or 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 anchored 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 Shenst