ALEXANDER POPE 141 



Dr Burgh in his notes on the English Garden calls 'Bacon, 

 the prophet ; Milton, the herald -, and Addison, Pope and Kent, 

 the champions of this true taste in gardening, because they 

 absolutely brought it into execution.' 



Mr Price, in his Essay on the Picturesque, objects to Kent, 

 that his ideas of painting were uncommonly mean, contracted 

 and perverse ; and that as he painted trees without form, so he 

 planted them without life. ' Kent, it is true, was by profession 

 a painter, as well as an improver; but we may learn from his 

 example how little a certain degree of mechanical practice can 

 qualify its possessor to direct the taste of the nation in either 

 of these arts.' Rev. James Dallaway, l Supplementary Anecdotes 

 of Gardening in England? 



H 



OW contrary to this simplicity (of Homer) is the modern ALEXANDER 



practice of gardening ! We seem to make it our study to / 

 recede from nature, not only in the various tonsure of greens into 

 the most regular and formal shape, but even in monstrous attempts 

 beyond the reach of the art itself : we run into sculpture, and are 

 yet better pleased to have our trees in the most aukward figures 

 of men and animals, than in the most regular of their own. . . . 



A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews, but he 

 entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of 



1 Mr Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his (Kent's) taste. The design 

 of the Prince of Wales's garden at Carlton House was evidently borrowed 

 from the poet's at Twickenham. There was a little of affected modesty in the 

 latter, when he said, of all his works he was most proud of his garden. And 

 yet it was a singular effort of art and taste to impress so much variety and 

 scenery on a spot of five acres. The passing through the gloom from the grotto 

 to the opening day, the retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, 

 the larger lawn, and the solemnity of the termination at the cypresses that lead 

 up to his mother's tomb, are managed with exquisite judgment ; and though 

 Lord Peterborough assisted him 



To form his quincunx and to rank his vines, 



those were not the most pleasing ingredients of his little perspective. Horace 

 Walpole . On Modern Gardening. 



