[Sidenote: Sir John Vanbrugh (1664-1726).] Sir John Vanbrugh, the next of the quartette of illustrious comic writers, occupies a remarkable position in literature. Few other distinguished architects have gained renown in elegant letters, and these have not attempted the drama. As, however, Angelo is more celebrated for St. Peter's than for his sonnets, so Vanbrugh is better remembered by Blenheim, which most have beheld, than by his plays, which are never seen on the stage, and yet connoisseurs have found infinitely more to censure in the former. The faults of the plays are those of the author's age and his school; the faults imputed to his buildings, if they exist, which is a question for architects, are personal to the Fleming, who shared his countryman Rubens's taste for the massive and substantial, and whose epitaph was couched in the adjuration: 'Lie heavy on him, earth, for he Laid many a heavy load on thee.' Though born an English subject, Vanbrugh was of Flemish descent. His first profession was the army. His _début_ as a dramatist was made in 1697 by two sparkling comedies, _The Relapse_ and _The Provoked Wife_, followed by _The False Friend_ (1702), _The Confederacy_, and _The Mistake_ (1705), some imitations of the French, and an unfinished play, _A Journey to London_, completed by Cibber, and produced in 1728 as _The Provoked Husband_. All these plays seem to have been successful; certainly none were in any peril of damnation on the ground apprehended by Orrery: 'This play, I'm horribly afraid, can't last; Allow it pretty, 'tis confounded chaste, And contradicts too much the present taste.' Latterly he became somewhat careless in the composition of his plays, which may be reasonably attributed to the demands made upon him by the laborious profession of architecture, which he took up, apparently without a regular education, about the end of the seventeenth century, and which he may have been the more inclined to pursue on account of the serious loss entailed upon him by his dramatic speculations. Interest or ability made him successful; he was entrusted with no less a task than the erection of Blenheim; and Castle Howard and other celebrated country mansions were built after his designs. He died in 1726. The little known of his personal character is to his credit. [Sidenote: George Farquhar (1678-1707).]