In all the biographies of Vanbrugh, from the time of Cibber's Lives of the Poets, the early part of the life of this man of genius remains unknown. It is said he descended from an ancient family in _Cheshire_, which came originally from _France_, though by the name, which properly written would be _Van Brugh_, he would appear to be of _Dutch_ extraction. A tale is universally repeated that Sir John once visiting France in the prosecution of his architectural studies, while taking a survey of some fortifications, excited alarm, and was carried to the Bastile: where, to deepen the interest of the story, he sketched a variety of comedies, which he must have communicated to the governor, who, whispering it doubtless as an affair of state to several of the noblesse, these admirers of "sketches of comedies"--English ones no doubt--procured the release of this English Moliere. This tale is further confirmed by a very odd circumstance. Sir John built at Greenwich, on a spot still called "Van Brugh's Fields," two whimsical houses; one on the side of Greenwich Park is still called "the Bastile-House," built on its model, to commemorate this imprisonment. Not a word of this detailed story is probably true! that the _Bastile_ was an object which sometimes occupied the imagination of our architect, is probable; for by the letter we have just quoted, we discover from himself the singular incident of Vanbrugh's having been _born in the Bastile_.[65] Desirous, probably, of concealing his alien origin, this circumstance cast his early days into obscurity. He felt that he was a Briton in all respects but that of his singular birth. The father of Vanbrugh married Sir Dudley Carleton's daughter. We are told he had "political connexions;" and one of his "political" tours had probably occasioned his confinement in that state-dungeon, where his lady was delivered of her burden of love. This odd fancy of building a "Bastile-House" at Greenwich, a fortified prison! suggested to his first life-writer the fine romance; which must now be thrown aside among those literary fictions the French distinguish by the softening and yet impudent term of "_Anecdotes hasardees!_" with which formerly Varillas and his imitators furnished their pages; lies which looked like facts! FOOTNOTES: [62] The name by which Pope ruthlessly satirized Sarah Duchess of Marlborough. [63] I draw the materials of this secret history from an unpublished "Case of the Duke of Marlborough and Sir John Vanbrugh," as also from some confidential correspondence of Vanbrugh with Jacob Tonson, his friend and publisher.