When, therefore, we see
this imitated in any measure, it gives us a nobler and more exalted
kind of pleasure, than what we receive from the nicer and more
accurate productions of art. On this account our _English_ gardens
are not so entertaining to the fancy as those in _France_ and _Italy_,
where we see a larger extent of ground covered over with an agreeable
mixture of garden and forest, which represent everywhere an artificial
wildness, much more charming than that neatness and elegancy which we
meet with in those of our own country.
Addison would have hesitated to apply this doctrine to poetry; indeed the
orthodoxy of that age favored the highest possible contrast between the
orderly works of man, and the garden, which it chose to treat as the
outpost of rebellious nature. Pope was a gardener as well as a poet, and
his gardening was extravagantly romantic. He describes his ideal garden
in the _Epistle to the Earl of Burlington_:
Let not each beauty everywhere be spy'd,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
Surprises, varies, and conceals the bounds.
Consult the genius of the place in all;
That tells the waters or to rise, or fall;
Or helps th' ambitious hill the heav'ns to scale,
Or scoops in circling theatres the vale;
Calls in the country, catches opening glades,
Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades;
Now breaks, or now directs, th' intending lines;
Paints as you plant, and, as you work, designs.
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