On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening Part 9

Line trunks, clothe spice, or, fluttering in a row, Befringe the rails of Bedlam, or Soho."

"The most _perfect_ of our poets, and the purest of our moralists."--"He is the _moral_ poet of all civilization; and, as such, let us hope that he will one day be the national poet of mankind. He is the only poet that never shocks; the only poet whose _faultlessness_ has been made his reproach. Cast your eye over his productions; consider their extent, and contemplate their variety:--pastoral, pa.s.sion, mock-heroic, translation, satire, ethics,--all excellent, and often perfect. If his great charm be his _melody_, how comes it that foreigners adore him even in their diluted translations?"[80]

Mr. Mason has also farther recorded the resplendent fame of this celebrated man; for in his _Musaeus_, a monody to the memory of Pope, he invokes the shades of Chaucer, Spencer, and Milton, to do homage to his departing spirit:--

----to cheer thee at this rueful time While black death doth on thy heart-strings prey.

So may we greet thee with a n.o.bler strain, When soon we meet for aye in yon star-sprinkled plain.

Milton thus begins _his_ homage:--

Thrice hail, thou heaven-taught warbler, last and best Of all the train! Poet, in whom conjoin'd All that to ear, or heart, or head, could yield Rapture; harmonious, manly, clear, sublime!

Accept this gratulation: may it cheer Thy sinking soul; or these corporeal ills Ought daunt thee, nor appal. Know, in high heav'n Fame blooms eternal on that spirit divine, Who builds immortal verse."[81]

Sir E. Brydges, in his "Letters on the Genius of Lord Byron," thus characterizes the grace and sweetness of his pathetic powers, in his _Eloisa_:--"When either his pa.s.sions or imaginations _were_ roused, they were deep, strong, and splendid. Notwithstanding _Eloisa_ was an historical subject, his invention of circ.u.mstances of detail, his imagery, the changes and turns of pa.s.sion, the brilliancy of hues thrown upon the whole, the eloquence, the tenderness, the fire, the inimitable grace and felicity of language, were all the fruits of creative genius.

This poem stands alone in its kind; never antic.i.p.ated, and never likely to be approached hereafter."

Young uttered this sublime apostrophe when the death of Pope was first announced to him:--

_Thou, who couldst make immortals_, art thou dead?

Of his _Essay on Man_, the Nouveau Dict. Hist. Portatif thus speaks:--"Une metaphysique lumineuse, ornee des charmes de la poesie, une morale touchante, dont les lecons penetrent le coeur et convainquent l'esprit, des peintures vives, ou l'homme apprend a se connoitre, pour apprendre a deviner meilleur; tels sont les princ.i.p.aux caracteres qui distinguent le poeme Anglois. Son imagination est egalement sage et feconde, elle prodigue les pensees neunes, et donne le piquant de la nouveante, aux pensees anciennes; il embelloit les matieres les plus seches, par la coloris d'une elocution n.o.ble, facile, energeque, variee avec un art infini."

In the gardens of Stowe is the following inscription to

ALEXANDER POPE, Who, uniting the correctness of judgment To the fire of genius, By the melody and power of his numbers, Gave sweetness to sense, and grace to philosophy.

He employed the pointed brilliancy of his wit To chastise the vices, And the eloquence of poetry To exalt the virtues of human nature; And, being without a rival in his own age, Imitated and translated with a spirit equal to the originals, The best Poets of antiquity.

WILLIAM KENT, whose portrait appears in Mr. Dallaway's rich edition of the Anecdotes of Painting. Kent, with Bridgman, Pope, and Addison, have been termed the fathers of landscape gardening.[82] Mr. Walpole, after reviewing the old formal style of our gardens, in language which it is painful to me thus only to advert to, instead of copying at length, (for I am fully "aware of the mischiefs which generally ensue in _meddling_ with the productions of genius"); and after stating that when _nature_ was taken into the plan, every step pointed out new beauties, and inspired new ideas: "at that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opiniative 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. Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled. But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpa.s.sed his management of water. Thus, dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its most favourable features, men saw a new creation opening before their eyes." And again he calls him "the inventor of an art that realizes painting, and improves nature: Mahomet imagined an elysium, but Kent created many." The greatest of all authorities tells us, that in Esher's peaceful grove, both

Kent and Nature vied for Pelham's love.

Mr. Mason, in his English Garden, thus panegyrises his elysian scenes:--

---- Kent, who felt The pencil's power; but fix'd by higher hopes Of beauty than that pencil knew to paint, Work'd with the living lives that _nature_ lent, And realized his landscapes.

Mr. Pope, as well as Kent, would, and Mr. Walpole, and Mr. Mason, must each of them have read with high approbation the following remark of the late Sir Uvedale Price:--"the n.o.ble and varied works of the eminent painters of every age and every country, and those of their supreme mistress, Nature, should be the great models of imitation."

Mr. Whateley paints in glowing language, the genius of Kent, both at Stowe, and at Claremont. Mr. George Mason thus honestly and finely pleads for him:--"According to my own ideas, all that has since been done by the most deservedly admired designers, as Southcote, Hamilton, Lyttleton, Pitt, Shenstone, Morris, for themselves, and by Wright for others, all that has been written on the subject, even the gardening didactic poem, and the didactic essay on the picturesque, have proceeded from Kent. Had Kent never exterminated the bounds of regularity, never actually traversed the way to freedom of manner, would any of these celebrated artists have found it of themselves? Theoretic hints from the highest authorities, had evidently long existed without sufficient effect. And had not these great masters actually executed what Kent's example first inspired, them with, the design of executing, would the subsequent writers on gardening have been enabled to collect materials for precepts, or stores for their imaginations? Mr. Price acknowledges himself an admirer of the water-scene at Blenheim. Would it ever have appeared in its present shape, if no Kent had previously abolished the stiffness of ca.n.a.ls! If this original artist had barely rescued the liquid element from the constraint of right lines and angles, that service alone would have given him an indubitable claim to the respect of posterity." The Rev. Mr. Coventry, in his admirable exposure of the grotesque absurdities in gardening, (being No. 15 of the World) thus speaks of Kent:--"The great Kent at length appeared in behalf of nature, declared war against the taste in fashion, and laid the axe to the root of artificial evergreens. Gardens were no longer filled with yews in the shape of giants, Noah's ark cut in holly, St. George and the Dragon in box, cypress lovers, laurustine bears, and all that race of root-born monsters which flourished so long, and looked so tremendous round the edges of every gra.s.s-plat. The great master above mentioned, truly the disciple of nature, imitated her in the agreeable wildness and beautiful irregularity of her plans, of which there are some n.o.ble examples still remaining, that abundantly show the power of his creative genius." Mr.

Dallaway, when treating on architecture, in his Anecdotes of the Arts, says, "Kent designed the n.o.ble hall at Holkham, terminated by a vast staircase, producing, in the whole, an imposing effect of grandeur not to be equalled in England." Kent died in 1748. He was a contemporary therefore of Horace Walpole. He was buried in the vault at Chiswick, belonging to his friend and patron, Lord Burlington.

BRIDGMAN'S portrait was a private plate. It exhibited a kind-hearted, hale old countenance. As he has the honour of being cla.s.sed with Mr.

_Addison_, and with _Pope_, and _Kent_, as one of the champions who established the picturesque scenery of landscape gardening, (which _Bacon_, and _Spencer_, and _Milton_, as hath been observed, foresaw) his portrait must surely be interesting. The engraved portrait which I saw of him more than fifty years ago, made then a strong impression on me. I think it was an etching. It marked a venerable healthy man. I neither recollect its painter nor engraver; and it is so scarce, that neither Mr. Smith, of Lisle Street, nor Mr. Evans, of Great Queen Street, the intelligent collectors and ill.u.s.trators of Granger, have been able to obtain it. Perhaps it will be discovered that it was a private plate, done at the expence of his generous and n.o.ble employer, Lord Cobham. Of this once able and esteemed man, I can procure little information. The Encycl. of Gardening says, "Lord Cobham seems to have been occupied in re-modelling the grounds at _Stowe_, about the same time that Pope was laying out his gardens at Twickenham. His lordship began these improvements in 1714, _employing Bridgman_, whose plans and views for altering old Stowe from the most rigid character of the ancient style to a more open and irregular design, are still in existence. Kent was employed a few years afterwards, first to paint the hall, and afterwards in the double capacity of architect and landscape-gardener; and the finest scenes there are his creation." The finest views of Stowe gardens were drawn by Rigaud, and published by _Sarah Bridgman_, in 1739. The fine and magnificent amphitheatre at the Duke of Newcastle's, at Claremont, was designed, I believe, by Bridgman.

When Queen Caroline added nearly three hundred acres from Hyde Park to the gardens at Kensington, they were laid out by him. He also laid out the gardens at Shardeloes, near Amersham. Mr. Walpole thus mentions Bridgman, after alluding to the shears having been applied to the lovely wildness of nature: "Improvements had gone on, till _London_ and _Wise_ had stocked our gardens with giants, animals, monsters, coats of arms, and mottos, in yew, box and holly. Absurdity could go no farther, and the tide turned. _Bridgman_, the next fashionable designer of gardens, was far more chaste; and whether from good sense, or that the nation had been struck and reformed by the admirable paper in the Guardian, No.

173, he banished verdant sculpture, and did not even revert to the square precision of the foregoing age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every division tally to its opposite; and though he still adhered much to straight walks with high clipped hedges, they were only his great lines, the rest he diversified by wilderness and with loose groves of oak, though still within surrounding hedges. I have observed in the garden at Gubbins, in Hertfordshire, many detached thoughts, that strongly indicate the dawn of modern taste. As his reformation gained footing, he ventured farther, and in the royal garden at Richmond, dared to introduce cultivated fields, and even morsels of a forest appearance, by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks that stretched out of one into another without intermission. But this was not till other innovators had broke loose too from rigid symmetry. But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that has followed, was (_I believe the first thought was Bridgman's_) the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses,--an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them ha! ha's! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk.[83] One of the first gardens planted in this simple though still formal style, was my father's at Houghton. It was laid out by Mr. Eyre, an imitator of Bridgman."

PHILIP MILLER died at the age of eighty, and was emphatically styled by foreigners _hortulanorum princeps_. Switzer bears testimony to his "usual generosity, openness and freedom." Professor Martyn says, "he acc.u.mulated no wealth from his respectable connection with the great, or from the numerous editions of his works. He was of a disposition too generous, and too careless of money, to become rich, and in all his transactions observed more attention to integrity and honest fame, than to any pecuniary advantages." There is a finely engraved portrait of Mr.

Miller, by Maillet, prefixed to the "Dictionnaire des Jardiniers, de Philipe Miller, traduit de l'Anglois," en 8 tom. 4to. Paris, 1785.

Dr. Pulteney says of him, "He raised himself by his merit from a state of obscurity to a degree of eminence, but rarely, if ever before, equalled in the character of a gardener." Mr. Loudon (in that "varied and voluminous ma.s.s of knowledge," his Encyclopaedia), thus remarks:--"Miller, during his long career, had no considerable compet.i.tor, until he approached the end of it, when several writers took the advantage of his unwearied labours of near half a century, and fixed themselves upon him, as various marine insects do upon a decaying sh.e.l.l-fish. I except Hitt and Justice, who are both originals, as is also Hill, after his fashion, but his gardening is not much founded in experience." The sister of Mr. Miller married Ehret, whose fine taste and botanical accuracy, and whose splendid drawings of plants, are the finest ornaments of a botanical library.

Mr. Miller fixed his residence adjoining that part of Chelsea church-yard where he lies interred. He died December 18, 1771. Mr.

Johnson gives a list of his writings, and of the different editions of his celebrated Dictionary, which he terms "this great record of our art." He farther does full justice to him, by a.s.sociating his name, at p. 147 and p. 151, with that of "the immortal Swede, whose master mind reduced the confusion and discord of botany to harmony." He calls Miller "the perfect botanist and horticulturist."[84] The following spirited tribute to Mr. Miller, appeared in the Gentleman's Magazine for June, 1828:--

"_Chelsea, June 5._

"MR. URBAN,--In the first volume, page 250, of the second edition of _Faulkner's History of Chelsea_, just published, which contains a very copious fund of historical, antiquarian, and biographical information, I find inserted the monument and epitaph of Philip Miller, who was so justly styled 'the prince of horticulture' by contemporary botanists, and whose well-earned fame will last as long as the sciences of botany and horticulture shall endure. The epitaph of this distinguished man is correctly given; but the historian appears not to have duly appreciated, if he was even aware of, the circ.u.mstances which induced the Fellows of the Linnaean and Horticultural Societies of London to erect this grateful tribute of respectful esteem to him, who in his life-time, had done more than any individual, ancient or modern, towards enlarging the boundaries of the science of horticulture, and very extensively the far more difficult one of botany likewise. These he accomplished in the numerous editions of his unrivalled Dictionary, and in his elaborate introductions to botanical knowledge.

"The reasons which induced the above-mentioned societies to erect the monument in question, were, chiefly, because neither monument, nor tomb, nor even any recording public notice whatever (the 'monumentum aere perennius' of his own immortal works excepted) had previously been provided by any one.

"The relatives of Miller were very few; he had no family, save two sons, one of whom died early, and the other, Charles Miller, at the age of 78, who spent the greater part of his long life in India, and returned not until after his father's funeral; and over his grave, in the old church-yard of Chelsea, a stone and sculptured bra.s.s record his name and age and parentage, together with that of his aged and more distinguished sire. This stone, too, was placed by the above-mentioned public-spirited societies, (unto both which the writer has the honour to belong) at the same time as the monument, stated by Faulkner, to the never-dying fame of the father.

"But it is even now scarcely known, that when those meritorious testimonials of public grat.i.tude were showered over the memory of Philip Miller, who had laboured so long and so successfully in the sciences which he loved, there was only one individual in existence, and that a very aged person, who had seen and attended the funeral of Miller, and who alone could point out the very spot where the 'Prince of Horticulture' was inhumed. This venerable person's name was Goodyer; he was the parish clerk of Chelsea church for half a century, and died as such in 1818, at the great age of ninety-four.

"Nevertheless, though last, it should not be concealed that I myself had actually stated and published, in the winter of 1794-5, the neglectful and opprobrious fact of Miller's having no single grave-stone, much less a monument, nor even one funeral line, to designate the spot where rested in its 'narrow house' the mortal relics of so great a man; see my Observations on the Genus Mesembryanthemum, p. 311-14; and, as every reader may not possess that publication, the following extract from it is added:--

"'So much for Miller; he, alas! who pleased so well, or, rather let me say, he who instructed and edified so much, and was even caressed by the great while living, now lies, forgotten by his friends, inhumed amongst the common undistinguished dead, in the bleak cold yard of Chelsea church, the very theatre of his best actions, the physic gardens of the Worshipful Company of Apothecaries, at Chelsea, not half a mile distant, without a tomb! without a stone! nay, dest.i.tute of a single line to mark the spot where rests, retired from all its cares and useful toils, the time-worn frame of the 'Prince of Horticulture!' How are those discerning foreigners, who so meritoriously rendered the language of his Dictionary into their own, to judge of this? by what measure are they to estimate the fact? Miller was the author of several publications, besides the very numerous editions of his Dictionary and Kalendar.'

Yours, &c.

"A. H. HAWORTH."

SIR JOHN HILL. His works are many of them enumerated in the Encyclo. of Gardening. The most full list is in Weston's Catalogue. His portrait is engraved in metz by Houston, from after Coates. It is an oval, with a _solitaire_. A short account of his life and writings was published at Edinburgh in 1779. The most general account of him is in Hutchinson's Biog. Medica. 2 vols. 8vo. See also the Biog. Dramatica, 2nd edit.

1782.

BATTY LANGLEY was born at Twickenham, where he resided. He was the author of,

1. Practical Geometry, 1726.

2. New Principles of Gardening, or the laying out and planting parterres, groves, wildernesses, labyrinths, avenues, parks, &c. cuts, 1728, 4to.

3. The sure Method of Improving Estates by Trees, 8vo. One of his chapters is "On the magnitude and prodigious Growth of Trees."

4. Pomona, or the Fruit Gardener, _with plates_, fol. 1729. At the end is a letter to Mr. Langley, on Cyder, from Hugh Stafford, Esq. of Pynes.

There is a 4to. metz portrait of Mr. Langley, with the name of Carwirtham, as the engraver or print-seller, 1741.

SIR WILLIAM WATSON, an eminent physician, who died in 1787, wrote

1. On the Culture of Mushrooms. In vol. 42 and 43 of the Phil. Trans.

2. Account of the Remains of Tradescant's Garden. In vol. 46 of the Phil. Trans.