45 



full of richness, intricacy, and variety, that 

 art must despair to rival them. 



It may, perhaps, be thought that such 

 banks as Mr. Brown made, though very 

 tiresome if uniformly continued, would be 

 very proper for the simple parts of such ar- 

 tificial water as I have supposed : in my 

 opinion, however, they are in one sense, 

 almost as remote from simplicity, as from 

 richness. Simplicity, when applied to ob- 

 jects in which nature is professedly imi- 

 tated, always implies naturalness: by which 

 I mean that all the circumstances whether 

 few or many, should have the appearance 

 of having been produced by a lucky con- 

 currence of natural causes, without the in- 

 terference of art. For that reason when a 

 river is the object of imitation, the banks 

 ought not to be made more regularly 

 sloping to the edge of the water, or more 

 exactly levelled, than those of gentle rivers 

 usually are; otherwise they betray art, and, 

 of course, are no longer simple. Indeed, 

 in all such imitations, the danger of betray- 

 ing art should prevent too nice an attention 



