JOSEPH ADDISON 135 



wholesome luxury which that place abounds with, I have always 

 thought a kitchen garden a more pleasant sight than the finest 

 orangery, or artificial greenhouse. I love to see everything in 

 its perfection : and am more pleased to survey my rows of cole- 

 worts and cabbages, with a thousand nameless pot-herbs, springing 

 up in their full fragrancy and verdure, than to see the tender plants 

 of foreign countries kept alive by artificial heats, or withering in 

 an air and soil that are not adapted to them. I must not omit, 

 that there is a fountain rising in the upper part of my garden, 

 which forms a little wandering rill, and administers to the pleasure 

 as well as the plenty of the place. I have so conducted it that it 

 visits most of my plantations ; and have taken particular care to 

 let it run in the same manner as it would do in an open field, so 

 that it generally passes through banks of violets and primroses, 

 plats of willow or other plants, that seem to be of its own pro- 

 ducing. There is another circumstance in which I am very 

 particular, or, as my neighbours call me, very whimsical; as my 

 garden invites into it all the birds of the country, by offering them 

 the conveniency of springs and shades, solitude and shelter, I do 

 not suffer any one to destroy their nests in the Spring, or drive 

 them from their usual haunts in fruit-time; I value my garden 

 more for being full of blackbirds than cherries, and very frankly 

 give them fruit for their songs. By this means I have always the 

 music of the season in its perfection, and am highly delighted to 

 see the jay or the thrush hopping about my walks, and shooting 

 before my eye across the several little glades and alleys that I 

 pass through. I think there are as many kinds of gardening as of 

 poetry : your makers of parterres and flower-gardens are epigram- 

 matists and sonneteers in this art ; contrivers of bowers and grottos, 

 treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London 

 are our heroic poets ; and if, as a critic, I may single out any 

 passage of their works to commend, I shall take notice of that 

 part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing 

 but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening, 

 that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow into 

 so beautiful an area, and to have hit the eye with so uncommon 



