HISTORICAL NOTICES. 33 



rally conceded, mainly to Addison and Pope. In 1712 ap- 

 peared Addison's papers on Imagination, considered with 

 reference to the works of Nature and Art. With a delicate 

 and masterly hand, at a time when he possessed, through 

 the " Spectator," the ear of all refined and tasteful Eng- 

 land, he lifted the veil between the garden and natural 

 charms, and showed how beautiful were their relations — 

 how soon the imagination wearies with the stiffness of the 

 former, and how much grace may be caught from a freer 

 imitation of the swelling wood and hill. 



The next year Pope, who was both a poet and painter, 

 opened his quiver of satire in the celebrated article on ver- 

 dant sculpture in the Guardian, where he ridiculed with no 

 sparing hand the sheared alleys, formal groves, and 



" Statues growing that noble place in, 

 All heathen goddesses most rare, 

 Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar, 

 Standing naked in the open air !" 



Pope was a refined and skilful amateur, and his garden 

 at Twickenham became a celebrated miniature type of the 

 natural school. In his Epistle to Lord Burlington, he de- 

 veloped sound principles for the new art ; — the study of 

 nature ; the genius of the place ; and never to lose sight of 

 good sense ; the latter, a rule which the whimsical follies 

 of that day in gardening, seemed, doubtless, to render espe- 

 cially necessary, but which the discordant abortions of am 

 bitious, would-be men of taste, prove is one soonest violated 

 in every succeeding age. 



The change in the popular feeling thus created, soon 

 gave rise to innovations in the practical art. Bridgeman, 

 the fashionable garden artist of the time, struck, as Horace 



