Horace Walpole. 193 



who befriended Donne and some of his 

 literary contemporaries. 



It seems to the present writer that much 

 of the improvement in the style of our 

 gardens is to be found, in essence or sug- 

 gestion, in the observations of Bacon, not 

 in the Sylva, but in his essay on the subject, 

 contained in the volume of 1597. Of course, 

 even when a few sensible men tried to super- 

 sede the stiff, tasteless manner introduced 

 from the Low Countries, there was far from 

 being a general rally round them ; and Wal- 

 pole himself remarks that many foreigners 

 had seen our gardens, and still preferred their 

 own artificial ingenuity. He instances Le 

 Nautre, the contriver of the groves and 

 grottoes at Versailles, who came over to us, 

 and planted St. James's and Greenwich parks 

 " no great monuments of his invention." 



Temple, after speaking of the regular and 

 irregular forms of gardens, pronounces in 

 favour of the former, on the ground of the 

 difficulty and risk attendant on success. 



( I should hardly advise any of these attempts," he 

 says, as cited by Walpole, "in the figure of gardens; 



13 



