The ladies, Lucilla especially, smiled at my warmth. I felt that there
was approbation in her smile, and though I thought I had said too much
already, it encouraged me to go on. "I repeat, that next to religion,
whatever relates to human manners, is most attracting to human
creatures. To turn from conversation to composition. What is it that
excites so feeble an interest, in perusing that finely written poem of
the Abbe de Lille, '_Les Jardins?_' It is because his garden has no
cultivators, no inhabitants, no men and women. What confers that
powerful charm on the descriptive parts of Paradise Lost? A fascination,
I will venture to affirm, paramount to all the lovely and magnificent
scenery which adorns it. Eden itself with all its exquisite landscape,
would excite a very inferior pleasure did it exhibit only inanimate
beauties. 'Tis the proprietors, 'tis the inhabitants, 'tis the _live
stock_, of Eden, which seize upon the affections, and twine about the
heart. The gardens, even of Paradise, would be dull without the
gardeners. 'Tis mental excellence, 'tis moral beauty which completes the
charm. Where this is wanting, landscape poetry, though it be read with
pleasure, yet the interest it raises is cold. It is admired, but seldom
quoted. It leaves no definite idea on the mind. If general, it is
indistinct; if minute, tedious."

"It must be confessed," said Sir John, "that some poets are apt to
forget that the finest representation of nature is only the scene, not
the object; the canvas, not the portrait. We had indeed some time ago,
so much of this gorgeous scene-painting, so much splendid poetical
botany, so many amorous flowers, and so many vegetable courtships; so
many wedded plants; roots transformed to nymphs, and dwelling in emerald
palaces; that some how or other, truth and probability and nature, and
man slipped out of the picture, though it must be allowed that genius
held the pencil."

"In Mason's 'English Garden,'" replied I, "Alcander's precepts would
have been cold, had there been no personification. The introduction of
character dramatizes what else would have been frigidly didactic.
Thomson enriches his landscape with here and there a figure, drawn with
more correctness than warmth, with more nature than spirit, and exalts
it everywhere by moral allusion and religious reference. The scenery of
Cowper is perpetually animated with sketches of character, enlivened
with portraits from real life, and the exhi