But The Last
Time I Had The Curiosity To See This House, I Missed That Part; So
That I Supposed They Were Removed.
As the present Earl of Pembroke, the lord of this fine palace, is a
nobleman of great personal merit
Many other ways, so he is a man of
learning and reading beyond most men of his lordship's high rank in
this nation, if not in the world; and as his reading has made him a
master of antiquity, and judge of such pieces of antiquity as he
has had opportunity to meet with in his own travels and otherwise
in the world, so it has given him a love of the study, and made him
a collector of valuable things, as well in painting as in
sculpture, and other excellences of art, as also of nature;
insomuch that Wilton House is now a mere museum or a chamber of
rarities, and we meet with several things there which are to be
found nowhere else in the world.
As his lordship is a great collector of fine paintings, so I know
no nobleman's house in England so prepared, as if built on purpose,
to receive them; the largest and the finest pieces that can be
imagined extant in the world might have found a place here capable
to receive them. I say, they "might have found," as if they could
not now, which is in part true; for at present the whole house is
so completely filled that I see no room for any new piece to crowd
in without displacing some other fine piece that hung there before.
As for the value of the piece that might so offer to succeed the
displaced, that the great judge of the whole collection, the earl
himself, must determine; and as his judgment is perfectly good, the
best picture would be sure to possess the place.
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