est company, even at that age,
condemned, and neither good nor bad company can read in the present day
without being shocked? If the conversation of the Kit-kat was anything
like that in this member's comedies, it must have been highly edifying.
However, I have no doubt Vanbrugh passed for a gentleman, whatever his
conversation, and he was certainly a wit, and apparently somewhat less
licentious in his morals than the rest. Yet what Pope said of his
literature may be said, too, of some acts of his life:--

'How Van wants grace, who never wanted wit.'

And his quarrel with 'Queen Sarah' of Marlborough, though the duchess
was by no means the most agreeable woman in the world to deal with, is
not much to Van's honour. When the nation voted half a million to build
that hideous mass of stone, the irregular and unsightly piling of which
caused Walpole to say that the architect 'had emptied quarries, rather
than built houses,' and Dr. Evans to write this epitaph for the
builder--

'Lie heavy on him, Earth, for he
Laid many a heavy load on thee,'

Sarah haggled over 'seven-pence halfpenny a bushel;' Van retorted by
calling her 'stupid and troublesome,' and 'that wicked woman of
Marlborough,' and after the Duke's death, wrote that the Duke had left
her 'twelve thousand pounds a-year to keep herself clean and go to law.'
Whether she employed any portion of it on the former object we do not
pretend to say, but she certainly spent as much as a miser could on
litigation, Van himself being one of the unfortunates she attacked in
this way.

The events of Vanbrugh's life were varied. He began life in the army,
but in 1697 gave the stage 'The Relapse.' It was sufficiently
successful to induce him to follow it up with the 'Provoked Wife,' one
of the wittiest pieces produced in those days. Charles, Earl of
Carlisle, Deputy Earl Marshal, for whom he built Castle Howard, made
him Clarencieux King-at-arms in 1704, and he was knighted by George
I., 9th of September, 1714. In 1705 he joined Congreve in the
management of the Haymarket, which he himself built. George I. made
him Comptroller-general of the royal works. He had even an experience
of the Bastille, where he was confined for sketching fortifications in
France. He died in 1726, with the reputation of a good wit, and a bad
architect. His conversation was, certainly, as light as his buildings
were heavy.

Another member, almost as well known in his day, was Sir Samue