CHISWICK HOUSE 



to highwaymen . . . now the roads are stocked with them, and 

 they are so tame that they even come into houses." 



Things, however, were not quite so bad in the first half of the 

 century, and no doubt Pope was able to watch with growing interest 

 the foundation and erection of the Italian Villa at Chiswick, and 

 even to advise in the gradual transformation of the gardens under 

 Kent.* 



The poet Gay, for many years Pope's intimate friend, in an 

 epistle to Lord Burlington, conveys the idea that Pope was a 

 frequent visitor at Chiswick, and very highly appreciative of the 

 fruit-garden there. 



" You, my Lord, bid stately piles ascend, 

 And in your Chiswick bow'r enjoy your friend, 

 When Pope unloads the boughs within his reach, 

 The purple vine, blue plum, and blushing peach." 



The picture thus sketched is attractive, and not without its 

 humorous side. The author of the " Beggars' Opera " was long 

 resident with the earl, and must have been often at hand to join 

 his friend in his depredations on their host's fruit. Indeed, how 

 otherwise could Gay have known of them ? ' Lazy, kindly, un- 

 commonly idle," says Thackeray, "... for ever eating, and 

 saying good things," that he shared the spoil there can be no 

 doubt, and certainly little wonder : for where is the man, woman, 

 or child, who can resist the blandishments of a red-cheeked apple, 

 or of a scarlet strawberry peeping from its leaves ? Not peasant, 

 peer, nor poet ; not the fine lady of the second George's court, if 

 hoop and stiff brocade permitted her to stoop down, or stretch 

 up ; not Queen Caroline herself, who, towards the end of her life 

 when the " bijou " was a-building, was living at Kew. And what 

 more likely than that, curious to inspect Lord Burlington's folly 

 concerning which all the mode was gossiping anxious to compare her 

 own crude attempt at garden-planning, her pseudo-Gothic " Grots " 

 and hermitages, with Kent's improvements on the Burlington 

 estate, she would order her chariot, and go lumbering forth through 

 the dirty Middlesex lanes to have a look at the garden celebrated 

 even two hundred years earlier, when it had produced fruit so 



* Horace Walpole admits that Pope did much to promote the development of a better taste 

 in the arrangement of pleasure grounds. 



175 



