ADDISON AND POPE 



" Addison, 



Thou polished sage, or shall I call thee bard, 

 I see thee come : around thy temples play 

 The lambent flames of humour, bright'ning mild 

 Thy judgment into smiles ; gracious thou com'st 

 With Satire at thy side, who checks her frown, 

 But not her secret sting." Mason. 



"With bolder rage 



Pope next advances ; his indignant arm 

 Waves the poetic brand o'er Timon's shades, 

 And lights them to destruction ; the fierce blaze 

 Sweeps through each kindred vista, groves to groves 

 Nod their fraternal farewell and expire." Mason. 



ALTHOUGH Addison and Pope were contemporaries it 

 was the former who led the crusade against formal 

 gardening in general and the art of Topiary in particu- 

 lar. Less satirical than his one-time friend, Addison 

 nevertheless pointed out with remarkable clearness that 

 the gardens of the early part of the eighteenth century 

 were not nearly so beautiful as they might have been, 

 owing to the excessive use of clipped trees and the 

 extreme care which the gardeners of that time took to 

 secure the utmost regularity in their planting and 

 uniformity in design. 



Addison was counted one of the most brilliant of the 

 Essayists of his time, and among the numerous con- 

 tributions made by him to the Spectator is a lengthy one 

 " On the Pleasures of the Imagination." This took the 

 form of eleven Papers, or epistles, published in regular 

 order from June 21, to July 3, 1712. It is in the 

 fourth paper that he deals more particularly with 



