the ugliest house ever erected, was a man of good family, and Walpole
counts him among those who 'wrote genteel comedy, because they lived in
the best company.' We doubt the logic of this; but if it hold, how is it
that Van wrote plays which the best 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