On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening Part 10

3. Account of the Bishop of London's Garden, at Fulham. In vol. 47 of the Phil. Trans. besides many valuable papers in several volumes of these Transactions.

He had the pleasure of introducing _Kalm_, as well as _Pallas_, to most of the curious gardens in the environs of London. On the first establishment of the British Museum, he was most active in furnis.h.i.+ng its garden, with no fewer than six hundred plants. His house (as Dr.

Pulteney observes) "became the resort of the most ingenious and ill.u.s.trious experimental philosophers that England could boast." Dr.

Pulteney has closed a very liberal memoir of him, by inserting Dr.

Garthsh.o.r.e's testimony to the humane feeling, the social politeness, and benignity of Sir William. His portrait is painted by Abbot, and engraved by Ryder, 1791. There is a full account of him in Chalmers.

The Rev. WILLIAM HANBURY, the intimate friend of Churchill, and of Lloyd, in his singular "History of the Charitable Foundations at Church Langton," (and which exhibits his own benevolent heart, and great love for planting and gardening) mentions, at page 185, a full-length portrait of himself, by Penny. Had there been any other portrait of him, it is likely Mr. Nicholls would have mentioned it in his Leicesters.h.i.+re, for that gentleman, as well as Joseph Cradock, Esq. (both of whom are lately deceased), would have been most likely to have known, if any other portrait of this zealous planter did exist; so would Dr. Thomas Warton, who always spoke of Mr. Hanbury as a generous, disinterested, and benevolent man. Earlom engraved, in 1775, a three-quarter metzotinto, from the above portrait by Penny. Mr. Hanbury also published "A Complete Body of Planting and Gardening;" 2 vols. folio. Also, "An Essay on Planting, and a Scheme to make it conducive to the Glory of G.o.d, and the Advantage of Society;" Oxford, 8vo. 1s. 1758. And "The Gardener's New Calendar;" 8vo. 1758.

Mr. Hanbury first conceived, in 1751, the establis.h.i.+ng at Church Langton, for benevolent purposes, his immense plantations; having procured (particularly from North America) "almost every sort of seed that could be procured." He proposed that an annual sermon should be preached, either in praise of church music, the duty of decorating religious houses, charity in general, or the wonders of the creation; and that a hospital should be founded for the relief of the really distressed. All these extensive plans were frustrated. Even when his first twenty thousand trees had just been planted out, the cattle belonging to the tenants of Mrs. Dorothy Pickering, and Frances Byrd, (who a few years after died worth two hundred thousand pounds, and whose village biography is curiously dispersed throughout the above history) were _purposely_ turned amongst the young trees, and in a little time destroyed them all. "Neither was this all; I was served for a trespa.s.s with twenty-seven different copies of writs in one day (by their attorney, Valentine Price, of Leicester); to such a degree of rage and fury were these old gentlewomen raised, at what one should have thought every heart would have rejoiced, and kindly lent an a.s.sisting hand." Mr.

Hanbury gives many instances of the "venomous rage and pa.s.sion" of these two old women. They had, says he, "the mortification to find themselves totally despised. Not a gentleman or lady would go near them, two neighbouring clergymen excepted, who were invited to dine with them upon venison." They attempted making a tool of the sow-gelder's son, to enable them to carry on their mean plans, and sent him word, that nothing they could do for him in the parish should be wanting. His answer was, "that favours granted from such people, on such terms, could never prosper, and he desired the other to tell them, they were _two old b.i.t.c.hes_."--"This summer, (says Mr. Hanbury,) was murdered, in the most barbarous manner, the best spaniel that perhaps ever entered the field, and the best greyhound that ever run. With these I had been often entertained in my morning walks. To deprive me of these pleasures, afforded me in my morning recreations, I had discharges from Mrs.

Pickering, and Mrs. Byrd, for taking them with me in their manors. To these I paid no regard, and as they never brought any action on that account, it may be supposed they could find no just cause to ground one.

What then is to be done? Some method is to be contrived to deprive me of my attendants; the spaniel therefore was the first object destined for destruction. He was small, and of a beautiful black, and had been used to the parlour; and being absent about an hour, came reeling home in the agonies of death; and in about a quarter of an hour after, died in the seemingly most excruciating tortures. Suspecting some villany, I ordered him to be opened, but found everything perfect and entire; I then directed him to be skinned, and coming to the loins, found the traces of a table-fork, which was stuck into the kidneys, and which was the occasion of his speedy and dreadful death. A few days after this, my best greyhound was stuck in the loins, in the like barbarous manner, which brought on the same kind of speedy and agonizing death; and this was the catastrophe of these two noted dogs, which had been much talked of, and were famous amongst sportsmen, as being most perfect in their kind. Some time after this, their game-keeper, in company with his nephew, _buried two dogs alive_; they were the property of Mr. Wade, a substantial grazier, who had grounds contiguous to a place of cover, called Langton Caudle, where was often game; and where the unfortunate two dogs, straying from their master, had been used to hunt. The game-keeper and his nephew being shooting in this place, the dogs, upon the report of the gun, made towards them. Their shooting them or hanging them would have been merciful, but they buried them alive; and what words can express the abhorrence of such barbarity to such innocent creatures following the dictates of nature? To prevent a possibility of their scratching a way out, they covered them down with black thorns; over these they laid a sufficient quant.i.ty of earth and one large stone, which the rammed down with their heels. Day after day the dogs were heard in this place, with the howling, barking noise of dogs that were lost. Some people resorted to find them out, and wondered it was to no purpose, for n.o.body could suspect the dogs were under ground; and thus after calling and whistling them, and seeking them for some time, returned, amazed that lost dogs should continue so long in that place; but a sight of none could ever be had. The noise was fancied to come sometimes from one quarter, sometimes from another; and when they came near the place they were in, they ceased howling, expecting their deliverance was at hand. I myself heard them _ten days_ after they had been buried; and seeing some people at a distance, enquired what dogs they were. _They are some dogs that are lost, Sir_, said they; _they have been lost some time_. I concluded only some poachers had been there early in the morning, and by a precipitate flight had left their dogs behind them. In short, the howling and barking of these dogs was heard for near three weeks, when it ceased. Mr. Wade's dogs were missing, but he could not suspect those to be his; and the noise ceasing, the thoughts, wonder, and talking about them, soon also ceased. Some time after, a person being amongst the bushes where the howling was heard, discovered some disturbed earth, and the print of men's heels ramming it down again very close; and seeing Mr. Wade's servant, told him, he thought something had been buried there. _Then_, said the man, _it is our dogs, and they have been buried alive: I will go and fetch a spade, and will find them, if I dig all Caudle over_. He soon brought a spade, and upon removing the top earth, came to the blackthorns, and then to the dogs, the biggest of which had eat the loins and greatest share of the hind parts of the little one." Mr. Hanbury states the deaths of these two sisters in the course of a few months after. The sums they acc.u.mulated by their penurious way of living, were immense. They bequeathed legacies by will to almost every body that were no kin to them except their a.s.siduous attorney, Valentine Price, to whom they left nothing. "But what is strange and wonderful, though their charities in their life-time at Langton were a sixpenny loaf a week only, which was divided into as many parts as there were pet.i.tioners, and distributed by eleven of the clock on a Sunday, unless they left the town the day before, which was often the case, and when the poor were sure to fail of their bounty; these gentlewomen, at the death of the last, bequeathed by will upwards of twelve thousand pounds to the different hospitals and religious inst.i.tutions in the kingdom. A blaze of goodness issued from them at last, and thus ended these two poor, unhappy, uncharitable, charitable old gentlewomen."

Mr. Marshall calls him, "the indefatigable Hanbury, whose immense labours are in a manner lost to the public." No man delighted more than Mr. Hanbury did, in describing the beauty of trees and shrubs: this is visible in the extracts which Mr. Marshall has made in his "Planting and Rural Ornament."

WILLIAM SHENSTONE, Esq., justly celebrated for his pure and cla.s.sic taste in landscape gardening. His tender and pathetic feelings s.h.i.+ne throughout most of his works; and the sweetness and simplicity of his temper and manners, endeared him to the neighbourhood and to his acquaintance. Dr. Johnson says, his life was unstained by any crime. He farther says of him, "He began from this time to entangle his walks, and to wind his waters; which he did with such judgment and such fancy, as made his little domain the envy of the great and the admiration of the skilful. His house was mean, and he did not improve it; his care was of his grounds. When he came home from his walks, he might find his floor flooded by a shower through the broken roof; but could spare no money for its reparation. In time his expences brought clamours about him, that overpowered the lamb's bleat and the linnet's song; and his groves were haunted by beings very different from fawns and fairies. He spent his estate in adorning it, and his death was probably hastened by his anxieties. He was a lamp that spent its oil in blazing. It is said, that if he had lived a little longer he would have been a.s.sisted by a pension: such bounty could not have been ever more properly bestowed; but that it was ever asked is not certain; it is too certain that it never was enjoyed."

His intimate friend, Robert Dodsley, thus speaks of him: "Tenderness, indeed, in every sense of the word, was his peculiar characteristic; his friends, his domestics, his poor neighbours, all daily experienced his benevolent turn of mind. He was no economist; the generosity of his temper prevented him from paying a proper regard to the use of money: he exceeded, therefore, the bounds of his paternal fortune, which before he died was considerably inc.u.mbered. But when one recollects the perfect paradise he had raised around him, the hospitality with which he lived, his great indulgence to his servants, his charities to the indigent, and all done with an estate not more than three hundred pounds a year, one should rather be led to wonder that he left any thing behind him, than to blame his want of economy. He left, however, more than sufficient to pay all his debts; and, by his will, appropriated his whole estate for that purpose."

His portrait is prefixed to his works, published in 3 vols. 8vo. 1764.

His second volume contains his "Unconnected Thoughts on Landscape Gardening;" and the description of the celebrated _Leasowes_, in that volume, was written by ("the modest, sensible, and humane") Robert Dodsley. His Epistolary Correspondence appeared in 2 vols. 8vo. The t.i.tle pages of the above first three volumes are attractive from their vignette, or rural embellishments. A portrait of Shenstone was taken in 1758, by Ross, which Hall engraved for Dodsley, in 1780; and this picture by Ross was in the possession of the late most worthy Dr.

Graves, of Claverton, who died a few years ago, at the advanced age of ninety. Bell's edition of the Poets has a neat copy of this portrait.

Dr. Graves wrote "Recollections of the late William Shenstone." He also dedicated an urn to him, and inscribed these lines thereon:--

Stranger! if woods and lawns like these, If rural scenes thy fancy please, Ah! stop awhile, and pensive view Poor Shenstone's urn: who oft, like you, These woods and lawns well-pleased has rov'd, And oft these rural scenes approv'd.

Like him, be thou fair virtue's friend, And health and peace thy steps attend.

Mr. Shenstone died in 1763, and is buried in Hales Owen church yard. An urn is placed in the church to his memory, thus inscribed:--

Whoe'er thou art, with reverence tread These sacred mansions of the dead.-- Not that the monumental bust Or sumptuous tomb HERE guards the dust Of rich or great: (Let wealth, rank, birth, Sleep undistinguish'd in the earth;) This simple urn records a name That s.h.i.+nes with more exalted fame.

Reader! if genius, taste refined, A native elegance of mind; If virtue, science, manly sense; If wit, that never gave offence; The clearest head, the tenderest heart, In thy esteem e'er claim'd a part; Ah! smite thy breast, and drop a tear, For, know, THY Shenstone's dust lies here.

Mr. Mason thus speaks of Shenstone:

----"Nor thou Shalt pa.s.s without thy meed, thou son of peace, Who knew'st perchance to harmonize thy shades Still softer than thy song; yet was that song Nor rude nor unharmonious, when attuned To pastoral plaint, or tales of slighted love."

And Mr. Whateley pays his memory the following tribute, previous to his masterly survey of his far-famed and enchanting seat: "An allusion to the ideas of pastoral poetry evidently enters into the design of the Leasowes, where they appear so lovely as to endear the memory of their author, and justify the reputation of Mr. Shenstone, who inhabited, made and directed that celebrated place. It is a perfect picture of his mind, simple, elegant, and amiable, and will always suggest a doubt whether the spot inspired his verses, or whether, in the scenes which he formed, he only realized the pastoral images which abound in his songs."[85]

George Mason, in many pages, pays high compliments to Shenstone's taste: "Paine's Hill has every mark of creative genius, and Hagley of correctest fancy; but the most intimate _alliance with nature_ was formed by Shenstone." Mr. Marshall, in his "Planting and Rural Ornament," has some critical remarks on the _Leasowes_, the expences in perfecting which threw Shenstone "on the rack of poverty, and probably hastened the dissolution of an amiable and valuable man." He says that _Enville_ was originally designed by Shenstone, and that the cascade and chapel were spoken of, with confidence, as his.[86]

LORD KAMES. His portrait is prefixed to the memoirs of him, by Lord Woodhouselee, in 2 vols. 4to. 1807. There is an edition of the same work, in 3 vols. 8vo. 1814, with the same portrait, which is engraved from a drawing by D. Martin. His "Gentleman Farmer" spread his fame through Scotland. Its preface is particularly interesting. Mr. Smellie, in his Literary Lives of Gregory, Home, Hume, Adam Smith, and Lord Kames, after giving many interesting particulars of the latter, and after noticing his benevolence to the poor, during the whole course of his long life, proceeds:--"One great feature in the character of Lord Kames, besides his literary talents, and his public spirit, was a remarkable innocency of mind. He not only never indulged in detraction, but when any species of scandal was exhibited in his company, he either remained silent, or endeavoured to give a turn to the conversation. As natural consequences of this amiable disposition, he never meddled with politics, even when politics ran to indecent lengths in this country; and what is still more remarkable, he never wrote a sentence, notwithstanding his numerous publications, without a direct and a manifest intention to benefit his fellow creatures. In his temper he was naturally warm, though kindly and affectionate. In the friends.h.i.+ps he formed, he was ardent, zealous and sincere. So far from being inclined to irreligion, as some ignorant bigots insinuated, few men possessed a more devout habit of thought. A constant sense of Deity, and a veneration for Providence, dwelt upon his mind. From this source arose that propensity, which appears in all his writings, of investigating final causes, and tracing the wisdom of the Supreme Author of Nature."

He had the honour to be highly esteemed by the celebrated Mrs. Montagu.

The European Magazine of Nov. 1790, which gives an engraved portrait of him, being a copy of the above, thus speaks: "He was one of the very first who to great legal knowledge, added a considerable share of polite literature. He arrived at the highest rank to which a lawyer could attain in his own country; and he has left to the world such literary productions, as will authorize his friends to place him, if not in the highest, yet much above the lowest, cla.s.s of elegant and polite writers.

He died in 1783, leaving to the world a proof, that an attention to the abstrusest branches of learning, is not incompatible with the more pleasing pursuits of taste and polite literature." He was kind-hearted and humane. His pure taste in landscape scenery, is acknowledged by Mr.

Loudon, in p. 81 of the Encyclopaedia of Gardening. _Blair Drummond_ will long be celebrated as having been his residence, and he there displayed his superior taste in planting and improving.

In his "Elements of Criticism," (a truly original work) there is a distinct chapter on architecture and gardening. He therein thus addresses the reader:--"These cursory observations upon gardening, shall be closed with some reflections that must touch every reader. Rough uncultivated ground, dismal to the eye, inspires peevishness and discontent: may not this be one cause of the harsh manners of savages? A field richly ornamented, containing beautiful objects of various kinds, displays in full l.u.s.tre the goodness of the Deity, and the ample provision he has made for our happiness. Ought not the spectator to be filled with grat.i.tude to his Maker, and with benevolence to his fellow creatures? Other fine arts may be perverted to excite irregular and even vicious emotions; but gardening, which inspires the purest and most refined pleasures, cannot fail to promote every good affection. The gaiety and harmony of mind it produceth, inclineth the spectator to communicate his satisfaction to others, and to make them happy as he is himself, and tends naturally to establish in him a habit of humanity and benevolence."

JOHN ABERCROMBIE'S manly and expressive countenance is best given in the portrait prefixed to an edition in 2 vols. 8vo. published Feb. 1, 1783, by Fielding and Debrett. He is also drawn at full-length at his age of seventy-two, in the sixteenth edition, printed in 1800, with a pleasing view of a garden in the back-ground, neatly engraved. This honest, una.s.suming man, persevered "through a long life of scarcely interrupted health," in the ardent pursuit of his favourite science. The tenor of his life exemplified how much a garden calms the mind, and tranquilly sets at rest its turbulent pa.s.sions. Mr. Loudon's Encyclop. of Gardening, after giving some interesting points of his history, thus concludes: "In the spring of 1806, being in his eightieth year, he met with a severe fall, by which he broke the upper part of his thigh bone.

This accident, which happened to him on the 15th of April, terminated in his death. After lying in a very weak exhausted state, without much pain, he expired in the night, between April and May, as St. Paul's church struck twelve. He was lamented by all who knew him, as cheerful, harmless, and upright." One of his biographers thus relates of him: "Abercrombie from a fall down stairs in the dark, died at the age of eighty, and was buried at St. Pancras. He was present at the famous battle of Preston Pans, which was fought close to his father's garden walls. For the last twenty years of his life he lived chiefly on tea, using it three times a-day: his pipe was his first companion in the morning, and last at night.[87] He never remembered to have taken a dose of physic in his life, prior to his last fatal accident, nor of having a day's illness but once." A list of his works appears in Watts's Bibl.

Brit., and a most full one in Johnson's History of English Gardening, who, with many collected particulars of Abercrombie, relates the great and continually increasing sale of some of his works.

LAUNCELOT BROWNE, Esq.

His portrait was painted by Dance, and engraved by Sherwin. Under this portrait are engraved the following lines, from the pen of Mr. Mason, which are also inscribed on the tomb of Mr. Browne, in the church of Fen-Staunton, Huntingdons.h.i.+re:

_Ye sons of elegance, who truly taste The simple charms which genuine art supplies, Come from the sylvan scenes his genius drew, And offer here your tributary sighs.

But know, that more than genius slumbers here, Virtues were his that art's best powers transcend, Come, ye superior train! who these revere, And weep the christian, husband, father, friend._

Mr. Walpole, too, pays Mr. Browne this elegant compliment: "Did living artists come within my plan, I should be glad to do justice to Mr.

Browne; but he may be a gainer by being reserved for some abler pen."

This celebrated landscape gardener died suddenly, in Hertford Street, May Fair, on the 6th of February, 1783, on his return from a visit to his old friend the Earl of Coventry. Mr. Browne, though bred a common gardener at Stowe, possessed a cultivated mind, and his society was much courted. Joseph Cradock, Esq. called him "a most agreeable, una.s.suming man." He ama.s.sed a large fortune. He was consulted by most of the n.o.bility and gentry, and the places he laid out or altered, were, as Mr.

Loudon observes, beyond all reckoning. Mr. Repton has given a list of his princ.i.p.al works.

It has been the fate of this eminent master of landscape embellishment, to be severely censured by some, and lavishly praised by others. The late keen and consummate observer of landscape scenery, Sir Uvedale Price, harshly condemns the too frequent cold monotony and tameness of many of Mr. Browne's creations, and his never transfusing into his works any thing of the taste and spirit which prevail in the poet Mason's precepts and descriptions; and in one of his acute, yet pleasant pages, he alludes to his having but _one_ and the same plan of operation; _Sangrado_-like, treating all disorders in the same manner. Perhaps the too general smoothness and tameness of Mr. Browne's pleasure-grounds ill accorded with Sir Uvedale's enthusiasm for the more sublime views of forest scenery, rapid and stony torrents and cascades, wild entangled dingles, and craggy breaks; or with the high and sublime notions he had imbibed from the rich scenery of nature so often contemplated by him in the landscapes of _Claude_, or in those of _Rubens_, _Gaspar Poussin_, _Salvator Rosa_, or of _t.i.tian_, "the greatest of all landscape painters." Perhaps Sir Uvedale preferred "unwedgeable and gnarled oaks,"

to "the tameness of the poor pinioned trees of a gentleman's plantation, drawn up straight," or the wooded banks of a river, to the "bare shaven border of a ca.n.a.l."[88]

Daines Barrington happily said, "Kent has been succeeded by Browne, who hath undoubtedly great merit in laying out pleasure-grounds; but I conceive that in some of his plans, I see rather traces of the kitchen-gardener of old Stowe, than of Poussin or Claude Lorraine: I could wish, therefore, that Gainsborough gave the design, and that Browne executed it."[89] Mr. Loudon observes, "that Browne must have possessed considerable talents, the extent of his reputation abundantly proves; but that he was imbued with much of that taste for picturesque beauty, which distinguished the works of Kent, Hamilton, and Shenstone, we think will hardly be a.s.serted by any one who has observed attentively such places as are known to be his creations." Mr. George Mason candidly asks, "why Browne should be charged with all the defects of those that have called themselves his followers, I have seen no good reason alleged, nor can I suppose it possible to produce one." Many of his imitators exhibited so little talent in their creations, that Mr.

Browne's name considerably suffered in the estimation of many.

Mr. Gilpin speaks of Browne's improvements at Blenheim in high terms.

Mr. Marshall in his Survey of Stowe and Fisherwick, in vol. i. of his "Planting and Rural Ornament," and at p. 384, pays a fair tribute to him. Much general information respecting him may be seen in Mr. Loudon's chapter "Of the rise, progress, and present state of gardening in the British Isles." The candour and rich conciseness of this review, embraces the whole _magic of the art_, as respects landscape gardening.[90]

FRANCIS ZAVIER VISPRE wrote "A Dissertation on the Growth of Wine in England", Bath, 8vo. 1786. Mr. Vispre died poor, between thirty and forty years ago, in St. Martin's Lane. He excelled in painting portraits in crayons: Sir Joshua much esteemed him. He was a most inoffensive man, of the mildest manners, and of the purest integrity. I have seen his portrait in crayons, in an oval, finely finished by himself, but know not now where that is. On his mode of training the vine _very near the ground_, see p. 757 of the Encyclop. of Gardening.

WILLIAM MASON, precentor and canon of York, died in 1797. His friend, Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted an impressive portrait of him, which is engraved by Doughty. A masterly copy of this fine portrait is in Mr.

Cadell's Contemporary Portraits. A copy is also prefixed to the edition of his works, in 4 vols. 8vo. 1811, published by Mr. Cadell. His portrait was also taken by Vaslet, and engraved by Carter, 1771. It is a large metz etching. He translated Du Fresnoy's Art of Painting, to which Sir Joshua added some notes. Mr. Mason has prefixed an Epistle to Sir Joshua, which thus concludes:

And oh! if ought thy poet can pretend Beyond his favourite wish, to _call thee friend_: Be it that here his tuneful toil has dress'd The muse of _Fresnoy_ in a modern vest; And, with what skill his fancy could bestow, Taught the close folds to take an easier flow; Be it that here, thy partial smile approv'd The pains he lavish'd on the art he lov'd.

Mr. Mason's attachment to painting was an early one, is conspicuous in many of his writings, and in his English Garden, is visible throughout:

----feel ye there What _Reynolds_ felt, when first the Vatican Unbarr'd her gates, and to his raptur'd eye Gave all the G.o.d-like energy that flow'd From _Michael's_ pencil; feel what _Garrick_ felt, When first he breath'd the soul of _Shakspeare's_ page.

Sir Joshua, in his will, bequeaths his then supposed portrait of Milton to Mr. Mason.

Mr. Gray thus observes of Mason, when at Cambridge:--"So ignorant of the world and its ways, that this does not hurt him in one's opinion; so sincere and so undisguised, that no mind with a spark of generosity would ever think of hurting him, he lies so open to injury; but so indolent, that if he cannot overcome this habit, all his good qualities will signify nothing at all."

Mr. Mason, in 1754, found a patron in the Earl of Holderness, who presented him with the living of _Aston_, in Yorks.h.i.+re. This sequestred village was favourable to his love of poetry and picturesque scenery; which displayed itself at large in his English Garden, and was the foundation of his lasting friends.h.i.+p with Mr. Gilpin, who to testify his esteem, dedicated to him his _Observations on the Wye_. A biographer of the late Mr. Sh.o.r.e, of Norton Hall, (the friend of Priestley), thus mentions _Aston_:--"That truly conscientious, and truly learned and excellent man, Mr. Lindsey, spent a whole week in this neighbourhood. He was during that time the guest of his friend Mr. Mason, who was residing on his rectory at _Aston_, the biographer of Gray, and one whose taste, gave beauty, and poetry, celebrity, to that cheerful village." His friends.h.i.+p for Mr. Gray, terminated only with the life of the latter. In 1770 Mr. Mason was visited at Aston, for the last time, by him. His last letter to Mr. Mason was from Pembroke-hall, in May, 1771, and on the 31st of the next month, and at that place, this sublime genius paid the debt of nature. The following epitaph was written by Mr. Mason, and inscribed on the monument in Westminster Abbey:

No more the Grecian muse unrivall'd reigns; To Britain let the nations homage pay: She felt a Homer's fire in Milton's strains, A Pindar's rapture in the lyre of Gray.

He farther evinced his attachment to this elegant scholar by publis.h.i.+ng his poems and letters, to which he prefixed memoirs of him. He commences the third book of his English Garden with an invocation to his memory, and records, in lofty language, his eye glistening and his accents glowing, when viewing the charms of all-majestic Nature--the heights of Skiddaw and the purple crags of Borrowdale. And on a rustic alcove, in the garden at Aston, which he dedicated to Mr. Gray, he inscribed this stanza from the celebrated elegy: