HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 385 



all his love for the formal garden, Temple is modern enough to 

 admit that there may be other forms, wholly irregular, that may 

 have more beauty than any of the others, ' but they must owe it to 

 some extraordinary dispositions of Nature in the seat, or some 

 great race of fancy or judgment in the contrivance.' Fifty years 

 after Temple's mention of the Chinese Gardens ' as too hard of 

 achievement,' they were being universally copied in England and 

 the Continent. 



Our next view is Stowe in Buckinghamshire, showing the Great 

 Parterre from the Portico, as laid out by Bridgman for Lord 

 Cobham about 1714. Bridgman banished verdant sculpture from 

 his garden, but still retained green architecture (observe the 

 arches), straight alleys and palissades and began to introduce ' a 

 little gentle disorder into the plantation of his trees and bushes.'' 2 

 The whole garden became a sort of practical pun upon the name 

 of its owner, Lord Temple, who seems to have had temples on 

 the brain, and dedicated them to every possible Deity and Virtue. 

 Stowe almost epitomises the early history of Landscape Gardening, 

 for Kent succeeded Bridgman as its ' Improver,' and ' Capability ' 

 Brown began his career here in the humble post of kitchen 

 gardener. Pope held up Stowe as an ideal almost unattainable, 

 crying in ecstacy : 



' Time shall make it grow, 

 A thing to wonder at, perhaps a " Stowe " ! ' 



The name of Pope brings us to the borderland dividing the 

 old garden from the new, as Pope's own verse may be said to be 



1 The following books on the Dutch Garden mav be consulted : 



Beudeker's ' Germania Inferior ' (British Museum}. 



Crispin de Pass ' Hortus Floridus.' 



Van der Groen ' Le Jardinier des Pays Bas,' 1672. 



Commelyn ' Hortus Amstelodamus,' 1697. 



,, ' Belgic or Netherlandish Hesperides,' 1683. 



Henrik van Oesten ' The Dutch Gardener,' 1703. 



De Groot ' Les Agrements de la Campagne,' 1750. 



A Rademaker, ' Holland's Arcadia' 1730. 



John Ray ' Observations on a Journey through the Low Countries, '-1673. 

 ' 2 Horace Wai pole. 



