212 AMATEUR INTEREST IN ARCHITECTURE 



figure others who had not received the practical teaching which 

 he enjoyed. 



Almost ever since the publication of books on architecture 

 had begun, a certain number of wealthy Englishmen had taken 

 an interest in the subject. Lord Burghley had procured books 

 from abroad in the time of Elizabeth ; and as the years went by 

 more and more people studied such publications as were pro- 

 curable. Webb, it will be remembered, referred to the fact that 

 " most gentry in England at this day have some knowledge in 

 the theory of architecture," and by the end of the seventeenth 

 century, it had become the fashion among the great and wealthy 

 to take an interest in the subject that is, in the classic archi- 

 tecture of the books. It is hardly necessary to say that the 

 interest was somewhat superficial, and concerned itself with 

 appearance more than with convenience ; it was still the theory 

 rather than " ye practique," as Webb phrases it, that was studied. 

 The pursuit of the most technical and utilitarian of the arts was 

 thus taken up by amateurs. Wren himself was an amateur 

 when he first began to design. His chief, Sir John Denham, 

 was reckoned by Evelyn " a better poet than architect," but to 

 do Sir John justice, he does not appear to have advanced a claim 

 to be an architect of any kind. Evelyn was a patron of the arts, 

 and especially of architecture, about which he wrote a book. 

 After him, in the eighteenth century, came Lord Burlington, the 

 most distinguished patron of architecture of that age. He was 

 a patron of architects, too ; many of the best known men of the 

 century owed their start in life to the earl. He dabbled in 

 design himself. We are probably justified in calling it dabbling, 

 but it was not so considered at the time, and Horace Walpole, 

 himself a dabbler, speaks of him as a distinguished architect. It 

 was through the munificence of Lord Burlington that many 

 designs of Palladio were published, as well as those drawings 

 left behind him by Webb, which, under the title of " Designs by 

 Inigo Jones," had so great a vogue at this period. 



Of the work usually attributed to Lord Burlington, it may 

 fairly be surmised that the practical part was done by one or 

 other of the men who were profiting by his generosity in their 

 endeavours to become architects. The theoretical part was 

 really not very difficult, for designers had a short way with 

 architectural problems in those days. The general purpose of 

 a building having been considered, its external appearance was 



