82 THE FORMAL GARDEN IN ENGLAND iv 



the Dragon by next April," and " a quickset 

 hog shot up into a porcupine through being 

 forgot a week in rainy weather." This was 

 an excellent sarcasm on an admitted extrava- 

 gance, and the formal school had undoubtedly 

 run riot with their pleaching and statuary ; but 

 this was not so much due to the system as to 

 the fact that garden design had slipped out of 

 the hands of cultivated designers and been 

 monopolised by the nursery gardener. The 

 latter, as Addison pointed out, would naturally 

 destroy an old orchard, or anything else, how- 

 ever beautiful, in order to reduce his stock of 

 evergreens arid plants. The " natural " manner 

 of gardening now became the rage. Pope 

 turned his 5 acres at Twickenham into a 

 compendium of nature, and was considered to 

 have shown admirable taste by condensing 

 samples of every kind of scenery into a suburban 

 villa garden. Even the architects were not 

 true to their colours. Batty Langley published 

 a sumptuous book on The New Principles of 

 Gardenings the value of which consists chiefly 

 in its paper and binding ; but Kent, who really 

 was an architect of ability, was the great rene- 

 gade. It seems almost inconceivable that a man 

 such as Kent, who could design fine and severe 

 architecture, should have lent himself so abjectly 

 to the fancies of the fashionable amateur. No 

 doubt he had to make his living, and the fashion 

 was too strong for him. Kent was something 



