guineas to Knox Ward. He died of quinsy at his house in Whitehall on 26 March 1726 (Hist. Reg. Chron. Diary, p. 13), and was buried in the Vanbrugh vault in the north aisle of St. Stephen's, Walbrook. In his will, dated 25 Aug. 1725, he names his sisters Mary, Victoria, and Robina, his [half] sister Garencieres and her daughter Lucia; his brothers, Charles and Philip, and his son Charles. The will was proved on 22 April 1726 by Dame Henrietta Maria Vanbrugh, executrix (P. C. C. 84, Plymouth).
Lady Vanbrugh died at East Greenwich on 26 April 1776 (Gent. Mag. 1776, p. 240, ‘aged 90;’ her real age was eighty-two), and was buried in the Vanbrugh vault on 3 May following. By her will, dated 15 June 1769, she leaves 200l. to her daughter, Mrs. Tulloh, and to ‘Mr. Vanbrugh’ (probably a nephew), with other property, ‘the rooms and cellars that belong to me in the Opera House … all the family pictures, and two small pictures set in gold—one of Sir John Vanbrugh, and the other of Sir Dudley Carleton.’ The will was proved on 22 May 1776 (P. C. C. 250, Bellas; cf. Foster, Yorkshire Pedigrees, 1874; Robinson, Priory and Peculiar of Snaith, 1861, pp. 55 sq.; Genealogist, 1878, ii. 237).
Charles Vanbrugh (d. 1745), their only surviving son, the idol of his parents and godson of the Earl of Carlisle, was educated privately until about 1736, when he went to finish his studies at Lausanne. There in April 1738 he became a member of the ‘Compagnie des Nobles Fusillers,’ and soon afterwards he returned to England and obtained an ensigncy in the Coldstream guards (2nd foot guards). He went with his regiment to Flanders in 1744. He died of wounds ‘received at the late battle near Tournai’ (that is, Fontenoy) on 12 May 1745 (Gent. Mag. 1745, p. 276). He was twenty-six years old on the day of his death. He was buried at Ath on 13 May (Genealogist, ii. 239; cf. Walpole, Letters to Sir Horace Mann, 1833, ii. 94; Carlisle Papers; Addit. MS. 32703).
Apart from the Duchess of Marlborough (upon whom, in his correspondence with Tonson, Vanbrugh wasted many unparliamentary epithets) and Hearne, who disliked all whigs impartially, Vanbrugh had a good word from everybody as the best of good fellows. As an architect, although he had a passion for size amounting to megalomania, he had an original and powerful imagination and a just idea of subordination. His scenic talent was distinctive, and his ‘passionate appreciation of the abstract qualities of architecture gives him a place by himself’ (Blomfield).
In his plays he lacked originality and sentiment, but excelled in wit and in all the refinements of technique. He rarely attempts blank verse, and when he does (as in ‘Æsop’) the result is atrocious, while his attempts at poetic utterance are the merest fustian. But the ‘Relapse’ and the ‘Confederacy’ are full of sparkling dialogue and not deficient in character. Vanbrugh and Congreve copied nature, says Fielding (Tom Jones, pref. to bk. xiv.), while their successors do but copy them. Lord Foppington, ‘the best fop ever brought upon the stage’ (Ward), is as famous as Dundreary, and with more reason. Above all, Vanbrugh's comedies have the merit of facility. Contemporary actors liked them because the parts were so easy to learn; nowadays he is the most readable of the Restoration dramatists. In like manner Voltaire praised him for being the gayest, as Congreve the wittiest and Wycherley the strongest, of the English playwrights. Walpole attributed his ease to the fact that he lived in the best society and wrote as they talked. Another good saying of Walpole's was that ‘if Vanbrugh had adapted from Vitruvius as well as from Dancour, Inigo Jones would not have been the first architect of Britain.’ To which it may be added that if a few only among adapters had approached Vanbrugh's excellence, adaptation need not have proved ‘the bane of the English drama.’
The best portrait of Vanbrugh is the Kit-Cat by Kneller (36 × 28½), painted when he was about forty, and still preserved at Bayfordbury. It has been engraved by John Simon [q. v.], by T. Chalmers, by Cooper (for the ‘Memoirs of the Kit-Cat Club,’ 1821), and by many others (Cat. Loan Portraits, 1867, No. 112). Another portrait, now preserved at the Heralds' College, was painted by J. Richardson in 1725. The Kneller portrait depicts him holding a pair of compasses; in this he holds in his left hand a plan of Blenheim. The fine mezzotint executed by Faber in 1727 is reproduced as frontispiece to ‘Sir John Vanbrugh’ (1893).
Collective editions of Vanbrugh's works were published in London, 1730, 2 vols. 8vo; 1735 and 1739, 2 vols. 12mo; Dublin, 1765, 2 vols. 12mo; London, 1776, 2 vols. 12mo. In 1840 appeared ‘The Dramatic Works of Wycherley, Congreve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar,’ with excellent biographical and critical notices from the pen of Leigh Hunt, and this volume, dedicated to Thomas Moore, has been several times reprinted. In 1893 appeared in two volumes (London, 8vo) ‘Sir John Vanbrugh,’ edited by W. C. Ward, and this edition, containing all Vanbrugh's
