384 THE PRAISE OF GARDENS 



the turning-point in literature. By his famous Number 173 of 

 the ' Guardian ' ridiculing the absurdities and excesses of ' verdant 

 sculpture ' and the cut-box system, and putting up for sale ' Adam 

 and Eve in yew — Adam a little shaken by the fall of the Tree 

 of Knowledge,' — by his Epistle to Lord Burlington on the 

 Aesthetic of Gardening, and by his own example in his villa at 

 Twickenham where he and his gardener, John Serle, planned the 

 wonderful grotto he describes in his letters, the echo of which 

 has alone survived. Pope is undoubtedly one of the pioneers of 

 modern gardening. A plan is here given of the garden of five 

 acres (never before had so small a compass produced such a 

 revolutionary effect upon gardening ! ) as left at the Poet's death 

 in 1744, by his gardener, John Serle. Thereon appears the 

 Shell Temple, the large Mount, the two small Mounts, the Vine- 

 yard, the Obelisk in memory of his mother, the Grove, the 

 Orangery and the Underground Passage leading to the Grotto. 

 We have also fourteen years later from the pen of Horace 

 Walpole, a description of it when the property of Sir Vv illiam 

 Stanhope. ' Would you believe it, he has cut down" the sacred 

 groves themselves ! In short, it was a little bit of ground of 5 

 acres, inclosed with three lanes and seeing nothing. Pope has 

 twisted and twirled and rhymed and harmonised this till it 

 appeared two or three sweet little lawns opening and opening 

 beyond one another, and the whole surrounded with thick im- 

 penetrable woods. Sir William, by advice of his son-in-law, 

 Mr Ellis, has hacked and hewed these groves, wriggled a 

 winding-gravel walk through them with an edging of shrubs, 

 in what they call the modern taste, and, in short, has desired 

 the three lanes to walk in again — and now is forced to shut 

 them out again by a wall, for there was not a Muse could 

 walk there but she was spied by every country fellow that went 

 by with a pipe in his mouth.' ^ Pope divides the literary honours 

 of his generation with Addison who, humorist himself, in his 

 equally famous 'Spectator' on the 'Pleasures of a Garden,' 

 declared Nature should be humoured, instead of being coerced. 

 ^ Letter to Sir Horace Mann, June 20th, 1760. 



