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MYLNE, ROBERT, a
distinguished architect, was born in Edinburgh, January 4, 1734. He
was the son of Thomas Mylne, a magistrate of the city, and an architect,
whose predecessors for several generations had been master-masons to the
king, and one of whom built the additions to Holyrood house in the reign of
Charles II., and is interred in the neighbourhood of that palace, with a
highly panegyrical epitaph. After receiving a general education in
Edinburgh, the subject of this article travelled on the continent for
improvement in his hereditary science. At Rome, where he resided five years,
he gained in 1758, the first prize of the academy of St Luke in the first
class of architecture, and was unanimously elected a member of that body. In
the course of his travels, he was able, by the minuteness of his
research, to discover many points in ancient architecture which no one ever
before or ever after remarked, and to illustrate by this means some obscure
passages in Vitruvius. On returning to London, a friendless adventurer, the
superiority of a plan which he presented, among those of twenty other
candidates, for the contemplated Blackfriars’ bridge, gained him the
employment of superintending that great public work, which was commenced in
1761. This plan and the duty of superintendence were rewarded, according to
agreement, by a salary of £300 a-year, and five per cent, upon all the money
expended. So well had he calculated the cost, that the bridge was completed
(1765) for the exact sum specified in the estimate, £153,000. As a specimen
of bridge architecture, on a large scale, it was long held in the very
highest rank; and a learned writer has even pronounced it the most perfect
in existence. The mode of centering employed by Mr Mylne, has, in
particular, been the theme of much praise.
This eminent architect was
afterwards appointed surveyor of St Paul’s cathedral; and he it was who
suggested the inscription in that building to the memory of Wren—"Si
monumentum quaeris, circumspice," an idea so felicitous, that it may safely
be described as more generally known, and committed to more memories, than
almost any similar thing in existence. Among the buildings erected or
altered by him, may be mentioned—Rochester cathedral, Greenwich hospital,
(of which he was clerk of the works for fifteen years,) King’s Weston,
Ardincaple house, and Inverary Castle. He was a man of extensive knowledge
in his profession, both in regard to its theory and practice. After a long
career of distinguished employment, he died, May 5, 1811, in his
seventy-eighth year, at the New River Head, London, where he had long
resided as engineer to that company, and was interred in Westminster Abbey,
near the tomb of Sir Christopher Wren. By his wife, Miss Mary Home, whom he
married in 1770, he had nine children, five of whom survived him. |
