Jones and Palladio to themselves restore, And be whate'er Vitruvius was before: Till Kings call forth th' Ideas of your mind, Bid Temples, worthier of the God, afcend; 195 NOTES. Bid attention, Berkley furveyed and examined every object of curiofity. He not only made the usual tour, but went over Apulia and Calabria, and even travelled on foot through Sicily, and drew up an account of that very claffical ground; which was loft in a voyage to Naples, and cannot be fufficiently regretted. His generous project for erecting an univerfity at Bermudas, the effort of a mind truly active, benevolent, and patriotic, is fufficiently known. WARTON. VER. 193. Jones] See an accurate and judicious account of his Works in Walpole's Anecdotes, vol. ii. from page 261 to page 280. full of curious particulars. Dr. Clarke, of All Souls College, Oxford, had Jones's Palladio, with his own notes and obfervations in Italian, which the Doctor bequeathed to Worcester College. WARTON. VER. 195. 197, &c. Till Kings-bid Harbours open, &c.] The Poet, after having touched upon the proper objects of Magnificence and Expence, in the private works of great men, comes to thofe great and public works which become a prince. This Poem was published in the year 1732, when fome of the new-built churches, by the act of Queen Anne, were ready to fall, being founded in boggy land (which is fatirically alluded to in our Author's imitation of Horace, Lib. ii. Sat. ii. "Shall half the new-built Churches round thee fall ?)” others were vilely executed, through fraudulent cabals between undertakers, officers, &c. Dagenham-breach had done very great mischiefs; many of the Highways throughout England were hardly paffable; and most of those which were repaired by Turnpikes were made jobs for private lucre, and infamously executed, even to the entrance of London itself. The propofal of building a Bridge at Westminster had been petitioned against and rejected; Bid the broad Arch the dang'rous Flood contain, These Honours, Peace to happy BRITAIN brings, These are Imperial Works, and worthy Kings. NOTES.. 200 rejected; but in two years after the publication of this poem, an Act for building a Bridge paffed through both Houses. After many debates in the committee, the execution was left to the carpenter above mentioned, who would have made it a wooden one; to which our Author alludes in thefe lines: "Who builds a Bridge that never drove a pile? Should Ripley venture, all the world would smile." See the notes on that place. РОРЕ. VER. 197. Bid Harbours open,] No country has been enriched and adorned, within a period of thirty or forty years, with fo many works of public fpirit, as Great Britain has been; witnefs our many extenfive roads, our inland navigations, (fome of which excel the boasted canal of Languedoc,) the lighting, and the paying, and beautifying our cities, and our various and magnificent edifices. A general good tafte has been diffused in gardening, planting, and building. The ruins of Palmyra, the antiquities of Athens and Spalatro, and the Ionian antiquities, by Wood, Stuart, Adam, and Chandler, are fuch magnificent monuments of learned curiofity as no country in Europe can equal. Let it be remembered, that these fine lines of Pope were written when we had no Wyatt or Brown, Brindley or Reynolds; no Westminster Bridge, no Pantheon, no Royal Academy, no king that is at, once a judge and a patron of all those fine arts, which ought to be employed in raising and beautifying a palace equal to his dignity and his tafte. On the whole, this Epiftle contains rather ftrictures on the false tafte*, than illuftrations of the true; which circumstance gave room to Mr. Mason to treat the subject in a more open and ornamental manner, and with more picturefque and poetical imagery in his English Garden. WARTON. *It was first published with the title of False Tafte, which feems more appropriate than that afterwards adopted. THIS Epiftle wa in 1731. Pope had tatious feat of the Du in return, he held up descended to throw out calls first published with the title of " Falfe Tafte," been received at Canons, a fplendid and oftenke of Chandos, with refpect and kindness the houfe and gardens to ridicule, and pericnalitics against its owner, whom he "A puny infect, fhiv'ring at a breeze." This circumstance excited confiderable odit im against Pope; and well it might. ON more As Pope was the first to deal in perfonalities, the following fevere retaliation was published in the Papers of the tine "Let Pope no more what Chandos builds deride, "Because he takes not NATURE for his guide; "Since, wond'rous critic! in thy form we fee, "That Nature may mistake, as well as he." Pope's obfervations on falfe magnificence evince his own to legant taste and accurate discrimination, which will appear the ls ftriking when we confider the ftate of gardening and rural ad embellishments at the time. Though we do not now admire either ser Stowe, or the plan of his own little garden at Twickenham (both of N. appear to us as puerile and affected, as the Queen's Herrne with Dr. Clarke, appeared to him), yet fufficient justice hifibeen always done to Pope's tafte, or to the taste of those whto fued his ideas of embellishing rural scenery. Every art must hm beginning; and the rapidity of improvement cannot be determined, than by comparing our English gardens (for I not fpeak of buildings), as they exifted in the time of Si William Temple, 1685, and at the period when our Author py lished this Poem, 1731. Let the reader decide, when he perufed the following extract from Sir William Temple : P "The perfectest figure of a garden I ever faw, either at ho 66 or abroad, was that of Moor Park in Hertfordshire, when "knew it about thirty years ago, &c. which aitage, "Because I take the garden I have named to have been in "kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in figure and difpo 'fition, that I have ever feen. I will defcribe it, for a model to thofe as not o pur ave its etter do "that 66 "that meet with such a situation, &c. It lies on the fide of a hill *, "but not very steep. The length of the house, where the best rooms and of most use and pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of "the garden; the great parlour opens into the middle of a terrace "gravel-walk, &c., the border fet with ftandard laurels, &c. : from "this walk are three defcents by many stone-steps, in the middle “and at each end, with a very large parterre. This is divided into "quarters by gravel-walks, and adorned with two fouutains and eight "flatues at the end of the terrace-walk are two fummer-houses, " &c." This will, perhaps, be fufficient to give a picture of the place, according to Sir William Temple's idea of rural perfection. It would be entertaining to compare the present state of what is now called Landscape Gardening. We have gone from one extreme to the other, in fome things. The Artificial, connected with the house; the avenues, the "high embowered roofs," &c. have been, by the followers of Brown, too much exploded; but Art and Nature never appeared fo reconciled in picturesque yet cultivated variety, as at fome of the feats of our Nobility and Gentlemen-witnefs, Downton Caftle†; the amenity and richness of Fonthill; the ftately magnificence, in fome points of view, of Long Leat; the dark amphitheatre of afcending oaks, fhading the venerable caftle of Wardour; the Grecian elegance of Stourhead; and let me add, the Leafowes; the murmurs of whofe retired ftream I have never heard without a figh, remembering its elegant but unfortunate defigner and owner, Shenstone. *It should e remembered, that gardens like thefe, formed, as it were, a part of the house, connected by terrace-stairs, and that they comp. ifed the flower garden, fruit garden, and ornamented plantation. Downton Cattle, near Ludlow, the feat of M. Knight, a poet, a lover and judge of painting, and, with Mr. Price, an eloquent advocate for the genuine picturefque in Landscape Gardening. |