119 



Knight, delighting in briars, docks, thistles, precipices, and unbeaten paths, 

 inveighs with the utmost bitterness against close-mown lawn and nicely 

 gravelled walks, exclaiming — 



And a^ain — 



Curse on the shrubbery's insipid scenes 

 Of tawdry fringe, encircling vapid greens." 



; Break their fell scythes, that would these beauties shave, 

 And sink then- iron rollers hi the wave." 



This writer is, however, answered by a close observer of the face of 

 Nature, in terms which are most expressive, — 



" Hath Nature given us eyes 

 To see the vaulted arch, and the rich crop 

 Of sea and land ; which can distinguish 'twist 

 The fiery orbs above, and the twin'd stones 

 Upon the humble beach? And can we not 

 Partition make, with spectacles so precious, 

 'Twist foul and fair?" 



Sir Uvedale Price, also, in his " Essays on the Picturesque," (in modern 

 gardening), treats the professors of it with contempt and ridicule, denouncing 

 them as " deformers," " shavers of nature," &c, and urges the adoption of 

 pictorial scenery as the standard of natural beauty. 



It is scarcely conceivable how men of such natural talent could so far 

 lose themselves, and exhibit such a want of true taste, as to contend with such 

 bitterness against art and order. Surely the abode of man is not to be 

 associated with wildness and neglect, because neatness is considered by these 

 writers as less suited to the pencil of the painter. 



The reason of their denunciations may probably be found in the 

 antagonism which they met with in such men as Brown and Repton, and 

 other professors of Landscape Gardening of the same day, whose aim was to 

 assist nature in the display of all her " fair proportions," without regard to 

 pictorial imaginings. To my mind, Sir Uvedale Price and Mr. Knight were 

 not only unsound in the arguments by which they attempted to support wild 

 against cultivated nature, but the doggedness with which they maintained 

 those arguments had a tendency to inculcate false principles as to forming 

 and arranging home or dress scenery to the best effect. 



