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 gardey-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 
