Retrospective Criticism, 713 



indeed, I apprehend that, unless some such rule be adopted and adhered to, 

 the Gai-dener's Magazine will ultimately exhibit a most astounding and dis- 

 proportionate number of comparatively useless and anomalous subjects; 

 for I grieve to observe that the moment you are so good-natured as to 

 insert the nonsense one person may recommend, such as, for instance, 

 " brewing small beerj" he, forsooth, must immediately after have the mon- 

 strous presumption to write upon another subject — ay, and a subject, too, 

 which it would indeed be the quintessence of absurdity to suppose that any 

 man could possibly understand, unless he were one of the select and privi- 

 leged few who are " deeply read in classic lore." This luckless wight, I 

 observe, has had the impertinence to make use of a very hard word, for 

 which he has been very properly snubbed ; physiology, I think, it is called : 

 but as both the Russian and Polish words are very hard, and of course 

 classic, I do not pretend to say that I have spelled the word properly, for 

 I have of late been sadly puzzled with them. Then, again, because another 

 person can adroitly draw a tooth, he also has the extreme vanity to suppose 

 that he can, with equal dexterity, draw upon the patience of your readers, 

 even unto the appalling number of some half-score octavo pages, upon 

 " props and stakes " (whether patent or not I know not, but I have heard 

 of such things) ; while he then and there learnedly and minutely expounds, 

 with mathematical precision, every line and angle of greater or less resist- 

 ance, from the horizontal to the diagonal, up to the perpendicular, in which 

 these said props and stakes can be most advantageously placed for the sup- 

 port of newly transplanted trees. Why, my good Sir, if you allow such 

 " faultless monsters" to continue their career much longer, we shall very 

 soon have mathematical demonstrations, with diagrams of course, of the 

 force with which a hammer ought to impinge on the head of a nail to drive 

 it into a bit of mortar; or, what would be equally laudable and scientific, 

 an algebraic formula for the cut of a broomstick. And such things, I fear, 

 would be too much even for the most gullible of your subscribers. 



I have been led into these desultory remarks from observing some papers 

 in your late Numbers, written in a tone of vanity and presumption, which 

 I should have considered unbecoming the gentleman and scholar. One 

 correspondent gives us a " description and use (ludicrously enough) of 

 a machine for transplanting large trees and shrubs," which might have 

 sunk into merited oblivion had he not made it a vehicle for conveying 

 a slanderous imputation on the character of probably some worthy man, 

 who, seeing the folly of using such a fantastic gewgaw, most likely 

 adopted this mode (feigning sheer ignorance) of ridding himself of his tor- 

 mentor. If not, the inference is, I think, tolerably clear, that the writer 

 has voluntarily constituted himself a worthy coadjutor of Su- Henry Steuart, 

 in stigmatising the whole brotherhood as obstinately " ignorant and self- 

 sufficient ; " for it is incredible that any man, with the least pretensions to 

 the name of a gardener, could either mistake the mode of applying this 

 machine, or its utter uselessness for practical purposes. In the last Number 

 the same gentleman has concocted a marvellously elongated article on 

 propping trees, and, like a spoiled child, has fallen foul of both friends and 

 foes ; even his renowned friend of Allanton is visited with a severe casti- 

 gation ; while so profoundly astute and extensive is his erudition, that a 

 poor unfortunate and nameless small-beer critic cannot escape a flagel- 

 lation from the pestle hand of this chivalrous doctor, who seems as doggedly 

 determined to set aside the ordinary rules of common sense in rural affairs, 

 as his incomparable prototype of blood-letting, water-drinking celebrity was 

 in " the healing art ; " for he has in this Number, in all the pride of learn- 

 ing, contrived to stilt over no less than ten pages, merely to tell us how a 

 newly transplanted tree ought to be propped, which Gorrie or Howden 

 would have explained in less than as many lines. Is this, then, the way in 

 which working gardeners are to be treated ? and are they to submit to have 



