THE ENGLISH GARDEN. 25 



So taught the Sage, taught a degenerate reign 

 What in Eliza's golden day was tafte. 425 



Not but the mode of that romantic age, 

 The age of tourneys, triumphs, and quaint mafques, 

 Glar'd with fantaftic pageantry, which dimm'd 

 The fober eye of truth, and dazzled ev'n 



The Sage himfelf ; witnefs his arched hedge, 430 



E In 



was a very broad gravel walk garnifh'd with a row of Laurels which looked like 

 Orange-trees, and was terminated at each end by a fummer-Houfe. The par- 

 terre or principal garden which makes the fecond part in each of their defcrip- 

 tions, it muft be owned is equally devoid of fimplicity in them both. " The 

 " garden (fays his Lordfhip) is beft to be fquare, encompafTed with a ftately 

 " arched hedge, the arches to be upon carpenters work, over every arch a little 

 " belly enough to receive a cage of birds, and, over every fpace between the 

 " arches, fome other little figure with broad plates of round coloured glafs 

 " gilt for the fun to play upon." It would have been difficult for Sir William 

 to make his more fantaflic ; he has however not made it more natural. The 

 third part, which Lord Bacon calls the Heath,, and the other the Wildernefs 

 is that in which the Genius of Lord Bacon is moft vifible; " for this," fays he, 

 " I wifh to be framed as much as may be to a natural wildnefs." And accord- 

 ingly he gives us a defcription of it in the moft agreeable and pidturefque terms 

 infomuch that it feems lefs the work of his own fancy than a delineation of that 

 ornamental fcenery which had no exiftence till above a century after it was writ- 

 ten. Such, when he defcended to matters of mere Elegance (for when we fpeak 

 of Lord Bacon, to treat of thefe was to defcend) were the amazing powers of his 

 univerfal Genius. 



