28 THE BOOK OF TOPIARY 
and in the course of his essay he allowed his sarcastic 
mockery to find expression here and there in a manner 
common enough in his time but which would be likely 
to offend the ears of modern polite folk, consequently I 
have in a few instances forestalled the editorial blue- 
pencil. 
‘T lately,” writes Pope, ‘‘took a particular friend 
of mine to my house in the country, not without some 
apprehension that it could afford little entertainment to 
a man of his polite taste, particularly in architecture and 
gardening, who had so long been conversant with all 
that is beautiful and great in either. But it was a 
pleasant surprise to me, to hear him often declare, he 
had found in my little retirement that beauty which he 
always thought wanting in most of the celebrated seats, 
or, if you will, villas, of the nation. This he described 
to me in those verses, with which Martial begins one of 
his epigrams : 
‘¢¢ Our friend Faustinus’ country seat I’ve seen ; 
No myrtles, placed in rows, and idly green, 
No widow’d plantain, nor clipp’d box-tree, there 
The useless soil unprofitably share ; 
But simple nature’s hand, with nobler grace, 
Diffuses artless beauties o’er the place,’ 
‘«< There is certainly something in the amiable simpli- 
city of unadorned nature, that spreads over the mind a 
more noble sort of tranquillity, and a loftier sensation of 
pleasure, than can be raised from the nicer scenes of 
art.” : 
After a reference to Homer’s account of the Garden 
of Alcinous, and Sir William Temple’s remarks upon it, 
Pope proceeds: ‘‘ How contrary to this simplicity is 
the modern 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 shapes, but even in monstrous attempts beyond 
