April 10,] THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 15 
WEEKLY CALENDAR. 
M W 
D D 
APRIL 10 — 16 , 1851. 
Weather near London in 1850. 
| Sun 
j Rises. 
Sun 
Sets. 
Moon 
R.&S. 
Moon’s 
Age. 
Clock 
bef. Sun, 
Day of 
Year. 
Barometer. 
Thermo. 
Wind. Rain in In - 
IOTh 
Beech leaves. 
29.664 — 29.538 
50—34 
N.E. 0.04 
18 a. 5 
45 a. 6 
3 
44 
9 
, 
27 
100 
lllF 
Camb. Term ends. 
29.800 — 29.691 
47—25 
N.E. — 
16 
46 
3 
26 
10 
1 
10 
101 
12S 
Oxford Terms ends. 
29.819 —29.598 
51—38 
N.W. 0.01 
14 
48 
4 
0 
11 
0 
54 
102 
13 Son 
Palm Son. Swift seen. 
29.341 —29.218 
51—25 
S.W. j 0.12 
12 
50 
4 
29 
12 
0 
38 
103 
14 M 
Mole Cricket churs. 
29.533 — 29.288 
55—32 
S.W. 0.03 
9 
52 
4 
57 
13 
0 
23 
104 
15 To 
Common Flesh Fly seen. 
29719 — 29.548 
50—36 
E. 0.08 
7 
63 
rises. 
© 
0 
7 
105 
lfi W 
Lady-Bird seen. 
29-785 — 29.719 
50—34 
N. — 
5 
65 
7a 
44 
15 
Oaf. 8 
106 
William Kent, of whose progress through life we are about to place 
a sketch before our readers, deserves our notice as the founder of land¬ 
scape gardening, and our imitation as one who dared to break loose from 
the trammels of fashion, and to obey the more enlightened dictates of the 
good taste with which he was richly gifted. It is very difficult to draw a 
just line between presumption and self-reliance, yet, no two mental 
qualities are productive of more widely differing results. He, who is 
presumptuous, infallibly bears himself on to disgrace, if not to ruin ; 
whereas, without self-confidence, no man can win his way to virtuous 
eminence. The distinction is, that the one is bold, from feeling his own 
strength, whilst the other is daring, from a vain estimate of the weakness 
of his competitors. Kent had no presumption, but through life he was 
confident, yet untinctured by obstinacy. He was born in Yorkshire, in 
1685, and was apprenticed to a coach painter, but aspiring to a higher 
path, he repaired to London, though unaided by his humble connections, 
and without the permission of his master. Thence, aided by some gentle¬ 
men of his own country, he proceeded with Mr. Tahvin to Rome, where 
he studied under the Chevalier Luti, and gained the second prize of the 
second class in the Academy. His first resources failing, he found a 
patron in Sir W. Wentworth; and finally in Lord Burlington, with 
whom he returned to England in 1719, and resided for the remainder of 
his life at that nobleman’s house. As a painter, however, notwithstanding 
the influence of his patron, the estimation in which he was held soon 
sunk to below mediocrity. As an architect and designer of furniture he 
succeeded better, and was much employed. By the patronage of the 
Queen, and through the interest of many noblemen, he was appointed 
Master Carpenter, Architect, Keeper of the Pictures, and finally chief 
Painter to the Crown, the emoluments of which produced about d?60Q 
per annum. From 1743 to 1748, he was much troubled with various in¬ 
flammatory attacks which terminated his life on the 12 th of April, in the 
last named year, and he was buried in the Earl of Burlington’s vault at 
Chiswick. It is said that Kent frequently declared that he caught his 
taste in gardening from the perusal of Spencer’s picturesque descriptions. 
I Walpole, Mason the Poet, and G. Mason, highly panegyrize him, and, 
indeed, by general consent he is estimated as the first general practiser of 
landscape gardening. For the remaining particulars we are indebted, 
almost exclusively, to Mr. Walpole, his contemporary. 
| “ His portraits bore little resemblance to the persons that sat for them; 
and the colouring was worse, more raw and undetermined than that of 
the most errant journeymen to the profession. The whole lengths at 
Esher are standing evidences of this assertion. In his ceilings, Kent’s 
drawing was as defective as the colouring of his portraits, and a 3 void of 
every merit. I have mentioned Hogarth’s parody, if I may call it so, of 
his picture at St. Clements. (This was an Altar-piece of angels playing 
on various instruments, very ill-drawn, and still preserved, perhaps, 
in the Vestry-room of St. Clement Danes.) The hall at Wanstead is 
another proof of his incapacity. Sir Robert Walpole, who was persuaded 
to employ him at Houghton, where he painted several ceilings, and the 
staircase, would not permit him, however, to work in colours, which 
would have been still more disgraced by the presence of so many capital 
pictures, but restrained him to chiaro scuro. If his faults are thence not 
so glaring, they are scarce less numerous. He painted a staircase in the 
same way for Lord Townshend, at Rainham. To compensate for his bad 
paintings, he had an excellent taste for ornaments, and gave designs for 
most of the furniture at Houghton, as he did for several other persons. 
Yet chaste as these ornaments were, they were often unmeasurably pon¬ 
derous. His chimney-pieces, though lighter than those of Inigo, whom 
he imitated, are frequently heavy; and his constant introduction of pedi¬ 
ments, and the members of architecture over doors, and within rooms, 
was disproportioned and cumbrous. Kent’s style, however, predominated 
authoritatively during his life ; and his oracle was so much consulted by 
all who affected taste, that nothing was thought complete without his 
assistance. He was not only consulted for furniture, as frames of pic¬ 
tures, glasses, tables, chairs, &c., but for plate, for a barge, for a cradle. 
And so impetuous was fashion, that two great ladies prevailed on him to 
make designs for their birth-day gowns. The one he dressed in a 
petticoat decorated with columns of the five orders ; the other like a 
bronze, in a copper-coloured satin with ornaments of gold. He was not 
more happy in other works, in which he misapplied his genius. The gilt 
rails to the hermitage at Richmond, were in truth but a trifling impro¬ 
priety ; but his celebrated monument of Shakspere in the Abbey, was 
preposterous. What an absurdity to place busts at the angles of a 
pedestal, and at the bottom of that pedestal! Whose choice the busts 
were I do not know, but though queen Elizabeth’s head might be in¬ 
tended to mark the era in which the poet flourished, why were Richard 
II., and Henry V., selected? Are the pieces under the names of those 
princes two of Shakspere’s most capital works ? or what reason can be 
assigned for giving them the preference ? As Kent’s genius was not 
universal, he has succeeded as ill in Gothic. The King’s bench at West¬ 
minster, and Mr. Pelham’s house at Esher, are proofs how little he con¬ 
ceived either the principles or graces of that architecture. Yet he was 
sometimes sensible of its beauties, and published a print of Wolsey’s 
noble hall at Hampton-court, now crowded and half hidden by a theatre. 
Kent gave the design for the ornaments of the chapel at the Prince of 
Orange’s wedding, of which he also made a print. Such of the drawings 
as he designed for Gay’s Fables, have some truth and nature; but, 
whoever would search for his faults, will find an ample crop in a very 
favourite work of his, the prints for Spenser’s Fairy Queen. As the 
drawings were exceedingly cried up by his admirers, and disappointed 
the public in proportion, the blame was thrown on the engraver, but so 
far unjustly, that though ill executed, the wretchedness of drawing, the 
total ignorance of perspective, the want of variety, the disproportion of 
the buildings, and the awkwardness of the attitudes, could have been the 
faults of the inventor only. There are figures issuing from cottages not 
so high as their shoulders, castles in which the towers could not contain 
an infant, and knights who hold their spears as men do who are lifting a 
j load sideways. The landscapes are the only tolerable parts, and yet the j 
trees are seldom other than young beeches, to which Kent as a planter j 
i was accustomed. But in architecture his taste was deservedly admired ; 
| and without enumerating particulars, the staircase at lady Isabella Finch’s, 
in Berkeley-square, is as beautiful a piece of scenery, and considering the 
space, of art, as can be imagined. The Temple of Venus, at Stowe, has 
simplicity and merit, and the great room at Mr. Pelham’s, in Arlington- 
street, is as remarkable for magnificence. I do not admire equally the 
room ornamented with marble and gilding at Kensington. The stair¬ 
case there is the least defective work of his pencil; and his ceilings in that 
palace from antique paintings, which he first happily introduced, show 
that he was not too ridiculously prejudiced in favour of his own historic 
compositions. Of all his works, his favourite production was the Earl of 
Leicester’s house at Holkam, in Norfolk. The great hall, with the 
flight of steps at the upper end, in which he proposed to place a colossal 
Jupiter, was a noble idea. How the designs of that house, which I have 
seen an hundred times in Kent’s original drawings, came to be published 
under another name,* and without the slightest mention of the real 
architect, is beyond comprehension. The bridge, the temple, the great 
gateway, all built, I believe, the two first certainly, under Kent’s own eye, 
are alike passed off as the works of another; and yet no man need envy 
or deny him the glory of having oppressed a triumphal arch with an 
Egyptian pyramid. Holkam has its faults, but they are Kent’s faults, 
and marked with all the peculiarities of his style.” 
Upon Kent’s taste and style of landscape gardening, Mr. Walpole is 
still more particular. “ I call the sunk fence the leading step to a more 
picturesque gardening, because no sooner was this simple enchantment 
made, than levelling, mowing, and rolling, followed. The contiguous 
ground of the park without the sunk fence, was to be harmonized with 
the lawn within ; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its 
prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without. 
The sunk fence ascertained the specific garden, but that it might not 
draw’ too obvious a line of distinction between the neat and the rude, the 
contiguous out-lying parts came to be included in a kind of general 
design : and when nature was taken into the plan, under improvements, 
every step that was made pointed out new beauties and inspired new 
ideas. At that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the 
charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, 
and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of 
imperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a 
garden. He felt the delicious constraint of hill and valley changing im¬ 
perceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or con¬ 
cave scoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence 
with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between 
their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive j 
comparison. Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of 
landscape on the scenes he handled. The great principles on which he 
worked were perspective, and light and shade. Groupes of trees broke j 
too uniform or too extensive a lawn ; evergreens and woods were opposed 
to the glare of the champain, and where the view was less fortunate, or so 
much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out some parts by thick 
shades, to divide it into variety, or to make the richest scene more en¬ 
chanting by reserving it to a farther advance of the spectator’s step. 
Thus selecting favourite objects, and veiling deformities by screens of 
plantation ; sometimes allowing the rudest W'aste to add its foil to the 
richest theatre, he realised the compositions of the greatest masters in 
painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste 
as an architect could bestow immediate termination, His buildings, his 
seats, his temples, were more the works of his pencil than of his com¬ 
passes. We owe the restoration of Greece and the diffusion of architec- i 
ture to his skill in landscape. But of all the beauties he added to the 
face of this beautiful country, none surpassed his management of water. I 
Adieu to canals, circular basons, and cascades tumbling down marble 
steps, that last absurd magnificence.of Italian and French villas. The 
forced elevation of cataracts was no more. The gentle stream was taught 
to serpentine seemingly at its pleasure, and where discontinued by dif¬ 
ferent levels, its course appeared to be concealed by thickets properly 
interspersed, and glittered again at a distance where it might be supposed 
naturally to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preserved their 
waving irregularity. A few trees scattered here and there on its edges 
sprinkled the tame bank that accompanied its mmanders, and when it 
disappeared among the hills, shades descending from the heights leaned 
towards its progress, and framed the distant point of light under which 
it was lost, as it turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon. Thus 
dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its most favour- 
* “The plan and elevations of the late Earl of Leicester’s house at 
Holkam, were engraved and published, London, 1761 . fol. by Mr. Bret- 
tingham, architect, who had not the modesty to own that it was built 
after the design of Kent.” Gough’s Brit. Topogr. vol. ii. p. 25. 
No. CXXXIL, Vol. VI. 
