vision had never seen a glimpse of any thing like what he has imagined, that his favourite ancients had dropped not a hint of such divine scenery, and that the conceits in Italian gardens, and Theobalds and Nonsuch, were the brightest originals that his memory could furnish.* His intellectual eye saw a nobler plan, so little did he suffer by the loss of sight. It sufficed him to have seen the materials with which he could work. The vigour of a boundless imagination told him how a plan might be disposed, that would embellish nature, and restore art to its proper office, the just improvement or imitation of it.

It is necessary that the concurrent testimony of the age should swear to posterity that the description above-quoted was written above half a century before the introduction of modern gardening, or our incredulous descendents will defraud the poet of half his glory, by being persuaded that he copied some garden or gardens he had seen-so minutely do his ideas correspond with the present standard. But what shall we say for that intervening half century who could read that plan and never attempt to put it in execution?

Now let us turn to an admired writer, posterior to Milton, and see how cold, how insipid, how

Since the above was written, I have found Milton praised and Sir William Temple censured, on the same foundations, in a poem called, The Rise and Progress of the present Taste in Planting, printed in 1767.

tasteless is his account of what he pronounced a perfect garden. I speak not of his style, which it was not necessary for him to animate with the colouring and glow of poetry. It is his want of ideas, of imagination, of taste, that I censure, when he dictated on a subject that is capable of all the graces that a knowledge of beautiful nature can bestow. Sir William Temple was an excellent man; Milton, a genius of the first order.

We cannot wonder that Sir William declares in favour of parterres,* fountains and statues, as necessary to break the sameness of large grassplats, which he thinks have an ill effect upon the eye, when he acknowledges that he discovers fancy in the gardens of Alcinous. Milton studied the ancients with equal enthusiasm, but no bigotry, and had judgment to distinguish between the want of invention and the beauties of poetry. Compare his Paradise with Homer's garden, both ascribed to a celestial design. For Sir William, it is just to observe, that his ideas centred in a fruit-garden. He had the honour of giving to his country many delicate fruits, and he thought of little else than disposing them to the best advantage. Here is the passage I proposed to quote ; it is long, but I need not make an apology to the

* [The whole scheme of pleasure-gardens, in Sir W. Temple's time, was borrowed from Holland, where he had long resided.]

reader for entertaining him with any other words instead of my own.

"The best figure of a garden is either a square or an oblong, and either upon a flat or a descent: they have all their beauties, but the best I esteem an oblong upon a descent. The beauty, the air, the view makes amends for the expence, which is very great in finishing and supporting the terraswalks, in levelling the parterres, and in the stone stairs that are necessary from one to the other.

"The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, either at home or abroad, was that of Moor-park in Hertfordshire,* when I knew it about thirty years ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, esteemed among the greatest wits of her time, and celebrated by Doctor Donne; and with very great care, excellent contrivance, and much cost; but greater sums may be thrown away without effect or honour, if there want sense in proportion to money, or if nature be not followed, which I take to be the great rule in this, and perhaps in every thing else, as far as the conduct not only of our lives, but our governments." shall see how natural that admired garden was. "Because I take the garden I have named to

We

* [A certain confusion has arisen between this place, and Moor Park near Farnham, in Surrey, the favourite residence of Sir W. Temple, and where under a sundial, he directed his heart to be buried, in a casket of silver.]

This garden seems to have been made after the plan laid

have been in all kinds the most beautiful and perfect, at least in the figure and disposition that I have ever seen, I will describe it for a model to those that meet with such a situation, and are above the regards of common expence. It lies on the side of a hill, upon which the house stands, but not very steep. The length of the house, where the best rooms and of most use or pleasure are, lies upon the breadth of the garden; the great parlour opens into the middle of a terras gravelwalk that lies even with it, and which may lie, as I remember, about three hundred paces long, and broad in proportion; the border set with standard laurels and at large distances, which have the beauty of orange-trees out of flower and fruit. From this walk are three descents by many stone steps, in the middle and at each end, into a very large parterre. This is divided into quarters by gravel-walks, and adorned with two fountains and eight statues in the several quarters. At the end of the terras-walk are two summer-houses, and the sides of the parterre are ranged with two large cloisters open to the garden, upon arches of stone, and ending with two other summer-houses even with the cloisters, which are paved with stone, and designed for walks of shade, there

down by Lord Bacon in his 46th essay, to which, that I may not multiply quotations, I will refer the reader. [Lord B. described a garden which he had himself made, near his villa, at Gorhambury. See Aubrey's Mem. v. ii. p. 229.]

being none other in the whole parterre. Over these two cloisters are two terrasses covered with lead and fenced with balusters; and the passage into these airy walks is out of the two summerhouses at the end of the first terras-walk. The cloister facing the south is covered with vines, and would have been proper for an orange-house, and the other for myrtles or other more common greens, and had, I doubt not, been cast for that purpose, if this piece of gardening had been then in as much vogue as it is now.

"From the middle of this parterre is a descent by many steps flying on each side of a grotto that lies between them, covered with lead and flat, into the lower garden which is all fruit-trees ranged about the several quarters of a wilderness which is very shady; the walks here are all green, the grotto embellished with figures of shell rockwork, fountains, and water-works. If the hill had not ended with the lower garden, and the wall were not bounded by a common way that goes through the park, they might have added a third quarter of all greens; but this want is supplied by a garden on the other side the house, which is all of that sort, very wild, shady, and adorned with rough rock-work and fountains.

"This was Moor-park, when I was acquainted with it, and the sweetest place, I think, that I have seen in my life, either before or since, at home or abroad."