Sir John Vanbrugh had been the object of Swift's satire, in two short poems: one in which he is said to have borrowed his architectural designs from the child's castle of cards and the schoolboys' mud-walls, and from these to have constructed his house at Whitehall —
' Such a monstrous pile,
That no two chairmen could be found
Able to lift it from the ground.'
The other poem ridiculed his dramatic attempts, as borrowed from the French, and found both in his dramas and his buildings
' A type of modern wit and style,
The rubbish of an ancient pile.'
In allusion to Vanbrugh's appointment as architect of Blenheim and Comptroller of Public Works, Swift speaks of him as 'Vitruvius the Second.' Swift seems afterwards to have modified his adverse opinion, and he and Vanbrugh were on good terms, although the architect-dramatist naturally resented the poems.