MAY. 207 



THE LITERATURE OF GARDENING. 



BY WILSON FLAGQ. 



No. III. "Analytical Inq,uiry into the Principles of 

 Taste. By Richard Payne Knight. 



This work, which is a general treatise, discusses incident- 

 ally, though at considerable length, the principles of Modern 

 Gardening. It controverts Mr. Burke's theories and Mr. 

 Price's illustrations of them, and gave rise to a new volume 

 by Mr. Price, in which the author represents himself and Mr. 

 Knight as holding a dialogue upon the subjects of controversy. 

 In the "Analytical Inquiry" the whole foundation of modern 

 gardening is condemned, and Kent and Brown are ridiculed 

 with perhaps unjust severity. In relation to the errors in the 

 Treatise on the "Sublime and Beautiful," the author remarks 

 that " both Dr. Johnson and Sir Joshua Reynolds, while liv- 

 ing in the most familiar intimacy and the strictest friendship 

 with Mr. Burke, entirely rejected, in their writings, the prin- 

 ciples which he had endeavored to establish in the " Inquiry 

 into the Sublime and Beautiful." Mr. Knight greatly excels 

 his antagonist, Mr. Price, in metaphysical acumen, though 

 the latter is more eloquent in his descriptive passages ; and 

 while Mr. Price seems to adopt all Burke's errors with a 

 foolish idolatry, Mr. Knight, while refuting them, treats them 

 v/ith contemptuous ridicule, and attributes very many of the 

 errors of taste, as well as many of the false modes of reason- 

 ing on these subjects, to the influence of Mr. Burke's Essay, 

 which seems indeed to be characterized by its false reasoning 

 more than by any other quality. As a specimen of one of his 

 distinctions without a difference, Mr. Burke says that the 

 sensation caused by music in the ascending scale should be 

 called pleasure, while that caused by its descent should be 

 termed delight ! 



The theory of Mr. Burke's, on which Mr. Price grounded 

 almost all his own reasoning is, that the beauty of most objects 

 that come mider the denomination of beautiful consists in 

 their ^^ smoothness,''^ and this is one of the points which our 

 author aims particularly to controvert. "And time hath 



