16 LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



Luxuriant ; meanwhile murmuring waters fall 

 Down the slope hills, dispers'd, or in a lake, 

 That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd 

 Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams. 

 The birds their choir apply : airs, vernal airs, 

 Breathing the smell of field and grove, attune 

 The trembhng leaves, while universal Pan 

 Knit with the Graces and the hours in dance 

 Led on th' eternal spring." 



Addison and Pope, however, undoubtedly have the merit 

 of completely overthrowing the formal, and substituting in 

 the minds of the British public a taste for the natural style. 

 The celebrated essay by Addison, "On the Causes of the 

 Pleasures of the Imagination arising from the works of Na- 

 ture, and their superiority over those of Art," was written in 

 1712. And the widely-read article " or> Verdant Sculpture," 

 by Pope, appeared in the " Guardian^^ in the succeeding 

 year. In the former, the superiority of the beauty of natural 

 expression is most effectively shown, and the philosophical 

 principles of Landscape Gardening suggested, in the latter, the 

 absurdities of the ancient style are pointed out in a masterly 

 manner.* 



Kent was the first artist who, fully entering into the spirit 

 of these reformers in taste, fairly put in execution on a large 

 scale what they suggested in theory. "Painter enough," 

 says Horace Walpole, "to taste the charms of landscape, 

 bold and opinionative enough to dare and dictate, and born 

 with a genius to strike out a great system ; from the twilight 



* "Among the first examples of modern Landscape Gardening were those given 

 by Pope and Addison. In so far as was practicable, on a spot of little more than 

 two acres. Pope practised what he wrote : and his well known garden at Twick- 

 enham contained, so early as 1716, some highly picturesque and natural looking 

 scenery ; accurately described by contemporary writers. Addison had a small 

 retirement at Bilton, near Rugby, laid out in what ma}' be called a rural style, 

 which still exists with very little alteration besides that of time." — Encyclopadia 

 of Gardening. 



