LANDSCAPE GARDENING 
263 
It is strange the way in which the writers of this school 
pointed to Milton and Bacon as the founders of their taste. 
They claimed Bacon because he devotes a part of his ideal 
garden to a “ natural wildness/' and also praises “ green grass 
kept finely shorn," and Milton, because he says that in 
Paradise there were 
“ Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art 
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon 
Poured forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain.” 1 
Yet how opposed to all ideas of landscape gardeners would 
these two men have been. Bacon, who loved the green grass, 
and yet would have his garden full of flowers in bloom in 
every month of the year, would have been shocked by the 
idea of “ a garden . . . disgracing by discordant character the 
contiguous lawn," or by being told that “ the flower-garden 
ought never to be visible from the windows of the house." 
Sir Walter Scott , 2 in one of his charming articles on landscape 
gardening, points out that Milton never intended to censure 
the “ trim gardens " of his own day, although he pictured 
natural beauties in the newly-created Paradise. Scott well 
understood the great mistake that had been made in destroy¬ 
ing these memorials of the past. He saw how perfectly an 
Elizabethan garden harmonized with the house, and while he 
could not vindicate the “ paltry imitations of the Dutch, who 
clipped yews into monsters," he acknowledged that there 
existed gardens, “ the work of London and Wise, and such 
persons as laid out ground in the Dutch taste, which would be 
much better subjects for modification than for absolute 
destruction." He admired the fine terraces, flights of steps, 
vases and balustrades, of gardens in the Italian style, and the 
fountains and waterworks of the French. 
Sir Uvedale Price, although he was the champion of rational 
landscape gardening, could only justify a “ jet d’eau," because 
such things were to be seen in the form of Geysers. Sir Walter 
Scott, still more large-minded, felt sure that the captivating 
beauty “ of a magnificent fountain . . . flinging up its waters 
1 Paradise Lost, Book IV. 
2 Quarterly Review, vol. xxxvii., 1828, and Criticism , vol. v. 
