe.

71 Without it, proud Versailles! thy glory falls;

72And Nero's terraces desert their walls:
73The vast parterres a thousand hands shall make,
74Lo! Cobham comes, and floats them with a lake:
75Or cut wide views through mountains to the plain,
76You'll wish your hill or shelter’d seat again.
 77Ev'n in an ornament its place remark,
78Nor in an hermitage set Dr. Clarke.

79 Behold Villario's ten years' toil complete;

80His quincunx darkens, his espaliers meet;
81The wood supports the plain, the parts unite,
82And strength of shade contends with strength of light;
83A waving glow his bloomy beds display,
84Blushing in bright diversities of day,
85With silver-quiv'ring rills meander'd o'er--
86Enjoy them, you! Villario can no more;
87Tir'd of the scene parterres and fountains yield,
88He finds at last he better likes a field.

89 Through his young woods how pleas'd Sabinus stray'd,

90Or sat delighted in the thick'ning shade,
91With annual joy the redd'ning shoots to greet,
92Or see the stretching branches long to meet!
93His son's fine taste an op'ner vista loves,
94Foe to the dryads of his father's groves;
95One boundless green, or flourish'd carpet views,
96With all the mournful family of yews;
97The thriving plants ignoble broomsticks made,
98Now sweep those alleys they were born to shade.

99 At Timon's villa let us pass a day,

100Where all cry out, "What sums are thrown away!"
101So proud, so grand of that stupendous air,
102Soft and agreeable come never there.
103Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught
104As brings all Brobdingnag before your thought.
105To compass this, his building is a town,
106His pond an ocean, his parterre a down:
107Who but must laugh, the master when he sees,
108A puny insect, shiv'ring at a breeze!
109Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around!
110The whole, a labour'd quarry above ground.
111Two cupids squirt before: a lake behind
112Improves the keenness of the Northern wind.
113His gardens next your admiration call,
114On ev'ry side you look, behold the wall!
115No pleasing intricacies intervene,
116No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
117Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
118And half the platform just reflects the other.
119The suff'ring eye inverted Nature sees,
120Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees;
121With here a fountain, never to be play'd;
122And there a summerhouse, that knows no shade;
123Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bow'rs;
124There gladiators fight, or die in flow'rs;
125Unwater'd see the drooping sea horse mourn,
126And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn.

127 My Lord advances with majestic mien,

128Smit with the mighty pleasure, to be seen:
129But soft--by regular approach--not yet--
130First through the length of yon hot terrace sweat;
131And when up ten steep slopes you've dragg'd your thighs,
132Just at his study door he'll bless your eyes.

133 His study! with what authors is it stor'd?

134In books, not authors, curious is my Lord;
135To all their dated backs he turns you round:
136These Aldus printed, those Du Sueil has bound.
137Lo, some are vellum, and the rest as good
138For all his Lordship knows, but they are wood.
139For Locke or Milton 'tis in vain to look,
140These shelves admit not any modern book.

141 And now the chapel's silver bell you hear,

142That summons you to all the pride of pray'r:
143Light quirks of music, broken and uneven,
144Make the soul dance upon a jig to heaven.
145On painted ceilings you devoutly stare,
146Where sprawl the saints of Verrio or Laguerre,
147On gilded clouds in fair expansion lie,
148And bring all paradise before your eye.
149To rest, the cushion and soft dean invite,
150Who never mentions Hell to ears polite.

151 But hark! the chiming clocks to dinner call;

152A hundred footsteps scrape the marble hall:
153The rich buffet well-colour'd serpents grace,
154And gaping Tritons spew to wash your face.
155Is this a dinner? this a genial room?
156No, 'tis a temple, and a hecatomb.
157A solemn sacrifice, perform'd in state,
158You drink by measure, and to minutes eat.
159So quick retires each flying course, you'd swear
160Sancho's dread doctor and his wand were there.
161Between each act the trembling salvers ring,
162From soup to sweet wine, and God bless the King.
163In plenty starving, tantaliz'd in state,
164And complaisantly help'd to all I hate,
165Treated, caress'd, and tir'd, I take my leave,
166Sick of his civil pride from morn to eve;
167I curse such lavish cost, and little skill,
168And swear no day was ever pass'd so ill.

169 Yet hence the poor are cloth'd, the hungry fed;
170Health to himself, and to his infants bread
171The lab'rer bears: What his hard heart denies,
172His charitable vanity supplies.

173 Another age shall see the golden ear

174Embrown the slope, and nod on the parterre,
175Deep harvests bury all his pride has plann’d,
176And laughing Ceres reassume the land.

177 Who then shall grace, or who improve the soil?

178Who plants like Bathurst, or who builds like Boyle.
179'Tis use alone that sanctifies expense,
180And splendour borrows all her rays from sense.

181 His father's acres who enjoys in peace,

182Or makes his neighbours glad, if he increase:
183Whose cheerful tenants bless their yearly toil,
184Yet to their Lord owe more than to the soil;
185Whose ample lawns are not asham’d to feed
186The milky heifer and deserving steed;
187Whose rising forests, not for pride or show,
188But future buildings, future navies, grow:
189Let his plantations stretch from down to down,
190First shade a country, and then raise a town.

191 You too proceed! make falling arts your care,

192Erect new wonders, and the old repair;
193Jones and Palladio to themselves restore,
194And be whate'er Vitruvius was before:
195Till kings call forth th’ ideas of your mind,
196Proud to accomplish what such hands design’d,
197Bid harbours open, public ways extend,
198Bid temples, worthier of the God, ascend;
199Bid the broad arch the dang’rous flood contain,
200The mole projected break the roaring main;
201Back to his bounds their subject sea command,
202And roll obedient rivers through the land;
203These honours, peace to happy Britain brings,
204These are imperial works, and worthy kings.
Notes
1] 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 Nôtre, the designer of the best gardens of
France." Inigo Jones (d. 1652) was an English architect who used the Palladian style. André Le Nôtre (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 VIII, 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).