28 THE BOOK OF TOPIARY 



and in the course of his essay he allowed his sarcastic 

 mockery to find expression here and there in a manner 

 common enough in his time but which would be likely 

 to offend the ears of modern polite folk, consequently I 

 have in a few instances forestalled the editorial blue- 

 pencil. 



"I lately," writes Pope, "took a particular friend 

 of mine to my house in the country, not without some 

 apprehension that it could afford little entertainment to 

 a man of his polite taste, particularly in architecture and 

 gardening, who had so long been conversant with all 

 that is beautiful and great in either. But it was a 

 pleasant surprise to me, to hear him often declare, he 

 had found in my little retirement that beauty which he 

 always thought wanting in most of the celebrated seats, 

 or, if you will, villas, of the nation. This he described 

 to me in those verses, with which Martial begins one of 

 his epigrams : 



"< Our friend Faustinas' country seat I've seen : 

 No myrtles, placed in rows, and idly green, 

 No widow'd plantain, nor clipp'd box-tree, there 

 The useless soil unprofitably share ; 

 But simple nature's hand, with nobler grace, 

 Diffuses artless beauties o'er the place.' 



" There is certainly something in the amiable simpli- 

 city of unadorned nature, that spreads over the mind a 

 more noble sort of tranquillity, and a loftier sensation of 

 pleasure, than can be raised from the nicer scenes of 

 art." 



After a reference to Homer's account of the Garden 

 of Alcinous, and Sir William Temple's remarks upon it, 

 Pope proceeds : " How contrary to this simplicity is 

 the modern practice of gardening ! We seem to make 

 it our study to recede from Nature, not only in the 

 various tonsure of greens into the most regular and 

 formal shapes, but even in monstrous attempts beyond 



