96 KEW GARDENS 



Richmond Garden also, where he destroyed 

 Queen Caroline's fanciful structures, so as to 

 be accused of having "transformed to lawn 

 what late was Fairyland." 



Under Bute's patronage the post of super- 

 intendent of the Botanic Garden was given, 

 but seems not to have been made pukka, to 

 Sir John Hill, as he styled himself on the 

 credit of a Swedish decoration, that humbug 

 physician and author, best remembered now by 

 Garrick's epigram : 



For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is : 

 His farces are physic, his physic a farce is. 



Another questionable authority in taste, 

 introduced by Bute to the Princess and her 

 son, was William Chambers, an architect who 

 built himself into no small note. In his youth, 

 as supercargo of a vessel he had travelled as 

 far as China, then a land of fresh wonder, to 

 bring back extravagant notions, set forth in his 

 Dissertation on Oriental Gardening, and in a 

 mania for Chinoiseries, which was let loose at 

 Kew. Hence the building of the Pagoda in 

 1762, of a House of Confucius, and of a 

 mosque, with temples, grottos, and other out- 

 landish erections, most of which have long 



