DISCOVERY 



24? 



a means of expressing national emotion, the impulse 

 given by Marlborough's wars lasting until Waterloo. 

 A generation later the new interest in scholarship 

 shown bv constant new editions of the works of our 

 older writers brought about the commemoration of 

 Shakespeare, Milton, and Ben Jonson, who took their 

 place at \\'estminster beside such contemporary idols 

 as Cowley, Butler, and Congreve. The Abbey, in 

 fact, was beginning to be looked upon as the epitome 

 of our history, where literature, arms, politics, and 

 music had equal rights; and it is surely a tribute to 

 the spiritual iijsight of the eighteenth century that 



Museum, and the model of the head of Milton — after 

 1654, since the poet is obviously blind — now at 

 Christ's College, Cambridge, once in the possession 

 of Vertue himself. As Pierce's father, originally an 

 assistant of \'andyck, was employed at Whitehall,, 

 one can only conjecture that the son was somehow 

 brought into contact with the Protector and his 

 Foreign Secretary. Evidently, however, such 

 employment was no bar to royal patronage, since 

 Pierce not only contributed two statues to the Royal 

 Exchange of 1667, but worked at Hampton Court,^ 

 was the architect of the Dial at Seven Dials, and 



BBTH Lli mi; ad jK-rtas fr wUil dupla columna. 



'KiX^'S.z 7C1/ aTct V >*^cs ur-::i s\tSi. 

 Hlc calvum ad rfnciratn IrHli rapilt ore rrt-linal ■ 



^ililliini ad l3,*\:*iii rprr.-a vmi la (eriom 

 Uifltintli!: liuur clt Smiiim fed utruniqtic labfm^iu. 



Kl g< ithiin irtttn 1> Uu<l:u utrttjur furor. 



Fig. 2.— GIBBER'S " R.WING .'VND MEL.A.NCHOLY M.\DNESS." 

 Formerly over the gates of Bedlam, now in the Guildhall Museum. 



Westminster Abbey came to be regarded as the 

 natural resting-place of the man of letters. 



\\'ith these conditions, these openings for employ- 

 ment, temporary and permanent, in our minds, we 

 may briefly discuss the history and achievement of our 

 century of English sculptors. 



Edward Pierce, the son of a man of the same 

 name, " Citizen and painter-stainer of London," was 

 working under the Commonwealth and did not die 

 till i6g8. His known output is unfortunately small, 

 but like that of Stone before him, andCibber, Gibbons, 

 and Bird after him, is both architectural and sculp- 

 tural. His earliest works are the superb bust of 

 Oliver Cromwell recentlv acquired bv the .Ashmolean 



became the colleague both of Wren and Bird. For 

 the former he carved the four dragons on the Monu- 

 ment ; as " mason " he assisted to build St. Clement 

 Danes; and above all he produced that glorious bust, 

 now like the Cromwell at the Ashmolean Museum, of 

 which Vertue wrote in his characteristically bad 

 grammar and spelling, " In Bodleyan Gallery the 

 Bust in Marble of Sir Chrisf Wren done by . . . 

 Pierce the Same person as my moddel of Milton." 

 This is the finest bust of purely Bernincsque' type in 



1 Lorenzo Bernini (1598-1680), the founder of the late florid 

 style of art and architecture known as Baroque, was incom- 

 parably the greatest architect and sculptor of his century, 

 and his influence all over Europe was supreme until the days. 



