32 A BOOK OF ENGLISH GARDENS 



Pope was, without doubt, one of the chief pioneers 

 of modern Gardening, and it was not a little due 

 to him that the natural manner in Gardening 

 became the fashion. At Twickenham, Pope made 

 his five acres of Garden into samples of every kind 

 of scenery as artificial and clever as his poetry 

 and as far from real Nature as were ever the now 

 despised old Formal Gardens. Walpole, many years 

 later, gives a description of this Garden of Pope's : 

 " It was a little bit of ground of five acres, enclosed 

 with three lanes and seeing nothing. Pope has 

 twisted and twisted 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, impenetrable woods." 



Then the " Grotto " who has not heard of the 

 far-famed "Grotto" in Pope's Garden, with its 

 shells and pieces of looking-glass, all, according 

 to the poet, " in the natural taste " ? Stephen 

 Switzer agreed with Pope's views in his " Ichno- 

 graphia Rustica," but Bridgman was the first noted 

 Gardener to work in agreement with the views of 

 Addison and Pope. Bridgman " banished verdant 

 sculpture, but still retained green architecture, 

 straight alleys and palisades, and began to in- 

 troduce a little gentle disorder into the plantation 

 of his trees and bushes." 



Horace Walpole declares in his essay "On 

 Modern Gardening" that the introduction of 



