ALEXANDER POPE 143 



gone ! yet my house is inlarg'd, and the gardens extend and 

 flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost. I have 

 more fruit-trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought 

 of; nay I have good Melons and Pine-apples of my own growth. 

 I am as much a better Gardiner, as I am a worse Poet, than 

 when you saw me : but gardening is near a-kin to Philosophy, for 

 Tully says "Agricultura proxima sapientise," For God's sake why 

 should not you (that are a step higher than a Philosopher, a 

 Divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a Bishop) 

 e'en give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have 

 already done every thing else) so quit the place, and live and die 

 with me ? And let " Tales Animae Concordes " be our Motto and 

 our Epitaph. — Letter to Dea?i Swift, March 25, 1736. 



Let the young ladies be assured I make nothing new in my 

 gardens, without wishing to see the print of their fairy steps in 

 every part of them. I have put the last hand to my works of this 

 kind, in happily finishing the subterraneous way and grotto. I 

 there found a spring of the clearest water, which falls in a perpetual 

 rill, that echoes through the Cavern day and night. From the 

 river Thames, you see through my arch up a walk of the wilder- 

 ness, to a kind of open temple, wholly composed of shells in the 

 rustic manner; and from that distance under the temple, you look 

 down through a sloping arcade of trees, and see the sails on the 

 river passing suddenly and vanishing as through a perspective 

 glass. When you shut the doors of this grotto it becomes on the 

 instant, from a luminous room, a Camera obscura, on the walls 

 of which all the objects of the river, hills, woods and boats are 

 forming a moving picture in their visible radiations ; and when 

 you have a mind to Hght it up, it affords you a very different 

 scene. It is finished with shells interspersed with pieces of 

 looking-glass in angular forms ; and in the ceiling is a star of the 

 same material, at which when a lamp, of an orbicular figure of 

 thin alabaster, is hung in the middle, a thousand pointed rays 

 glitter, and are reflected over the place. There are connected to 

 this grotto by a narrower passage two porches with niches and 



