XXXIV PEOCEEDINGS OF THE 



first president. It consisted of about twenty members, of wbom 

 he was the last survivor. To the publication of this rather short- 

 lived* Society, consisting of two thin octavo volumes, Mr. "Woods 

 contributed several essays : one, read in 1807, on the uniaviting 

 subject of Dilapidations, necessarily dry and technical, but to 

 which subsequent writers have admitted their great obligation ; 

 another, illustrated by four plates from his designs, " On the 

 Situations and Accompaniments of Villas." In a third, read in 

 1808, " On modern Theories of Taste," he reviewed those of 

 Hogarth, Burke, Uvedale Price, Eepton, Alison, Grilpin, &c., in a 

 manner which gave abundant evidence of the thought and study 

 by which he prepared himself subsequently to examine and illus- 

 trate the works of ancient art in foreign countries. 



Shortly after the appearance of these essays, Mr. Taylor, the 

 architectural publisher, seems to have proposed to Mr. Woods 

 that he should arrange for publication, as a fourth volume of the 

 magnificent ' Antiquities of Athens,' the remaining documents 

 of the deceased Athenian Stuart. It was the singular fate of 

 this work that each of its four volumes was ushered into the 

 world by a different editor. The first vokime appeared in 1762 ; 

 the second, though bearing date 1787, was not published till after 

 Stuart's death in 1788, when the arrangement was completed by 

 Newton ; the third, edited by Mr. Eeveley, was issuing in 1794 ; 

 and, after a further interval of twenty years, the papers were 

 placed in Mr. "Woods's hands, which enabled him to bring out the 

 fourth (and concluding) volume in 1816, just fifty-four years 

 after the publication of the first volume by Stiiart himself. Most 

 of the matter had been already prepared by Stuart, and the plates 

 engraved under his superintendence. Mr. "Woods, however, had 

 to select from a vast mass of crude materials of more or less in- 

 terest, and some of them very imperfect. " This" (says his friend 



* In an account of this Society and its publications, which appeared in the 

 ' Builder ' for February 14, 1863, an extract is given fi-om a letter addressed, a 

 few days before, by Mr. Woods to Professor Donaldson, who thus speaks of 

 the writer : — " It is charming to see my old fi'iend Joseph Woods seated in his 

 study, finishing up some of his Q-reciau sketches made above forty years ago, 

 and discoursing of arts and artists with grace and vivacity, and of reminiscences 

 when we were together at Rome, and were meeting Canova, Camuccini, Thor- 

 waldsen, and like men of mark there, with John Soane, jun., Bassevi, Bond, 

 Saunders, George Eennie the sculptor, and other such, now passed away. 

 Hardwick and myself used to go to his rooms, and we read Groldoni and Alfieri 

 together, and battled it out on many questions of taste regarding Greek and 

 Koman architecture." 



