Page:Japanese Gardens (Taylor).djvu/46

20 and call the Divine Comedy ‘all rot’! As if another Bernard Shaw might scoff at Shakespeare, and (chuckling with inward joy and amusement) declare himself his equal! As if another Robert Ingersoll should thunder out denunciations of the Bible, and jeer at Holy Writ.

Almost the only novelty which these great exponents of the art introduced were clipped shrubs and trees. While the shapes of these were never so exorbitantly ugly as those of the Dutch, they remain to this day, to my mind, the least attractive feature of Japanese gardens. This tree-clipping, one fancies, must have been introduced from Holland,—although it may have been the other way about,—for the Dutch were very early in the field, and at this time were more or less at home in Japan, where they introduced many European ideas. Or the Portuguese, who gained a footing there about this time, may have had something to do with it, for they certainly left their names, at least, behind them, as one can tell by the present pronunciation and spelling of many words.

The Official Catalogue, sent me from the Kyoto Commercial Museum, gives the history of landscape gardening so fully, though in such short measure, that, at the risk of repeating myself, I insert it verbatim, including spelling, which is not always that recognized:—

“At first, when the Chinese style of