To Court: after dinner, I visited that excellent painter, Verrio, whose works in fresco in the King's palace, at Windsor, will celebrate his name as long as those walls last. He showed us his pretty garden,[Pg 136] choice flowers, and curiosities, he himself being a skillful gardener.
I went to Clifden, that stupendous natural rock, wood, and prospect, of the Duke of Buckingham's, and buildings of extraordinary expense. The grots in the chalky rocks are pretty: it is a romantic object, and the place altogether answers the most poetical description that can be made of solitude, precipice, prospect, or whatever can contribute to a thing so very like their imaginations. The stand, somewhat like Frascati as to its front, and on the platform is a circular view to the utmost verge of the horizon, which, with the serpenting of the Thames, is admirable. The staircase is for its materials singular; the cloisters, descents, gardens, and avenue through the wood, august and stately; but the land all about wretchedly barren, and producing nothing but fern. Indeed, as I told his Majesty that evening (asking me how I liked Clifden) without flattery, that it did not please me so well as Windsor for the prospect and park, which is without compare; there being but one only opening, and that narrow, which led one to any variety; whereas that of Windsor is everywhere great and unconfined.
Returning, I called at my cousin Evelyn's, who has a very pretty seat in the forest, two miles by hither Clifden, on a flat, with gardens exquisitely kept, though large, and the house a staunch good old building, and what was singular, some of the rooms floored dove tail-wise without a nail, exactly close. One of the closets is pargeted with plain deal, set in diamond, exceeding staunch and pretty.