DODINCTON 251 



nificeuce by George Dodingtoii, a former Lord of the 

 Admiralty, who, having presumably made some fine 

 pickings in that capacity, determined to spend them 

 on becoming a patron of the Arts and an entertainer 

 of literary men, after the fashion of an age in which 

 painters were made to fawn upon the powerful, and 

 poets to sing their praises in the blankest of blank 

 verse. Every rich person had his henchmen among 

 the followers of the Muses, and they were petted or 

 scolded, indulged or kept on the chain, just as the 

 humour of the patron at the moment decreed. Un- 

 fortunately, however, for this eminently eighteenth- 

 century ambition of George Dodington, he died 

 before he could finish his building. All his worldly 

 goods went to his grand-nejDhew, George Bubb, son of 

 his brother's daughter, who had married a Weymouth 

 apothecary named Jeremias Bubb. Already, under 

 the patronage of his uncle, a member of Parliament, 

 and an influential person, George on coming into this 

 property assumed the name of Dodington ; perhaps 

 also because the obvious nickname of ' Silly Bubb ' 

 by which he was known might thereby become 

 obsolete. 



Georw Bubb Dodinoton, as he was now known, 

 immediately stopped the works on his uncle's palace, 

 and thus the unfinished building remained gaunt and 

 untenanted from 1720 to 1738. Then, as suddenly 

 as the building was stopped, work was resumed again. 

 The vast sum of £140,000 was spent on the comple- 

 tion. Tapestries, gilding, marbles, everything of the 

 most costly and ornate character was employed, and 

 the grounds which had been newly laid out eighteen 



