A real house, with rooms, and stairs,
Five times at least as big as theirs;
Taller than Miss's by two yards;
Not a sham thing of clay or cards:
And so he did; for, in a while,
He built up such a monstrous pile,
That no two chairmen could be found
Able to lift it from the ground.
Still at Whitehall it stands in view,
Just in the place where first it grew:
There all the little schoolboys run,
Envying to see themselves outdone.
From such deep rudiments as these,
Van is become, by due degrees,
For building fam'd, and justly reckon'd,
At court, Vitruvius the second:
No wonder, since wise authors show,
That best foundations must be low;
And now the duke has wisely ta'en him
To be his architect at Blenheim.
But, raillery at once apart,
If this rule holds in every art;
Or if his grace were no more skill'd in
The art of battering walls than building,
We might expect to see next year,
A mouse-trap-man chief engineer!
BAUCIS
