Page:Architectural Review and American Builders' Journal, Volume 1, 1869.djvu/407

 1868.] Landscape, Decorative, and Economic Gardening. 329 Greatness, with Timon, dwells in such a draught, As brings ail Brobdignag before your thought. To compass this, his building is a town, His pond an ocean, his parterre a down : Who, but must laugh, the master when he sees, A puny insect, shivering at a breeze! Lo, what huge heaps of littleness around ! The whole, a labored quarry, above ground. Two cupids squirt before: a lake behind Improves the keenness of the northern wind. His gardens next your admiration call; On every side you look, behold the wall! No pleasing intricacies intervene, No artful wildness to perplex the scene: Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother ; And balf the platform just reflects the other. The suffering eye inverted Nature sees ; Trees cut to statues, statues thick as trees ; With here a fountain, never to be played ; And there a summer-house that knows no shade; Here Amphitrite sails through myrtle bowers ; There gladiators fight, or die in flowers ; Unwatered, see the drooping sea-horse mourn; And swallows roost in Nilus' dusty urn." Even in the IHth century, Lord Bacon, in his essays, indicates his disapproval of the extreme formality prevalent in the decoration of gardens ; and gives a ▼ery accurate description of the Natural style. For instance, out of thirty acres, which he allots for the whole of his pleasurerground, he selects the first four for a lawn, without any intervention of tree or parterre; because " nothing is more pleasant to the eye, than green grass, kept nicely shorn. And as for the making of knots and figures, with diverse colored earths, that they maj' lie under the windows of the house, on that side which the gai'den stands, they be but toys. You may see as good sights many times on tarts. I do not like images cut in juniper or other gar- den stuff; they are for children." It is probable, that the keen ridicule of Pope, in the 113d Guardian, pub- lished in 1713, went further towards arresting the taste for clipping plants, than that of any other writer. After giv- ing his translation of Homer's description of the gardens of Alcinous ; and descant- ing upon their simplicity and natural beauties, he laments, that the modern practice is to recede from nature; and run into sculpture ; and is better pleased to have trees in the most awkward figures of men and animals, than in the most regular of their own. But, for the benciit of all his loving oountiymen, of this curious taste, he publishes the cata- logue of a virtuoso gardener, who has arrived at great perfection in this art ; who cuts family pieces of men, women, and children, so that ladies may have their own effigies in myrtle, and their husbands in hornbeam ; and who never fails, when he shows his garden, to repeat that passage in the Psalms, " Thy wife shall be as the fruitful vine, and thy children as olive branches round thy table." He then proceeds with the catalogue, as follows : "Adam and Eve in yew; Adam a little shattered by the fall of the tree of knowledge in the great storm : Eve and the serpent very flourishing. The tower of Babel, not yet finished. St. George in boxwood : his arm scarce long enough ; but will be in a condition to stick the dragon by next April. A green dragon of the same, with a tail of ground-ivy for the present. N. B. These two not to be sold separately. Edward the Black Prince, in cypress. A laurestine bear, in blossom, with a juniper hunter, id ^erries. A pair of giants, stunted, to be sold cheap. An old maid of honor, in wormwood. A topping Ben Johnson, in laurel. Divers eminent modern poets in bays, somewhat blighted, to be disposed of, a pennyworth. A quickset hog, shot up into a porcu- pine, by its being forgot a week in rainy weather. A lavender pig, with sage growing in his belly. Noah's ark, in holly, standing on the mount ; the ribs a little damaged for want of water." The most celebrated artist in Geomet- rical gardening was Andre le Notre, a French architect, whose rural designs and highly- wrought, fanciful decorations