THE STORY OF THE GARDENS 91 



At first it was rather a Strawberry Hill Gothic 

 which improvers practised in imitation of natural 

 effects, heightened by art that clung to tawdry 

 decorations. The cradle of this school was not 

 far from Kew, at Twickenham, where Pope 

 and Horace Walpole, "prince of cockle-shells," 

 set copies in a " more grand and rural manner," 

 advocated by a local author, Batty Langley, in 

 his New Principles of Gardening. The rank of 

 leader of the revolution has been claimed also 

 for Stephen Switzer, who, though of foreign 

 origin perhaps, was born in England, and from 

 a working gardener became a nurseryman, then 

 in 1715 published the Gardeners Recreation, a 

 work showing better education than might be 

 expected from such a career, unless the writer 

 got some literary craftsman to graft flowery 

 tropes and classical tags upon his practical 

 knowledge. Another gardener named Bridge- 

 man is mentioned in connection with Kent, 

 who designed ornamentation both outside and 

 inside the Prince's villa at Kew. 



Kent is commonly called the father of the 

 English or natural school of landscape gardening, 

 and seems at least to have been its first 

 exponent on a large scale. He was followed 



