Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/317

 in eighteenth-century literature, e.g. in Robert Lloyd's ‘Cit's Country Box’ and Garrick and Colman's ‘Clandestine Marriage.’ What stay Roubiliac made with Cheere is unknown; but it seems to have been Cheere who recommended him to Jonathan Tyers [q. v.] of Vauxhall, then engaged in decorating the gardens with pictures and statues, as a fitting person to carve a statue of Handel. This, for which Tyers paid 300l., was erected in May 1738, and for many years was the chief glory of the popular pleasure-ground by the Thames. After many vicissitudes it finally found its way into the collection of Mr. Alfred H. Littleton, formerly of No. 1 Berners Street. The model, which once belonged to Nollekens, was last in the possession of Hamlet the silversmith. For Tyers Roubiliac also executed a Milton in lead, ‘seated on a rock, in an attitude listening to soft music,’ as he is described in ‘Il Penseroso.’

Before the Handel was carved, Roubiliac must have set up for himself, for he is represented in the journals of the day as engaged upon the work in his own studio at St. Peter's Court, St. Martin's Lane, the room afterwards occupied by the St. Martin's Lane Academy. What were Roubiliac's next works is exceedingly doubtful. Edward Walpole is said by Horace Walpole (Anecdotes of Painting, ed. Dallaway, 1828, iv. 192) to have recommended him for half the busts at Trinity College, Dublin, and he certainly did a bust of Swift which is copied as the frontispiece to Dr. Craik's biography, and is mentioned in Wilde's ‘Closing Years of Dean Swift's Life’ (1849, p. 87) as having been executed in 1745. He also did for Bolingbroke in 1741 a bust of Pope, the clay model of which belongs to Mr. Hallam Murray of Newstead, Wimbledon, and the finished marble of which had in 1848 passed into the possession of Sir Robert Peel, who in that year purchased at the Stowe sale (Illustrated London News, 26 Aug.) another bust of Prior, reputed to be by the same sculptor. To this period may therefore belong the busts of Chesterfield, Bentley, Mead, Folkes, Willoughby, and Ray, the models and casts of which, now in the glass and ceramic gallery of the British Museum, were presented to that institution, soon after Roubiliac's death, by Chesterfield's biographer, Dr. Matthew Maty [q. v.] Six of the finished marbles from these are now in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge; and some of the others presented to Pope by Frederick, prince of Wales, were bequeathed by the poet to Lord Lyttelton. Roubiliac's first definite monumental work, however, belongs to 1743, being the tomb of John Campbell, second duke of Argyll, in the south transept of Westminster Abbey, a commission also attributable to Edward Walpole, and notable for a much-praised figure of ‘Eloquence.’ Other monuments followed: to Marshal Wade, to General Fleming, and to General Hargrave—personages, as Goldsmith hints (Citizen of the World, Letter cix), not wholly deserving of the elaborate mural medleys compiled in their memory. The next datable record of Roubiliac's work is the monument in 1751 to Henry Chichele, founder of All Souls', Oxford.

Of personal records there are but few, and those doubtful. In June 1750 Tyers lent him 20l. (, Nollekens, 1828, ii. 94). This looks as if he were needy, unless the fact that in this same year (31 March) he had been robbed in Dean Street, Soho (, London, 1891, i. 493), can be held to account for his necessity. Then, in January 1752, his marriage was reported in the ‘General Advertiser’ and other papers to Miss Crosby of Deptford, ‘a celebrated beauty,’ with 10,000l. But, beyond this announcement, which is repeated by Fielding in the ‘Covent Garden Journal’ for 11 Jan. 1752, there seems to be no further reference whatever to the circumstances. Moreover, late in the same year Roubiliac was travelling alone in Italy, for in October Reynolds met him with Pond and Hudson, making his first expedition to Rome, where he found little to admire in ancient sculpture, and frankly preferred the moderns. By the work of Bernini, indeed, he seems to have been profoundly impressed. All he had done previously, he told Reynolds, after a reinspection on his return of his own efforts in Westminster Abbey, seemed ‘meagre and starved, as if made of nothing but tobacco pipes’ (, Reynolds, 1813, p. 44).

In 1753 Roubiliac completed another great sepulchral trophy in Westminster Abbey to Admiral Sir Peter Warren. The next important statue he executed was the full-length of Shakespeare (1758), now in the entrance hall of the British Museum. This was a commission from Garrick, who placed it in a special temple at Hampton, and gave the sculptor 315l. After the Shakespeare came a second statue of Handel, now above his grave in Poet's Corner; but what is perhaps Roubiliac's most popular effort belongs to 1761. This is the famous Nightingale monument at Westminster, where a fleshless and shrouded Death menaces with his dart the figure of a young wife who is sinking in her husband's arms. Besides these, there are many scattered works which it is not always easy to date. At Trinity College, Cambridge, is his celebrated statue of Newton (1755)—