536 



LANDSCAPE GARDENING. 



History, great justice to his observation, and prove by their 



S ~"""V""^ -works, how difficult it is to succeed in the undertaking. 

 Yet to this whimsical exercise of caprice, the modern 

 improvements in gardening may chiefly be attributed." 

 (Etsay on Design, &c. p. 50.) No man could be a 

 more enthusiastic admirer of the classics, a warmer pa- 

 triot, or a more rigid critic, than this author; and it 

 appears from another part of his work, (Discussion on 

 Kent, p. 105.) that he was well aware, when he wrote 

 the above passage, that the origin of the modern style 

 was generally traced to Kent. That he should derive it 

 from our attempt at the Chinese manner, we consider as 

 a proof of candour and impartiality. Having now given 

 the different views respecting the origin, we shall next 

 advert to the improvement of the modern style, in which 

 happily there is a greater unanimity of opinion. 



Addison. It is allowed on all sides, that .Addison (who had 

 many years afterwards a smal^ retirement at Bilton, 

 near Rugby, laid it out in what may be called a ru- 

 ral style, and which still exists with very little altera- 

 tion besides that of time,) and Pope " prepared for the 

 new art of gardening the firm basis of philosophical 



Pope. principles." Pope attacked the verdant sculpture, and 

 formal groves of the ancient style, witli the keenest 

 shafts of ridicule ; and in his epistle to Lord Burling- 

 ton, laid down the justest principles of art the study 

 of nature, of the genius of the place, and never to lose 

 sight of good sense. 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 Twickenham 

 contained, so early as 1716, some highly picturesque 

 and natural-like scenery, accurately described by va- 

 rious cotemporary writers. (See Beauties of England 

 and Wales.) 



Kent. But it was reserved for Kent, the friend of Lord 



Burlington, to carry Pope's ideas more extensively into 

 execution. It was reserved for him, says Daines Bar- 

 rington, "to realize the beautiful descriptions of the 

 poets, for which he was peculiarly adapted, by being 

 a painter ; as the true test of perfection in modern 

 gardening is, that a landscape painter would choose it 

 for a composition." Bridgeman, the fashionable de- 

 signer of gardens previously to Kent, Lord Walpole 

 conjectures to have been " struck and reformed" by the 

 Guardian, No. 173. He banished verdant sculpture, and 

 introduced morsels of a forest appearance in the gar- 

 dens at Richmond; " but not till other innovators had 

 broke loose from rigid symmetry." The capital stroke 

 was the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the 

 introduction of ha-has the harmony of the lawn with 

 the park followed. Kent appeared at this moment, 

 and saw that all nature was a garden ; " painter enough 

 to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative. 

 enough to dare, and to dictate, and born with a genius 

 to strike out a great system ; from the twilight of im- 

 perfect essays, he realised the compositions of the 

 greatest masters in painting." " Kent," continues his 

 lordship, " was neither without assistance nor -without 

 faults. Pope contributed to form his taste ; and the 

 gardens at Carleton House were probably borrowed 

 from the poet's at Twickenham." 



The various deviations from rigid uniformity, or 

 more correctly, the various attempts to succeed in the 

 Chinese manner, appear thus to have taken a new and 

 decisive character under the guidance of Kent, a cir- 

 cumstance, in our opinion, entirely owing to his having 

 the ideas of a painter ; for no mere gardener, occupied 

 in imitating the Chinese, or even Italian manner, would 

 ever have thought of studying to produce picturesque 



effect. Picturesque beauty, indeed, we consider to History. 

 have been but little recognised in this country, ex- 'T''' 

 cepting by painters, previously to the time^of Pope, 

 who was both a painter and a poet. The^ontinued 

 approbation of the modern style, as purified from the 

 Chinese absurdities, originally more or less introduced 

 with it, and continued in many places long after Kent's 

 time, we consider to be chiefly owing to the circum- 

 stance of the study of drawing and landscape painting 

 having become a part of the general system of educa- 

 tion : and thus, as Mr. Alison observes, our taste for 

 natural beauty was awakened ; " the power of simple 

 nature was felt and acknowledged, and the removal 

 of the articles of acquired expression, le~d men only 

 more strongly to attend to the natural expression of 

 scenery, and to study the means by which it might be 

 maintained or imprpved." 



Kent was born in Yorkshire, and apprenticed to a 

 coach painter in 1719- He soon afterwards came to 

 London, discovered a genius for painting, was sent 

 to Italy, patronised there by Lord Burlington, return- 

 ed with his lordship, and lived with him in Burlington 

 House till 1748, when he died at the age of 63 years. 

 On his first return, he was chiefly employed to paint 

 historical subjects and ceilings, and the Hall at Stowe 

 is from his pencil. Soon afterwards he was employ- 

 ed as an architect, and lastly as a landscape garden- 

 er. It is not known where he first exercised his ge- 

 nius as a layer out of grounds ; probably at Clare- 

 mont and Esher, two of his designs, both minutely 

 described by Wheatley, and, judging from the age 

 of the trees, laid out sometime between 1725 and 

 1735. Kent was also employed at Kensington gar- 

 dens, where he is said to have introduced parts of dead 

 trees to heighten the allusion to natural woods. Ma- 

 son, the poet, mentions Kent's Elysian scenes in the 

 highest style of panegyric, and observes in a note, that 

 he prided himself in shading with evergreens in his 

 more finished pieces, in the manner described in the 

 14th and 15th sections of Wheatley's Observations. 



Claremont has been celebrated by Garth, and Esher 

 by Warton, (in (he Enthusiast, or Lover oJ'Naliire,l740;) 

 and Mr. Walpole, with the authority of an eye-wit- 

 ness, has very accurately delineated Kent's manner of 

 realizing landscapes ; and has expatiated on his merits, 

 without concealing his few demerits in his profession. 

 " According to my own idea/' adds Mr. G. Mason, " all 

 that has since been done by the most deservedly admired 

 designers, by Southcote, Hamilton, Lyttleton, Pitt, 

 Shenstone, Morris, for themselves, and by Wright for 

 others, all that has been written on the subject, even 

 the gardening didactic poem, and the didactic essay 

 on the picturesque, have proceeded from Kent. Had 

 Kent never exterminated the bounds of regularity, ne- 

 ver actually traversed the way to freedom of manner, 

 would any .of these celebrated artists have found 'it of 

 themselves ? Theoretical hints from the highest autho- 

 rities, had evidently long existed without sufficient ef- 

 fect. And had not the>e great masters actually exe- 

 cuted, what Kent's example first inspired them with 

 the design of executing, would the subsequent writers 

 on gardening have been enabled to collect materials for 

 precepts, or stores for their imaginations ?" P. 112. 



Lord Cobham seems to have been occupied in re-mo- i, or( j ot>- 

 del|ing the grounds at Stowe, about the same time that ham. 

 Pope was laying out his gardens at Twickenham. His 

 lordship began these improvements in 1714, employ- 

 ing Bridgeman, whose plans and views for altering old 

 Stowe from the most rigid character of the ancient 



