THE Early Georgian Period covers an interval of about forty years, - from the accession of the House of Hanover in 1714 to the appearance of Chippendale's The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director in 1754. During this period, strange to say, the art of the Regency and Louis XV., though not unfelt, has not so much influence as a spurious Gothic revival, an equally spurious "Chinese" furore and a fetish worship of Palladio and Classic architecture.

The commanding figures in the taste of the day were William Kent, Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington, and John Talman. Kent and Talman studied in Rome under the Chevalier Luti. When the Society of Antiquaries was established in its present form in 1718, Talman was appointed its first director. He died in 1726. Kent attracted the attention of the Earl of Burlington, and from 1716 to 1748, when Kent died, he received the shelter and hospitality of the Earl's town house.

Kent's charming personality, and the authority he assumed in art matters in consequence of his foreign training, enabled him to win a high position in fashionable circles. He soon became the arbiter of taste. Horace Walpole testifies: "He was not only consulted for furniture, as frames of pictures, glasses, tables, chairs, etc., but for plate, for a barge, for a cradle. And so impetuous was fashion that two great ladies prevailed on him to make designs for their birthday gowns. The one he dressed in a petticoat decorated with columns of the five orders; the other, like a bronze, in a copper-coloured satin with ornaments of gold." Walpole also says: "Kent's style predominated during his life." Besides the numerous mansions he built for the nobility in the Classic style, he also built a "Gothic" house for Henry Pelham.

Pope says:

"Must bishops, lawyers, statesmen, have the skill To build, to flan, judge paintings, what you will? Then why not Kent as well our treaties draw, Bridgman explain the gospel, Gibbs the law?"*

Kent was a painter, architect and general designer, and nobody has been found to oppose Hogarth's dictum that neither England nor Italy ever produced a more contemptible dauber. Hogarth satirizes him in two of his prints: Masquerades and Operas (1724), and 'The Man of Taste (1732). In the former, the statue of Kent surmounts Burlington Gate, and supported on a lower level by the statues of Raphael and Michael Angelo; in the latter, he again towers above the same two artists over the gate (of taste), which is being whitewashed. On a scaffolding Alexander Pope's diminutive form is wielding the brush and spattering passers-by with the whitewash. The Duke of Chandos gets most of it. The Earl of Burlington is mounting the ladder with more material.

* Bridgman was a famous landscape gardener of the day, and Gibbs a noted architect.

Burlington House, Piccadilly, was practically rebuilt about 1716 from the Earl's plans. It formed a striking exception to the mixed and commonplace architecture of the period, and aroused the enthusiasm of contemporary writers. Gay writes: "Beauty within, without proportion reigns." Lord Hervey, however, sneers at its lack of accommodation:

"Possessed of one great hall of state Without a room to sleep or eat."

This mordant wit also satirizes another residence at Chiswick owned by Lord Burlington, which was built about 1730 after the model of the celebrated villa of the worshipped Palladio. According to Hervey's, "It was too small to live in and too large to hang to a watch." Burlington designed mansions for others also. One of these, belonging to General Wade, in Cook Street, provoked Walpole to say: "It is worse contrived in the inside than is conceivable, all to humour the beauty in front." Lord Chesterfield also suggested: "As the general could not live in it to his ease, he had better take a house over against it and look at it."

The discomfort of the interior arrangement of even the most magnificent houses built at the beginning of this period is attested by more than one writer. Pope sneers at Blenheim as follows:

"See, sir, here's the grand approach, This way is for his Grace's coach; There lies the bridge, and here's the clock, Observe the lion and the cock, The spacious court, the colonnade! The chimneys are so well designed, They never smoke in any wind. The gallery's contrived for walking, The windows to retire and talk in. The council chamber for debate, And all the rest are rooms of state. Thanks, sir, cried I, 'tis very fine, But where d'ye sleep, or where d'ye dine? I find by all you have been telling That 'tis a house but not a dwelling."

How strong the fashionable taste of the day was for Gothic, Chinese and French decorations is gathered from the indignant writings of contemporaries who could not bear to see their pet Classic neglected. We learn that by the middle of the century the craze for the French and Chinese had somewhat abated. In 1756, Isaac Ware has much to say on the late tendencies. He speaks bitterly of the degeneracy of modern taste, and attacks those who "flew into every absurdity that the scope of things could afford. Of this we see instances in many expensive works which stand, and will stand to disgrace our country: and we have models of them, and of others as ridiculous, proposed for imitation. . .

We have seen architecture, a science founded upon the soundest principles, disgraced by ignorant caprice, and fashion very lately attempted, and it would be well if we could not say attempts now, to undermine and destroy it by the caprice of France, and by the whims of China.

"How must a man of true taste frown to see in some of the best buildings of that country, as it would pretend for the encouragement of arts, Corinthian capitals made of cocks' heads. It is called the French (order) and let them have the praise of it; the Gothic shafts and Chinese bells are not below or beyond it in poorness of imagination.