Robert Treat Paine Papers, Volume 2
Your favour1 by Capt: Cobb I2 have received & deliver'd the Letter to Mr: Joy; I now send you by Capt: Cobb the London Art of Building3: which I take to be the Book you wanted.
You will find in pa. 103 a delineation of the Tuscan door you so much admired; the Rustick work is added witht. any difficulty; the profile, of Entablature &ca. is minutely discribed in plate 4th. page 77.
4 when you determine the height of your column, you may find the proportion of Entablature, pedistal &ca: by the inspectional Table pa: 95.
These Hints I am persuaded will be suffient to a Gent: already so well acquainted with Architecture (in Theory) & of such curious observation.
I should have attempted a plan, but as no Team is now here, to carry one up, that could be serviceable; & the difficulty of gett
It will always give me pleasure to be favour'd with Mr: Paynes commands. I am with due Esteem. Your Hum. Servt:,
Not located.
James Flagg (1739–1773), son of Gershom Flagg, housewright, was a Boston merchant who went to Maine in the 1760s. He was sued for debt by Dr. Sylvester Gardiner in 1765. They appointed referees to settle the case, but Gardiner disputed their findings, and this led to a pamphlet war between the two including A Short Vindication of the Conduct of the Referees in the case of Gardiner versus Flagg, against the Unjust Aspersions contained in two anonymous pamphlets lately published and banded about (Boston, 1767). Flagg died at St. Eustacia in the West Indies in 1773.
William Salmon, Palladio Londiniensis: or, the London art of building (London, 1734). RTP may have had the 7th edition (London, 1767).
Several illegible cancelled words.
RTP was in the process of adding an office onto his Taunton house this summer (see Diary, June 8, July 11, Aug. 7, 1772), but the correspondence with Flagg probably refers to his work on a committee to build a new court house in Taunton (see Diary, Feb. 7, June 1, 10, 23, July 8, Oct. 13, 1772).