Although much of the furniture of the middle and latter part of the eighteenth century is wrongly attributed to Chippendale, and he is now popularly held responsible for many excellencies as well as many faults which do not belong to him, the evidence of his book goes to prove that his work at its best was superior to that of his contemporaries, and vastly superior to that which either preceded or followed it. [Illustration] [Illustration] Chippendale's ordinary furniture may be conveniently classified under three heads of very various artistic value. The first is the pure rococo. In this class of work we find, as Mr. Basil Champneys has happily described it, "intemperately flowing lines, wantonly twisting volutes, fantastic and unmeaning forms, suggestive about equally of organic and inorganic nature, bursting here into a gryphon's or sphynx's head, or there into a bunch of flowers; writhing into a mermaid, or culminating in a trophy; here the volutes are propped with an utterly dissipated and abandoned Gothic shaft, there is the ghost of a classic pediment; here a whole piece of ruin is bodily foisted in; a fortuitous interval is occupied by a sportsman or a flirtation, or by the conventional Chinaman, with an impossible mustache and inconceivable hat. The two sides of the design are seldom alike; symmetry is ostentatiously avoided; everything twists, twirls, writhes, changes, gets distorted like the images in a dyspeptic dream over a book of travels, from which the reader will be glad to awake." [Illustration: PLATE XL CHIPPENDALE CHAIRS] Fortunately for Chippendale's fame this class of work forms but an insignificant portion of the remains of his furniture now extant--a fact which is owing in some measure to its constructive weakness. Its merits are purely those of a skilful carver. [Illustration] A second important characteristic style was that which may be described as "fret work." Some pieces coming under this description, shelves and cabinets for china, amongst others, are constructed almost wholly of thin slabs of wood pierced with a great variety of small patterns, many of them very intricate. These are dainty pieces of furniture, well suited for the drawing-room and boudoir; and it speaks volumes for the care and finish in the workmanship that any of them have been handed down to us in a perfect state during so long an existence.