72 Garden Literature of Italy. 



Arte dei Giardini, " Theory of the Art of Gardening." Bassano, 1801. Be- 

 sides this, he wrote Alabiliana, or Vniin Selva, " Various Dissertations on 

 agricultural Subjects, Botany, &c." Istriizioni ai CoUivatori delta Canapa nazio- 

 nale, " Instructions to the Cultivators of native Hemp." Padua, 1785. Mezzi di 

 diffondere trai Villici le migliori IstriLzioni Agronomic/ie, " Helps for diffusing 

 among the Country-people the best Instructions on rural Aifairs." (In 

 Grisettini's Itatian Journal, fasc. iii. second series.) SidP hidute dc' Giardini, 

 " On the Soils of Gardens." Verona, Mainardi, 1817: and various other 

 literary pubUcations. 



The above-mentioned minor works of Pindemonte, and the Theory of the Art 

 of Gardening by Mabil, were united in a single volume, and printed in Verona 

 in 18] 7 by Mainardi, to which were added two Academical Papers by the Abbe 

 Melchior Cesarotti.* Upon them, Cesarotti, after having given an account 

 of these works, concludes that gardens in the modern style ought not to be 

 called Englisii, but Italian. To corroborate this conclusion with the au- 

 thority of the English themselves, Pindemonte quotes at the end of the 

 volume, Eustace's Classical Tour in Italy. {A Classieal Tour through Italy in 

 1802, by the Rev. John Chetwode Eustace. Third edition, revised and 

 enlarged, &c., 1815, vol. iii.) Mr. Eustace, far from recognising in Milton 

 the origin of EngHsh gardens, as most of his countrymen do, attributes it to 

 our Torquato Tasso ; for, after saying that " the description of the terrestrial 

 Paradise of Milton is considered as the model of modern parks," adds, '' that 

 this is more suitably applied to that of the garden of Armida, not only 

 because our poet furnished Milton with some of the principal features of his 

 description, but because he really laid the first foundation of the art, and 

 comprehended it in a single most ingenious line, with which he concludes 

 the picture of the most beautiful of landscapes. 



" L' Arte che tutto fa, nulla si scopra," 

 " Art which does all is not discovered." 



" If, therefore," says Pindemonte, " the English ultimately confess that 

 the invention of these gardens belongs to Tasso, and if Tasso merely de- 

 scribed the park of Turin, it consequently ensues that that park was really 

 a garden in the modern style." 



With respect to the park at Turin, there is a memoir by the late Professor 

 of Padua, Vincent Malacarne, read by him in that academy, and which by 

 some is said to have been afterwards printed by Bodoni, but which is not 

 found in the catalogue of Bodoni's books, in which it is proved (exactly what 

 the aforesaid Cesarotti declares in his second article before mentioned) by 

 this authentic document, that Italy, the original mother and mistress of all 

 the fine arts, was also the mother of modern gardening ; making it appear 

 that, long before the time of Bridgman, whom the English acknowledge as 

 the founder of the new style of gardens, and of Kent, the supreme legislator 

 of the art, there existed in Piedmont, not far from Turin, a garden exactly 

 of that description, of great extent, most varied, calculated to excite the 

 most interesting sensations, and worthy of being a model for all gardens ; con- 

 trived by, and executed under the order of, Emanuel, first Duke of Savoy. 

 The garden is no longer in existence ; but there is still extant (says 

 Cesarotti) an exact description of it by Aquiline Coppino, a writer of the 

 sixteenth century, and professor at Pavia, in a Latin letter, breathing the 

 sentiments of enthusiasm with which this delightful scene had inspired him ; 

 of which letter Malacarne gives a paraphrase. 



19. Philip Re. Born at Reggio, in Lombardy, March 20. 1763; died May 

 20. 1817, in Modena. He was Professor in the Lyceum of Reggio in 1791 ; 

 in 1806, decorated with the iron crown, enrolled in the Society of Forty; 

 in 1812, elected a member of the Italian Institute. By this author we have 

 // Giardiniere avviato nella sica Professione, " The Gardener learned in his 



* Art. xvi. in 1795, and art. xviii. in 1798, in vol. ii. of the Transactions of 

 the Academy, by Cesarotti ; Pisa, 1 803. 



