A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century Part 11

[22] "Epistle of Augustus."

[23] "Autumn," 1030-37. _Cf._ Cowper's

"O for a lodge in some vast wilderness, Some boundless contiguity of shade!"

[24] "Winter," 424-32.

[25] "Spring," 1026-28.

[26] Shakspere's "broom groves whose shade the dismist bachelor loves;"

Fletcher's

"Fountain heads and pathless groves, Places which pale pa.s.sion loves,"

and his

"Moonlight walks when all the fowls Are safely housed, save bats and owls."

[27] Letter to Howe, September 10.

[28] Letter to Howe, November, 1763.

[29] Alicia Amherst ("History of Gardening in England," 1896, p. 283) mentions a French and an Italian work, ent.i.tled respectively "Plan de Jardins dans le gout Anglais," Copenhagen, 1798; and "Del Arte dei Giardini Inglesi," Milan, 1801. "This pa.s.sion for the imitation of nature," says the same authority, "was part of the general reaction which was taking place, not only in gardening but in the world of literature and of fas.h.i.+on. The extremely artificial French taste had long taken the lead in civilized Europe, and now there was an attempt to shake off the shackles of its exaggerated formalism. The poets of the age were also pioneers of this school of nature. Dyer, in his poem of 'Grongar Hill,'

and Thomson, in his 'Seasons,' called up pictures which the gardeners and architects of the day strove to imitate." See in this work, for good examples of the formal garden, the plan of Belton House, Lincoln, p. 245; of Brome Hall, Suffolk; of the orangery and ca.n.a.l at Euston, p. 201; and the scroll work patterns of turf and parterres on pp. 217-18.

[30] In Temple's gardens at Moor Park, Hertfords.h.i.+re, _e.g._, there were terraces covered with lead. Charles II. imported some of Le Notre's pupils and a.s.sistants, who laid out the grounds at Hampton Court in the French taste. The maze at Hampton Court still existed in Walpole's time (1770).

[31] It is worth noticing that Batty Langley, the abortive restorer of Gothic, also recommended the natural style of landscape gardening as early as 1728 in his "New Principles of Gardening."

[32] "History of Gardening in England."

[33] I. 384-404.

[34] "The Works of William Mason," in 4 vols., London, 1811.

[35] See Pope's paper in the _Guardian_ (173) for some rather elaborate foolery about topiary work. "All art," he maintains, "consists in the imitation and study of nature." "We seem to make it our study to recede from nature, not only in the various tonsure of greens into the most regular and formal shapes, but," etc., etc. Addison, too, _Spectator_ 414, June 25, 1712, upholds "the rough, careless strokes of nature"

against "the nice touches and embellishments of art," and complains that "our British gardeners, instead of humoring nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids.

We see the marks of the scissors upon every plant and bush. I do not know whether I am singular in all its luxuriancy and diffusion of boughs and branches, than when it is thus cut and trimmed into a mathematical figure." See also _Spectator_, 477, for a pretty scheme of a garden laid out with "the beautiful wildness of nature." Gilbert West's Spenserian poem "Education," 1751 (see _ante_, p. 90) contains an attack, in six stanzas, upon the geometric garden, from which I give a single stanza.

"Alse other wonders of the sportive shears, Fair nature mis-adorning, there were found: Globes, spiral columns, pyramids, and piers, With sprouting urns and budding statues crowned; And horizontal dials on the ground, In living box by cunning artists traced; And gallies trim, on no long voyage bound But by their roots there ever anch.o.r.ed fast, All were their bellying sails out-spread to every blast."

[36] "Essays on Men and Manners," Shenstone's Works, Vol. II. Dodsley's edition.

[37] "On Modern Gardening," Works of the Earl of Orford, London, 1798, Vol. II.

[38] Graves, "Recollections of Shenstone," 1788.

[39] "Ward's English Poets," Vol. III. 271.

[40] "Life of Shenstone."

[41] See _ante_, p. 90, for his visits to Gilbert West at Wickham.

[42] See especially "A Pastoral Ode," and "Verses Written toward the Close of the Year 1748."

[43] "A Description of the Leasowes by R. Dodsley," Shenstone's Works, Vol. II, pp. 287-320 (3d ed.) This description is accompanied with a map. For other descriptions consult Graves' "Recollections," Hugh Miller's "First Impressions of England," and Wm. Howitt's "Homes of the Poets" (1846), Vol. I. pp. 258-63. The last gives an engraving of the house and grounds. Miller, who was at Hagley--"The British Tempe"-and the Leasowes just a century after Shenstone began to embellish his paternal acres, says that the Leasowes was the poet's most elaborate poem, "the singularly ingenious composition, inscribed on an English hillside, which employed for twenty long years the taste and genius of Shenstone."

[44] See "Lady Luxborough's Letters to Shenstone," 1775, for a long correspondence about an urn which _she_ was erecting to Somerville's memory. She was a sister of Bolingbroke, had a seat at Barrels, and exchanged visits with Shenstone.

[45] "Letter to Nichols," June 24, 1769.

[46] Dryden's "Annus Mirabilis," Davenant's "Gondibert," and Sir John Davies' "Nosce Teipsum" were written in this stanza, but the universal currency of Gray's poem a.s.sociated it for many years almost exclusively with elegiac poetry. Shenstone's collected poems were not published till 1764, though some of them had been printed in Dodsley's "Miscellanies."

Only a few of his elegies are dated in the collected editions (Elegy VIII, 1745; XIX, 1743; XXI, 1746), but Graves says that they were all written before Gray's. The following lines will recall to every reader corresponding pa.s.sages in Gray's "Churchyard":

"O foolish muses, that with zeal aspire To deck the cold insensate shrine with bays!

"When the free spirit quits her humble frame To tread the skies, with radiant garlands crowned;

"Say, will she hear the distant voice of Fame, Or hearing, fancy sweetness in the sound?"

--_Elegy II_.

"I saw his bier ign.o.bly cross the plain."

--_Elegy III_.

"No wild ambition fired their spotless breast."

--_Elegy XV_.

"Through the dim veil of evening's dusky shade Near some lone fane or yew's funereal green," etc.

--_Elegy IV_.

"The glimmering twilight and the doubtful dawn Shall see your step to these sad scenes return, Constant as crystal dews impearl the lawn," etc.

--_Ibid_.

[47] "Life of Akenside."

[48] "Pleasures of Hope."

[49] _cf._ Wordsworth's

"Some casual shout that broke the silent air, Or the unimaginable touch of time."

--_Mutability: Ecclesiastical Sonnets_, x.x.xIV.

CHAPTER V.