and erected near it, in 1730-6, a villa built after the model of the celebrated villa of Palladio. This building also provoked the satire of Lord Hervey, who said of it that 'it was too small to live in and too large to hang to a watch.' The grounds were laid out in the Italian style, adorned with temples, obelisks, and statues, and in these 'sylvan scenes' it was the special delight of Burlington to entertain the literary and artistic celebrities whom he numbered among his friends. Here, relates Gay,
Pope unloads the boughs within his reach,
The purple vine, blue plum, and blushing peach.
Pope addressed to Burlington the fourth epistle of his Moral Essays, 'Of the Use of Riches,' afterwards changed to 'On False Taste;' and Gay, whom he sent into Devonshire to regain his health, addressed to him his 'Epistle on a Journey to Exeter,' 1716. Both poets frequently refer in terms of warm eulogy to his disinterested devotion to literature and art; but Gay, though he was entertained by him for months, when he lost in the South Sea scheme the money obtained from the publication of his poems, expressed his disappointment that he had received from him so 'few real benefits' (Coxe, Life of Gay, 24). This, however, was mere unreasonable peevishness, for undoubtedly Burlington erred rather on the side of generosity than otherwise. Walpole says of him 'he possessed every quality of a genius and artist except envy.' He was a director of the Royal Academy of Music for the performance of Handel's works, and about 1716 received Handel into his house (Schoelcher, Life of Handel, p. 44). At an early period he was a patron of Bishop Berkeley. The architect Kent, whose acquaintance he made in Italy, resided in his house till his death in 1748, and Burlington used every effort to secure him commissions and extend his fame. His enthusiastic admiration of Inigo Jones induced him to repair the church at Covent Garden. It was at his instance and by his help that Kent published the designs of Inigo Jones, and he also brought out a beautiful edition of Palladio's 'Fabbriche Antiche,' 1730.
Burlington supplied designs for various buildings, including the assembly rooms at York built at his own expense, Lord Harrington's house at Petersham, the dormitory at Westminster School, the Duke of Richmond's house at Whitehall, and General Wade's in Cork Street. The last two were pulled down many years ago. Of General Wade's house Walpole wrote, 'It is worse contrived in the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty of front,' and Lord Chesterfield suggested that, 'as the general could not live in it to his ease, he had better take a house over against it and look at it.' Burlington 'spent,' says Walpole, 'large sums in contributing to public works, and was known to choose that the expense should fall on himself rather than that his country should be deprived of some beautiful edifices.' On this account he became so seriously involved in money difficulties that he was compelled to part with a portion of his Irish estates, as we learn from Swift: 'My Lord Burlington is now selling in one article 9,000l. a year in Ireland for 200,000l., which won't pay his debts' (Swift's Works, ed. Scott, xix. 129). He died in December 1753. By his wife, Lady Dorothy Savile, daughter and coheiress of William, marquis of Halifax, he left three daughters, but no male heir. His wife was a great patroness of music. She also drew in crayons, and is said to have possessed a genius for caricature.
[Lodge's Irish Peerage, i. 177-8; Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting; Works of Pope, Gay, and Swift; Wheatley's Round about Piccadilly, 46-59.]
BOYLE, Hon. ROBERT (1627–1691), natural philosopher and chemist, was the seventh son and fourteenth child of Richard Boyle, the 'great' Earl of Cork, by his second wife Catherine, daughter of Sir Geoffrey Fenton, principal secretary of state for Ireland, and was born at Lismore Castle, in the province of Munster, Ireland, on 25 Jan. 1627. He learned early to speak Latin and French, and won paternal predilection by his aptitude for study, strict veracity, and serious turn of mind. His mother died when he was three years old, and at the age of eight he was sent to Eton, the provost then being his father's friend, Sir Henry Wotton, described by Boyle as 'not only a fine gentleman himself, but very well skilled in the art of making others so.' Here an accidental perusal of Quintus Curtius 'conjured up in him' (he narrates in an autobiographical fragment)' that unsatisfied appetite for knowledge that is yet as greedy as when it first was raised; ' while 'Amadis de Gaule,' which fell into his hands during his recovery from a fit of tertian ague, produced an unsettling effect, counter-acted by a severe discipline—self-imposed by a boy under ten—of mental arithmetic and algebra.
From Eton, after nearly four years, he was transferred to his father's recently purchased estate of Stalbridge, in Dorsetshire, and his education continued by the Rev. Mr. Douch,
