e of his favourite tastes. The villa was on one of the
loveliest reaches of the Thames, not yet polluted by the encroachments
of London. The house itself was destroyed in the beginning of this
century; and the garden (if we may trust Horace Walpole) had been
previously spoilt. This garden, says Walpole, was a little bit of ground
of five acres, enclosed by three lanes. "Pope had twisted and twirled
and rhymed and harmonized this, till it appeared two or three sweet
little lawns, opening and opening beyond one another, and the whole
surrounded with impenetrable woods." These, it appears, were hacked and
hewed into mere desolation by the next proprietor. Pope was, indeed, an
ardent lover of the rising art of landscape gardening; he was familiar
with Bridgeman and Kent, the great authorities of the time, and his
example and precepts helped to promote the development of a less formal
style. His theories are partly indicated in the description of Timon's
villa.

His gardens next your admiration call
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.

Pope's taste, indeed, tolerated various old-fashioned excrescences which
we profess to despise. He admired mock classical temples and obelisks
erected judiciously at the ends of vistas. His most famous piece of
handiwork, the grotto at Twickenham, still remains, and is in fact a
short tunnel under the high road to connect his grounds with the lawn
which slopes to the river. He describes in a letter to one of his
friends, his "temple wholly comprised of shells in the rustic manner,"
and his famous grotto so provided with mirrors that when the doors are
shut it becomes a camera obscura, reflecting hills, river, and boats,
and when lighted up glitters with rays reflected from bits of
looking-glass in angular form. His friends pleased him by sending pieces
of spar from the mines of Cornwall and Derbyshire, petrifactions,
marble, coral, crystals, and humming-birds' nests. It was in fact a
gorgeous example of the kind of architecture with which the cit
delighted to adorn his country box. The hobby, whether in good taste or
not, gave Pope never-ceasing amusement; and he wrote some characteristic
verses in its praise.

In his grotto, as he declares in another place, he could sit in peace
with hi