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THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY
[WILLIAM GILPIN]
A
DIALOGUE
UPON THE GARDENS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE
Lord Viscount _COBHAM_
AT
STOW IN BUCKINGHAMSHIRE
_(1748)_
_Introduction by_
JOHN DIXON HUNT
PUBLICATION NUMBER _176_
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
_1976_
GENERAL EDITORS
William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles
David S. Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles
ADVISORY EDITORS
James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
CORRESPONDING SECRETARY
Beverly J. Onley, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
INTRODUCTION
Stowe is certainly the most documented of all English Augustan
gardens,[1] and William Gilpin's _Dialogue_ probably one of the most
important accounts of it. He was at Stowe in 1747 and published his
record of that visit anonymously the following year.[2] The _Dialogue_
reached a second edition, with some slight alterations in the text, in
1749 and a third in 1751, when the dialogue was transformed into
narrative.
The _Dialogue_ recommends itself both to the historian of the English
landscape movement, in which Stowe was a prime exhibit, and to the
student of the later vogue for the picturesque, in which Gilpin was a
major participant. His account of Cobham's gardens illuminates some of
the connections between the cult of the picturesque that Gilpin fostered
with his publications of the 1780s and the earlier eighteenth-century
invocation of pictures in gardens.
Perhaps in no other art form were the tensions and transformations in
the arts more conspicuous than in landscape gardening. Gilpin is
especially rewarding in his instinctive attention to these shifting
patterns; although the dialogue form is not very skillfully handled, it
yet allows some play between the rival attitudes. Thus his characters
attend to both the emblematic and the expressive garden;[3] to both its
celebration of public worth and its commendation of private virtue.
While Gilpin seems sufficiently and indeed sharply aware of set-piece
views in the gardens, the three-dimensional pictures contrived among the
natural and architectural features, he also reveals himself as sensitive
towards the more fluid psychological patterns, what one might term the
_kinema_ of landscape response. Above all, his obvious delight in the
landscape garden and appreciation of it vie with an equally strong
admiration for scenery outside gardens altogether.
At the time of Gilpin's visit, Lord Cobham's gardens were substantially
as they are represented in the engravings published in 1739 by the widow
of Charles Bridgeman, one of Stowe's designers. In the year of Gilpin's
visit work had just started in the northeast part of the grounds upon
the natural glade that came to be known as the Grecian Valley.[4]
Whether it is the work of Lancelot ("Capability") Brown, who was then a
gardener at Stowe, or only prophetic of it, the Grecian Valley was a
hint of the less architectural, the more carefully "natural" gardens of
the next decades. Although Gilpin would presumably have seen little of
this most advanced example of gardening style, he would still have
observed what were, in the terms customarily invoked, formal and
informal ingredients at Stowe. From the Rotunda, for example, he looked
over the (now vanished) Queen's Pool, "laid out with all the Decorations
of Art" (p. 15), including the oblong canal itself and various statues;
the first body of water encountered beside the Lake Pavillions (p. 4)
was octagonally shaped and bore an obelisk at its centre. Yet elsewhere
there was frequent occasion to praise prospects that obviously seemed
much less artificial.
If there is any distinction between the two participants in the
_Dialogue_, it is certainly between the one's taste for the evidence of
art and the other's penchant for natural beauties. If their opposition
is not very conspicuously maintained by Gilpin, it is surely because his
own loyalties were divided and were to be reconciled only with some
subtlety and ingenuity later in his career. Callophilus, who cites
Pope's balanced instructions on the mixture of art and nature (p. 26),
is more inclined to appreciate these elements in the garden where
Nature's defective compositions have been improved; the love of beauty
that his name announces is of beauty methodized, though without
exceeding "a probable Nature" (p. 6). On the other hand, his
enthusiastic companion, Polypthon, directs his eponymous ill-will mostly
against the decorations of art: the "hewn Stone" of Dido's Cave
particularly offends him (p. 14), and he "cannot very much admire" the
canal below the Rotunda (p. 15). Yet he seems to share Callophilus'
notions about "mending" nature (p. 23), and it is he who proposes a
landscape that, substituting farm-houses for temples (p. 45),
approximates most clearly to that prettiest of eighteenth-century
landscape ideas, the _ferme ornee_. Polypthon's predilection for scenery
outside gardens seems equally compromised by his ready assent to
Callophilus' praise of the carefully studied contrasts in Stowe gardens:
so that he may turn from the less agreeable vista down the Queen's Pool
and look instead over Home Park, earlier noted for its "rural scene"
(p. 8), and now admired as a natural field--though the cattle prominent
in Rigaud's drawings[5] are not mentioned.
But what is artless for Polypthon is studied by his companion in terms
of art: "the Field is _formed_ by that Semi-circle of Trees into a very
grand Theatre" (p. 15, _my italics_), and his eye registers an
architectural feature--Vanbrugh's Pyramid--as the apt centre of that
field of vision. This particular exchange at the Rotunda suggests that
the usual modern discussion of landscape gardens in terms of their
diminishing formality or escalating informality is less Gilpin's concern
than the mind's involvement with the various landscapes. Callophilus and
Polypthon can apparently both contemplate the same scene from the
Rotunda, southwest towards Kent's Temple of Venus and Vanbrugh's
Pyramid, yet adjudge its artifice differently. What is evidently at work
in Gilpin's record of this garden is the mental experience of it, and in
his case the ambiguities of his visual response.
The complicated geometry that began on Bridgeman's drawing board[6] and
then was transferred to shape the grounds is certainly a survival of the
old-fashioned French style in gardens. Its presence is registered by
Gilpin, who allows Callophilus to note how the Gibbs building, like many
other objects at Stowe designed to be seen along a variety of axes, "has
its Use ... in several Prospects" (p. 8). But the psychology of the
viewer has at least equal weight in Gilpin with the many-faceted object
viewed from different positions.[7] And in those circumstances the
presence of formal or informal designs upon the ground or the
drawing-board matters less than the variety of objects and scenes within
a garden and even, as at the Rotunda, the variety of viewpoint and
interpretation within one vista.
Variety had, of course, always been essential to the English garden and
is a special feature of Stowe, as Pope implies in the _Epistle to
Burlington_ and as the writer of the appendix to Defoe's Tour of 1742
explicitly stated.[8] What we have in Gilpin's _Dialogue_ is both
valuable evidence of response to garden structures, the visitor's rather
than the designer's or client's account, and some hints of how the idea
of variety, itself a painterly term, presented itself to Gilpin in the
days before his picturesque tours.
Gilpin's path through the gardens at Stowe is recorded in the _Dialogue_
as a journal of the mind's responses: the _Advertisement_ (p. iv)
prepares the reader for this with its insistence upon the role memory
has played in its composition. The varieties of mental experience are
sometimes registered by the dialogue form; more often the two visitors
share responses which correspond to the changes of Stowe's scenes. This
is most amusingly illustrated by the "impertinent Hedge" that suddenly
blocks their view (p. 11); Callophilus' ingenious explanation, a curious
parallel to Sterne's blank page in _Tristram Shandy_, is that thereby
the visitor's "Attention" is kept awake (p. 12). More strenuous is their
intellectual involvement with the monuments, statues, and inscriptions
in the Elysian Fields (pp. 19ff), emblems that provoke in Callophilus "a
Variety of grand Ideas" (p. 29). Yet, as the text of the third edition
makes precisely clear (p. 11), in face of the same objects his companion
is more fascinated than he with the formal elements of an art--contrasts
in landscape textures, style of inscriptions (p. 30), or unadmirable
workmanship in bas-reliefs (p. 37). The "Subject[s] for ... Rapsody" (p.
30) that Polypthon mocks were an essential aspect of any Augustan
garden, and six pages later they divert even Polypthon himself into
moralizing. But his stronger inclination is to ignore the iconographical
problems of the Saxon busts (p. 44) and gaze "into the Country" where
his companion solicitously directs his attention to the elegant woods
(p. 45).
The _Dialogue_ allows these and related distinctions to emerge, even
though it does not grapple with their implications. As Callophilus
explains, there should be a grand terrace for strangers, and the shade
of a "close vista" for friends (p. 31). Stowe provided both, just as it
catered to the propensity for retirement--the Hermitage, the Temple of
Friendship, or the Temple of Sleep--as well as for the obligations of
public life--the Temple of British Worthies, the gothic Temple of
Liberty. The most emblematic items in the gardens, upon which
Callophilus predictably expatiates because they were designed to be
easily "read," are in the public places, where they firmly control the
visitors' mental reactions and leave less scope for the private and
enthusiastic reveries of Polypthon. It is a fair assumption that most
visitors to the Temples of Liberty or Ancient and Modern Virtue would
have understood their meanings just as Callophilus did (pp. 40 and
19-21).
But the aesthetic taste of Polypthon for the forms and shapes rather
than the meanings of landscape betrays a potential for less controlled
and more private rhapsodies. His quest "after beautiful Objects" (p. 24)
takes him as much to the northern parts of Great Britain as to gardens
like Stowe, and is obviously prophetic of Gilpin's own picturesque
travels. Like Warton's _Enthusiast or the Lover of Nature_ (1740),
Polypthon rejects "gardens deck'd with art's vain pomps." This is
because he is fascinated with the more radical landscapes of solely
formal elements--the serpentine windings of the river at Stirling (p.
44) or what has been called the abstract garden[9] that comes to
fruition only in the decades after Gilpin's visit under the management
of "Capability" Brown. But the fact that Polypthon finds sufficient
abstract patterns to engage his attention at Stowe suggests that the
Brownian mode was already latent among the richnesses of the
Buckinghamshire gardens.
The "rejection" of Stowe by Polypthon as by Warton also signals their
desire to indulge the enthusiastic fit. His very first reaction upon
arrival at Stowe is an "Exclamation" that expresses _his_ expectations
of aesthetic delight (p. 2). Although his companion is equally
susceptible and is accused by Polypthon of being an "Enthusiast" (p. 49)
and in the third edition of the _Dialogue_ (p. 12) determines himself to
"indulge the thrilling Transport," it seems to be Polypthon whom Gilpin
intends to characterize by expressive as opposed to explanatory
outbursts as they proceed round the gardens. And it is he who concludes
their visit (p. 58) with a catalogue of the various human moods for
which the gardens cater, rather more extravagant in its expressive
fervour than Callophilus' traditional identification of the passions on
faces of other visitors (p. 51).
Gilpin's attention to his characters' intellectual and emotional
reactions illuminates the roles of poetry and painting that have always
been associated with the rise of the English landscape garden.[10] If
Milton's description of the Garden of Eden, so frequently invoked by
eighteenth-century gardenists, implied an informal structure for
designers to emulate, it equally encouraged associationist activity in
gardens. The visual reminders of literary texts at Stowe--_Il Pastor
Fido_ (pp. 2ff) or Spenser (pp. 6-7)--which are sometimes accompanied by
inscriptions which articulate the "dumb poetry" of the decorations
(e.g., p. 13) serve mainly to provoke the imagination of visitors.
Sometimes, as at the Hermitage, Stowe's designers force specific
associations upon the mind; elsewhere they are content to manipulate the
feelings in such a way as to stimulate merely general fancies to which
the visitor himself must put whatever name he wishes. It is consistent
with Gilpin's attempt to identify Polypthon with the less public aspects
of Stowe that it is he who twice formulates his own responses to a
scene: the quotations from Milton (pp. 10 and 52-3) may both describe
the formal features of landscape, but they are also expressive of his
emotional reactions.
Pictures, too, provided associationist focus when recalled in a garden:
the most obvious instance being the probable allusion to Claude at
Stourhead.[11] Yet the actual influence of pictures on landscape gardens
has been generally exaggerated.[12] Where they were perhaps a force
seems to have been in articulating the mental and emotional reaction of
visitors. When Walpole praises William Kent for realizing in gardens
"the compositions of the greatest masters in painting",[13] I suspect
that he is in part rationalizing his own associationalist instinct, when
at Hagley he was reminded of Sadeler's prints or of the Samaritan woman
in a picture by Nicolas Poussin. Allusions to pictures were a means of
focusing evanescent mood.
Gilpin, too, organizes his characters' responses in pictorial focus. The
_Advertisement_ again alerts the reader to these studied painterly aims.
Once inside the gardens Callophilus sees pictures everywhere: variously
disposed objects "make a most delightful Picture" (p. 14), while on at
least three occasions in the first half-dozen pages the ruins,
prospects, and "Claro-obscuro" of trees are discussed in terms that
suggest how his habits of vision have been educated in front of painted
or engraved landscapes which in their turn are recalled to provide a
suitable vocabulary for his experiences.[14] Even Polypthon invokes the
syntax of painting (pp. 25 and 41) to formulate his reactions to
scenery.
It is in these painterly preconceptions of the characters and in
Polypthon's account of Scottish scenery (pp. 23-4) that hints of
Gilpin's later career are announced: the second edition of the
_Dialogue_ even talks of his "Observations" on Stowe, a term that became
a standard ingredient in the titles of his picturesque tours. The
education of sight by the study of paintings and prints was clarified
and expounded in the _Essay on Prints_, written at least by 1758 and
published ten years later. The picturesque tours themselves were started
in the 1770s and published from 1782 onwards. In them Gilpin refines
and enlarges upon the methods and ideas of his Stowe _Dialogue_. The
adjudication between a taste for natural beauties (what his _Three
Essays_ term the "correct knowledge of objects")[15] and the inclination
to adjust them according to painterly criteria (in 1792 termed "scenes
of fancy") is more sophisticated and consistent. He still delights in
the variety of a landscape; but the roughness that Stowe only
occasionally allowed becomes one of his guiding rules in appraising
scenery.
Perhaps the most significant items in the _Dialogue_ for readers of
Gilpin's later writings will be his psychological emphasis and his
attention to verbal and visual associations. Although his picturesque
tours never entirely neglected the topographical obligation to describe
actual localities, it is increasingly an imaginative response to
landscape that is his concern.[16] In the _Dialogue_ he explained how a
good imagination will "improve" upon the sight of a grand object, just
as Burke a few years later was to discuss the essential vagueness of the
sublime and its appeal to the private sensibility. Polypthon's reactions
at Stowe suggest something of this potential in contradistinction to
Callophilus' ability to read the message of each temple or vista. What
Gilpin displays in 1748 is more intricately adumbrated in the _Three
Essays_ of 1792: a scene may strike "us beyond the power of thought ...
and every mental operation is suspended. In this pause of intellect,
this deliquirium of the soul, an enthusiastic sensation of pleasure over
spreads it ...".[17] As the final pages of _Dialogue_ suggest, that
experience was also available in the gardens of Stowe.
But the more mature imagination in Gilpin is tempted simultaneously in
two directions, which perhaps explains why one contemporary was moved to
commend the published tours for being "the Ne plus ultra of the pen and
pencil united."[18] At Stowe he is attentive to the expressive potential
of scenery and its associations ("The Eye naturally loves Liberty" [p.
54]), which are best expounded in the written commentary. But he also
delights in the shapes and forms of scenery, the abstract qualities of
the Stowe landscape that please the eye rather than the mind's eye.
These are best recorded in his watercolours and the illustrations which
become a main feature of his later books.
Bedford College
University of London
NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION
[1] Before 1753 there was no guide to any English garden except
Stowe; by then the Stowe guidebook had gone through sixteen
editions (one in French) plus two pirated editions, the _Dialogue_
itself which mentions the guidebook on p. 17, and two sets of
engraved views. For a modern account of Stowe see Christopher
Hussey, _English Gardens and Landscapes, 1700-1750_ (London:
Country Life, 1967), pp. 89-113.
As a companion piece to this facsimile of _Dialogue_, ARS plans to
publish in its 1976-77 series a facsimile of the _Beauties of
Stowe_ (1750), with an introduction by George Clarke.
[2] Gilpin's authorship is argued by William D. Templeman, _The
Life and Works of William Gilpin (1724-1804), Illinois Studies in
Language and Literature_, XXIV. 3-4 (Urbana, 1939), pp. 34-5.
[3] The distinction is made by Thomas Whately, _Observations on
Modern Gardening_, 5th ed. (London, 1793), pp. 154-5.
[4] The Grecian Valley is seen first on Bickham's engraved plan of
1753. This and other plans of Stowe are reproduced by George
Clarke, "The Gardens of Stowe," _Apollo_ (June, 1973), pp. 558-65.
[5] See Peter Willis, "Jacques Rigaud's Drawings of Stowe in the
Metropolitan Museum of Art," _Eighteenth-Century Studies_, 6
(1972), 85-98.
[6] See George Clarke, _op. cit._, p. 560.
[7] On this topic see two essays by Ronald Paulson: "Hogarth and
the English garden: visual and verbal structures," _Encounters,
Essays on Literature and the Visual Arts_, ed. John Dixon Hunt
(London: Studio Vista, 1971), and "The Pictorial Circuit and
related structures in eighteenth-century England," _The Varied
Pattern_, ed. Peter Hughes and David Williams (Toronto: Hakkert,
1971).
[8] "There is more Variety in this Garden, than can be found in
any other of the same Size in _England_, or perhaps in _Europe_"
(p. 290).
[9] Derek Clifford, _A History of Garden Design_ (London: Faber,
1962), pp. 138-9.
[10] "Poetry, Painting, and Gardening, or the Science of
Landscape, will forever by men of taste be deemed Three Sisters,
or the _Three New Graces_ who dress and adorn nature": MS.
annotation to William Mason's _Satirical Poems_, published in an
edition of the relevant poems by Paget Toynbee (Oxford: Clarendon,
1926), p. 43. For an anthology of similar comments see _The Genius
of the Place: The English Landscape Garden 1620-1820_, ed. John
Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis (London: Elek, 1975).
[11] See Kenneth Woodbridge, _Landscape and Antiquity_ (Oxford:
Oxford Univ. Press, 1970), plates 2a, 2b, and 3.
[12] On this see Derek Clifford, _op. cit._, pp. 140 and 158.
[13] I. W. U. Chase, _Horace Walpole: Gardenist. An edition of
Walpole's 'The History of the Modern Taste in Gardening' with an
estimate of Walpole's contribution to landscape architecture_
(Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1943), p. 26.
[14] This is an apt example of the psychological theory of sight
proposed by E. H. Gombrich, _Art and Illusion_ (New York:
Pantheon, 1961).
[15] _Three Essays: On Picturesque Beauty; on Picturesque Travel;
and on Sketching Landscape_ (London, 1792), p. 49.
[16] Carl Paul Barbier, _William Gilpin, His Drawings, Teaching
and Theory of the Picturesque_ (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1963),
pp. 71, 106 and 139.
[17] _Op. cit._, p. 49.
[18] Cited by Templeman, _op. cit._, p. 228.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The facsimile of [William Gilpin's] _A
Dialogue Upon The Gardens ... At Stow_
(1748) is reproduced from a copy (Shelf Mark:
577.e.26[3]) in the British Library. The total
type-page (p. 7) measures 156 x 94 mm.
A
DIALOGUE
UPON THE GARDENS
OF
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE
LORD VISCOUNT _COBHAM_,
AT
STOW in BUCKINGHAMSHIRE.
_Here Order in Variety we see,
Where all Things differ, yet where all agree._
Mr. POPE.
[Illustration]
_LONDON_:
Printed for B. SEELEY, Bookseller in _Buckingham_, and Sold by J. and J.
RIVINGTON, in _St. Paul's Church-Yard_. M DCC XLVIII.
[Price One Shilling.]
THE
ADVERTISEMENT.
_We read of a great Prince of Antiquity, who would suffer his Portrait
to be taken only by the greatest Artist. And he thought justly without
question: A great Object ought ever to be handled by a great Master. But
yet I am apt to think that if Apelles had not offered his Service, the
Monarch, rather than have had his Form unknown to Posterity, would have
been glad to have employed some meaner Hand.----If Stow had been as
fortunate in this Particular as Alexander, I need not now have taken up
my Pencil: But as this charming Landskip is yet untouched by a Titian,
or a Poussin, a mere Bungler has been tempted to venture upon it._
_But in Excuse for the Meaning of the Performance it may be said, that
it is not designed to be considered as a finished Piece: This View was
not taken upon the Spot, as it ought to have been, but only from my
Memory and a few loose Scratches; if the Public therefore will call it
only a rough Draught, or at best a coloured Sketch, my Ambition will be
fully satisfied. The Curious therefore must purchase it rather from
their necessity than its Merit; as they do meaner Engravings of the
Cartoons, where Dorigny's are not to be had: "'Tis true, Gentlemen, says
the Print-seller, they are far from being good, but take my Word for
it, you will meet with no better."_
A
DIALOGUE
UPON THE
GARDENS _of the Right Honourable
the_ Lord Viscount COBHAM, _&c._
_Polypthon_ was a Gentleman engaged in a way of Life, that excused him
two Months in the Year from Business; which Time he used generally to
spend in visiting what was curious in the several Counties around him.
As he had long promised his Friend _Callophilus_ to pass away his
Vacancy, at some time or other, in _Buckinghamshire_, he determined upon
it this Year; and accordingly paid him a Visit at * * *. _Stow_ was one
of the first Places where his Curiosity carried him; and indeed he had
scarce got his Foot within the Garden-door, before he broke out into
the following Exclamation.
Why, here is a View that gives me a kind of Earnest of what my
Expectation is raised to!
It is a very fine one indeed (replied _Callophilus_:) I do not wonder it
should catch your Sight: The old Ruin upon the left of the Canal, the
Opening to the Pyramid, the View towards the House, the River, the
beautiful Disposition of the Trees on the other side of it, and that
venerable old Temple, make a fine Variety of Objects. But your Eye is so
taken up with Views at a distance, that you neglect something here at
hand very well worth your notice. What do you think of these two
Pavilions?
_Polypth._ Why really they are light, genteel Buildings enough. I like
these rough Paintings too; they are done in a very free, masterly
Manner. Pray, Sir, do you know the Stories?
_Calloph._ They are both taken from _Pastor Fido_; the disconsolate
Nymph there, poor _Dorinda_, had long been in love with _Sylvio_, a
wild Hunter, of barbarous Manners, in whose Breast she had no reason to
believe she had raised an answering Passion. As she was roving in the
Woods, she accidentally met his Dog, and saw her beloved Hunter himself
at a distance hollowing, and running after it. She immediately calls the
Hound to her, and hides it amongst the Bushes. _Sylvio_ comes up to her,
and enquires very eagerly after his Dog: The poor Nymph puts him off,
and tries all her Art to inspire him with Love, but to no purpose; the
cold Youth was quite insensible, and his Thoughts could admit no other
Object but his Dog. Almost despairing, she at length hopes to bribe his
Affections, and lets him know she has his Dog, which she will return if
he will promise to love her, and give her a Kiss; _Sylvio_ is overjoyed
at the Proposal, and promises to give her ten thousand Kisses. _Dorinda_
upon this brings the Dog: but alas! see there the Success of all her
Pains: the Youth transported at the Sight of his Dog, throws his Arms
round its Neck, and lavishes upon it those Kisses and Endearments, in
the very Sight of the poor afflicted Lady, which she had been flattering
herself would have fallen to her share.--On this other Wall Disdain and
Love have taken different Sides; the Youth is warm, and the Nymph is
coy: Poor _Myrtillo_ had long loved _Amarillis_; the Lady was engaged to
another, and rejected his Passion. Gladly would he only have spoke his
Grief, but the cruel fair One absolutely forbid him her Presence. At
length a Scheme was laid by _Corisca_, the young Lover's Confidant, which
was to gain him Admission into his dear _Amarillis_'s Company. The Lady
is enticed into the Fields with some of _Corisca_'s Companions, (who
were let into the Plot) to play at Blindman's Buff, where _Myrtillo_ was
to surprize her. See there he stands hesitating what use to make of so
favourable an Opportunity, which Love has put into his Hands.----If you
have satisfied your Curiosity here, let us walk towards the Temple of
_Venus_. But hold: we had better first go down towards that Wilderness,
and take a View of the Lake.
_Polypth._ Upon my Word here is a noble Piece of Water!
_Calloph._ Not many Years ago I remember it only a Marsh: it surprized
me prodigiously when I first saw it floated in this manner with a Lake.
Observe, pray, what a fine Effect that old Ruin has at the Head of it:
Its Ornaments too, the Cascade, the Trees and Shrubs, half concealing,
and half discovering the ragged View, and the Obelisk rising beyond if,
are Objects happily disposed.
_Polypth._ Yes, indeed, I think the Ruin a great Addition to the Beauty
of the Lake. There is something so vastly picturesque, and pleasing to
the Imagination in such Objects, that they are a great Addition to every
Landskip. And yet perhaps it would be hard to assign a reason, why we
are more taken with Prospects of this ruinous kind, than with Views of
Plenty and Prosperity in their greatest Perfection: Benevolence and
Good-nature, methinks, are more concerned in the latter kind.
_Calloph._ Yes: but cannot you make a distinction between natural and
moral Beauties? Our social Affections undoubtedly find their Enjoyment
the most compleat when they contemplate, a Country smiling in the midst
of Plenty, where Houses are well-built, Plantations regular, and every
thing the most commodious and useful. But such Regularity and Exactness
excites no manner of Pleasure in the Imagination, unless they are made
use of to contrast with something of an opposite kind. The Fancy is
struck by _Nature_ alone; and if _Art_ does any thing more than improve
her, we think she grows impertinent, and wish she had left off a little
sooner. Thus a regular Building perhaps gives us very little pleasure;
and yet a fine Rock, beautifully set off in Claro-obscuro, and garnished
with flourishing Bushes, Ivy, and dead Branches, may afford us a great
deal; and a ragged Ruin, with venerable old Oaks, and Pines nodding over
it, may perhaps please the Fancy yet more than either of the other two
Objects.--Yon old Hermitage, situated in the midst of this delightful
Wilderness, has an exceeding good Effect: it is of the romantick Kind;
and Beauties of this sort, where a probable Nature is not exceeded, are
generally pleasing.----This Opening will lead us again into the
Terrace.----That large Building, the Inscription lets you see, is a
Temple dedicated to _Venus_.
_Polypth._ Upon my Word a Master has been at work here! I cannot say I
have met with any modern Touching, this long time, that has pleased me
better. I see very little to be cavilled at, with regard either to the
Design, Colouring, or Drawing. These Stories are taken from the
_Fairy-Queen_ I dare say; they look like _Spencer_'s Ideas.
_Calloph._ Yes: that Lady is the fair _Hellinore_, who having left a
disagreeable Husband, and wandering in the Woods, was met by the polite
Sett of Gentry she is dancing with: She likes their Manner of Life, and
resolves to enjoy it with them. Her old Spouse _Malbecco_ is
inconsolable for his Loss: he wanders many Days in search of her, and at
length finds her (you see him at a distance peeping from behind a Tree)
revelling with a beastly Herd of Satyrs. When the Evening comes on, he
follows the Company to their Retirement, takes a commodious stand, and
to his great Torment sees every thing that passes among them. After they
were all laid asleep, he creeps gently to his Lady, and you see him in
the other Painting offering to be reconciled to her again, if she will
return back with him. But _Hellinore_ threatens to awake the Satyrs, and
get him severely handled if he does not immediately leave her. Upon
which the poor Cuckold is obliged to fly, and soon after runs
distracted.
_Polypth._ This loose Story, these luxurious Couches, and the
Embellishments round the Walls, give the Place quite a _Cyprian_ Air,
and make it a very proper Retreat for its incontinent Inhabitant upon
the Roof.----But let us move forward towards yon cubico-pyramidical
Building. It looks like a mighty substantial one: I fancy it is Sir
_John_'s; he is generally pretty liberal of his Stone. However, it
terminates this Terrace extremely well: the Ascent up to it too has a
good Effect.----Pray, do you know what that Field there, upon the right,
is to be improved into?
_Calloph._ I am surprized the Beauty of it, in its present Form, does
not strike you at first sight. It is designed, like a Glass of Bitters
before Dinner, to quicken your Appetite for the elegant Entertainment
that is to follow. For my part, I assure you, I find it a very great
Relief to my Eye, to take it from these grand Objects, and cast it for a
few Minutes upon such a rural Scene as this. Do not you think that
Haycock contrasts extremely well with this Temple? Such Oppositions, in
my Opinion, are highly pleasing.----That Building there is called, _The
Belvidere_. Whatever you may think of it, from this Stand, it has its
Use, I assure you, in several Prospects in the Gardens.----There is a
very good Copy of the _Roman_ Boxers.
_Polypth._ I like its Situation extreamly: it terminates these Alleys,
and that Opening from the Terrace, very beautifully; much better, I
think, than the fighting Gladiator, and _Sampson_ killing the
_Philistine_, do that other vast Terrace; the Objects there, in my
Opinion, are too small for the Distance: Here both are justly
proportioned.
_Calloph._ Your Criticism, I think, is rather too refined: I cannot see
what occasion there is always for a confined View; a more open one
sometimes makes Variety.
_Polypth._ You mistake me: I am not against a Prospect's being bounded
even by the blue Hills in the Country. All I mean is this, that where
Objects are set up to terminate a View, they ought to be of such a
Nature as to afford Pleasure at any Distance they are designed to be
viewed from. These Statues I have been mentioning, are Objects so small,
that at one end of the Terrace it is impossible to make out what is
offered you at the other.----I have too much Envy in my Temper, you must
know, to bear to see any thing perfect; and I came in here fully
determined to cavil, if I saw the least Grounds. But this is a sad
Place, I find, for a malicious Spirit to enter: He whose chief
_Entertainment_ is finding fault, will here meet with a very slender
_Repast_: As the Devil did at Sight of the Creation, in spite of Envy
he must cry out,
_Terrestrial Heaven!----
With what Delight could I have walk'd thee round,
If I could joy in ought: Sweet Interchange
Of Hill, and Valley, Rivers, Woods, and Plains!
Now Land, now Sea, and Shores with Forest crown'd,
Rocks, Dens, and Caves._----
But what have we got here?
_Calloph._ This is the Building we took notice of from the Temple of
_Venus_. I know you are no Friend to a cloathed Statue; so I question
whether you will meet with any thing here to your Taste.
_Polypth._ There is something extremely grand and noble, I have always
thought, in several of the old cloathed Statues, and particularly in
some of the _Roman_ consular ones; yet I must confess I am always better
pleased when I find them without their Finery. Marble, tho' admirably
fitted to express the Roundness of a Muscle, very often fails when it
attempts to give you the Folds of Drapery. The Ancients, it must be
owned, even in their Draperies are often successful; but amongst our
modern Attempts in this Way, how many horrid Pieces of Rock-work have I
beheld!
------------ _atram
Desinet in_ rupem _mulier_----
_Michael Angelo_, whenever he found himself obliged to cloath his
Statues, used to do it with wet Linnen; which is unquestionably the most
advantageous kind of Cloathing for a Statue.
_Calloph._ Since you are not to be pleased here, let us pass on to
something else. There is no Occasion to turn down to that Pyramid; it is
an Object not designed to be viewed at a Yard's Distance; but you will
see its Use by and by, in a Variety of beautiful Views: Let us pursue
our Walk along this Terrace.
_Polypth._ Why here we entirely lose sight of the Garden; our elegant
Prospects are all vanished: I cannot conceive what this impertinent
Hedge does here.
_Calloph._ Did you never experience in a Concert vast Pleasure when the
whole Band for a few Moments made a full Pause? The Case is parallel:
You have already had a great many fine Views, and that you may not be
cloyed, this Hedge steps in to keep your Attention awake. One Extreme
recommends another: The Moralists observe, that a little Adversity
quickens our Relish for the Enjoyment of Life; and it is the Man of
Taste's Care not to distribute his Beauties with too profuse a Hand, for
a Reason of the same kind.
_Let not each Beauty every where be spy'd,
Where half the Skill is decently to hide._
But if you must have something to look at, the Park there upon your left
Hand affords you some very fine Views. I like that Equestrian Statue
extremely: It is, in my Opinion, a very beautiful Circumstance. What a
Number of fine Vistas it terminates thro' the Trees, varying its
Appearance in each of them.--There you have a charming View struck out
towards the Temple of Ancient Virtue.
_Polypth._ Methinks that Statue of the Faun stands a little aukwardly:
He might at least, I should think, have fixed himself in the Middle of
the Semi-circle.
_Calloph._ You do not certainly attend to his Use: He stands there to
receive the Eye placed at the other End of that Opening.--That elegant
little Building I think they call _Nelson_'s Seat.
_Polypth._ The Painting is done masterly enough: The Inscriptions, I
see, explain the Designs. Those Boys fixing the Trophies are prettily
imagined. From hence that round Building terminates the View extremely
well. Let us walk to it.
_Calloph._ Hold----turn to the Right a little: We must first pay a Visit
here to the Temple of _Bacchus_.
_Polypth._ We have had a pretty long Walk, suppose we sit down here a
Moment: These Walls seem to promise us some Entertainment.
_Calloph._ Here, Sir, you see represented the Triumphs and Happiness of
Drunkenness. Those musical Ladies too are not improper Companions to
this mirthfully-disposed Deity.
_Polypth._ Some of those smaller Figures are really done extremely well:
And those two Vases are delightfully touched. I cannot say I am so much
pleased with the jolly Inhabitant: Even _Bacchus_ himself certainly
never made so enormous a Figure.
_Calloph._ I am admiring the fine View from hence: So great a Variety of
beautiful Objects, and all so happily disposed, make a most delightful
Picture. Don't you think this Building too is a very genteel one, and is
extremely well situated? These Trees give it an agreeable, cool Air, and
make it, I think, as elegant a Retreat for the Enjoyment of a Summer's
Evening, as can well be imagined.----But it is mere trifling to sit
here: Let us walk towards the Rotunda.----This little Alley will carry
us to _Dido_'s Cave.
_Polypth._ _Dido_'s Cave! why 'tis built of hewn Stone! Here she is
however, and her _pious_ Companion along with her.
_Calloph._ Those two Cupids joining their Torches, I never see but I
admire extremely: they are very finely painted.
_Polypth._ I think they are indeed. But let us be a little complaisant,
and not interrupt these kind Lovers too long. I want to see this
Rotunda.
_Calloph._ There then you have it: I hope you cannot complain of an
heavy Building here. I do not know any Piece of Stone-work in the whole
Garden that shews itself to more Advantage than this does, or makes a
more beautiful Figure in a Variety of fine Views from several Parts of
the Garden: Several Parts of the Garden likewise return the Compliment,
by offering a great many very elegant Prospects to it. There you have an
Opening laid out with all the Decorations of Art; a spacious Theatre;
the Area floated by a Canal, and peopled with Swans and Wild-ducks: Her
late Majesty is the principal Figure in the Scene, and around her a
merry Company of Nymphs and Swains enjoying themselves in the Shade.
_Polypth._ I must confess I cannot very much admire----
_Calloph._ Come; none of your Cavils.--Observe how this View is
beautifully contrasted by one on the opposite Side of a different kind;
in which we are almost solely obliged to Nature. You must know I look
upon this as a very noble Prospect! The Field is formed by that
Semi-circle of Trees into a very grand Theatre. The Point of Sight is
centred in a beautiful manner by the Pyramid, which appears to great
Advantage amongst those venerable Oaks: Two or three other Buildings,
half hid amongst the Trees, come in for their Share in the Prospect, and
add much to the Beauty of it.
_Polypth._ I agree with you entirely; nor do I think this other View
inferior to it. That Variety of different Shades amongst the Trees; the
Lake spread so elegantly amongst them, and glittering here and there
thro' the Bushes, with the Temple of _Venus_ as a Termination to the
View, make up a very beautiful Landskip.
_Calloph._ Here is a Vista likewise very happily terminated by the
Canal, and the Obelisk rising in the Midst of it. There is another close
View likewise towards _Nelson_'s Seat.
_Polypth._ Upon my Word, we have a Variety of very elegant Prospects
centred in this Point. I could sit here very agreeably a little longer.
_Calloph._ Nay, if you are inclined to rest, come along with me: I'll
carry you to where you may indulge your Humour with great Propriety.
Deep in the Retirement of that Wood, the God of Sleep has reared his
Habitation, where he will afford you every Convenience to make a Nap
agreeable----It comes into my Head that I forgot to carry you to a
little Place, which it is hardly worth while to travel back to from this
Distance: It is called _St. Austin_'s Cave, and answers its Title very
well; it appears quite Cell-like, stands retired, and is made of no
other Materials but Roots and Moss. In the Inside a Straw Couch offers
you an hard Seat, and the Walls three humorous Inscriptions, in Monkish
Verse. You may buy them, bound up with Copies of all the other
Inscriptions, in a Six-penny Pamphlet, that will be offered us at the
Inn.----There, Sir, is the Temple of Sleep.
_Polypth._ Why really I must confess _Ovid_ himself could scarce have
buried the senseless God in an happier Retirement. This gloomy Darkness,
these easy Couches, and that excellent _Epicurean_ Argument above the
Door, would incline me wonderfully to indulge a little, if these
beautiful Ornaments did not keep my Attention awake. There is wanting
too a purling Stream, to sing a Requiem to the Senses; tho' the Want is
in some measure made up by the drowsy Lullibies of that murmuring Swarm,
which this Shade has invited to wanton beneath it. You would laugh at
me, or I should certainly throw myself down upon one of these Couches;
I am persuaded I should need no Opium to close my Eyes.
_Calloph._ I own sleeping is a Compliment as much due to this Place, as
Admiration and Attention are to _Raphael_ at _Hampton-Court_. But try if
your Curiosity cannot keep you awake. Come, leave these drowsy Abodes,
they are infectious; like luscious Food they will blunt your Appetite
before the Entertainment is half over. Walk down that Alley, and pop
your Head into the first Door you come to.
_Polypth._ What the D----l have we got here? What wretched Scrawler has
been at work upon these Walls?
_Calloph._ I assure you, Sir, I look upon this as a very great
Master-piece. You must know this House is inhabited by a Necromancer;
and that Inscription lets you see the Hand that has been employed to
paint it. The Composition, Drawing, and Pencilling, I can allow you, are
not the most elegant; yet if the Design and Figures are the Artist's
own, I can assure you he has shewn excellent Humour, and an exceeding
good Invention. That Consultation is well imagined; and so are these
Witches and Wizards; their Employments likewise, their Forms and
Attitudes are well varied.---- But I see this is a Scene not suited to
your Taste: Our next, I hope, will please you better.
_Polypth._ Pray, what Building is that before us? I cannot say I dislike
the Taste it is designed in. It seems an Antique.
_Calloph._ It is the Temple, Sir, of Ancient Virtue; the Place I am now
conducting you to. You will meet within it a very illustrious Assembly
of great Men; the wisest Lawgiver, the best Philosopher, the most divine
Poet, and the most able Captain, that perhaps ever lived.
_Polypth._ You may possibly, Sir, engage yourself in a Dispute, by
fixing your Epithets in such an absolute manner; there are so many
Competitors in each of these Ways, that altho' Numbers may be called
truly eminent, it will be a difficult matter to fix Pre-eminence upon
any.
_Calloph._ You will hardly, I fancy, dissent from me, when I introduce
you to these great Heroes of Antiquity: There stands _Lycurgus_; there
_Socrates_; there _Homer_; and there _Epaminondas_. Illustrious Chiefs,
who made Virtue their only Pursuit, and the Welfare of Mankind their
only Study; in whose Breasts mean Self-interest had no Possession. To
establish a well-regulated Constitution; to dictate the soundest
Morality, to place Virtue in the most amiable Light; and bravely to
defend a People's Liberty, were Ends which neither the Difficulty in
overcoming the Prejudices, and taming the savage Manners of a barbarous
State; the Corruptions of a licentious Age, and the Ill-usage of an
invidious City; neither the vast Pains of searching into Nature, and
laying up a Stock of Knowledge sufficient to produce the noblest Work of
Art; nor popular Tumults at Home, and the most threatening Dangers
Abroad, could ever tempt them to lose Sight of, or in the least abate
that Ardency of Temper with which they pursued them.
_Polypth._ A noble Panegyric upon my Word! why, Sir, these great Spirits
have inspired you with the very Soul of Oratory. However, in earnest, I
confess your Encomium is pretty just; and I am apt to believe that if
any of those worthy Gentlemen should take it into his Head to walk from
his Nitch, it would puzzle the World to find his Equal to fix in his
Room.----That old Ruin, I suppose, is intended to contrast with this new
Building.
_Calloph._ Yes, Sir, it is intended to contrast with it not only in the
Landskip, but likewise in its Name and Design. Walk a little nearer, and
you will see its Intention.
_Polypth._ I can see nothing here to let me into its Design, except this
old Gentleman; neither can I find any thing extraordinary in him, except
that he has met with a Fate that he is entirely deserving of, which is
more than falls to the Share of every worthless Fellow.
_Calloph._ Have you observed how the Statue is decorated?
_Polypth._ O! I see the whole Design: A very elegant Piece of Satyr,
upon my Word! This pompous Edifice is intended, I suppose, to represent
the flourishing Condition, in which ancient Virtue still exists; and
those poor shattered Remains of what has never been very beautiful
(notwithstanding, I see, they are placed within a few Yards of a
Parish-church) are designed to let us see the ruinous State of decayed
modern Virtue. And the Moral is, that Glory founded upon true Worth and
Honour, will exist, when Fame, built upon Conquest and popular Applause,
will fade away. This is really the best thing I have seen: I am most
prodigiously taken with it.
_Calloph._ I intend next to carry you to a Scene of another kind. I am
going to shew you the Grotto, a Place generally very taking with
Strangers.----I thought that Piece of Satyr would catch your Attention:
I hope likewise you will be as well pleased here. This Gate will carry
us into the romantic Retirement. What do you think of this Scene?
_Polypth._ Why really, Sir, it is quite a Novelty: This Profusion of
Mirrors has a very extraordinary Effect: The Place seems divided into a
thousand beautiful Apartments, and appears fifty times as large as it
is. The Prospects without are likewise transferred to the Walls within:
And the Sides of the Room are elegantly adorned with Landskips, beyond
the Pencil of _Titian_; with this farther Advantage, that every View, as
you change your Situation, varies itself into another Form, and presents
you with something new.
_Calloph._ Don't you think that serpentine River, as it is called, is a
great Addition to the Beauty of the Place?