“I lately,” writes Pope, “took a particular friend of mine to my house in the country, not without some apprehension that it could afford little entertainment to a man of his polite taste, particularly in architecture and gardening, who had so long been conversant with all that is beautiful and great in either. But it was a pleasant surprise to me, to hear him often declare, he had found in my little retirement that beauty which he always thought wanting in most of the celebrated seats, or, if you will, villas, of the nation. This he described to me in those verses, with which Martial begins one of his epigrams:
“‘Our friend Faustinus’ country seat I’ve seen: No myrtles, placed in rows, and idly green, No widow’d plantain, nor clipp’d box-tree, there The useless soil unprofitably share; But simple nature’s hand, with nobler grace, Diffuses artless beauties o’er the place.’
“There is certainly something in the amiable simplicity of unadorned nature, that spreads over the mind a more noble sort of tranquillity, and a loftier sensation of pleasure, than can be raised from the nicer scenes of art.”
After a reference to Homer’s account of the Garden of Alcinous, and Sir William Temple’s remarks upon it, Pope proceeds: “How contrary to this simplicity is the modern practice of gardening! 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 even in monstrous attempts beyond the reach of the art itself. We run into sculpture, and are yet better pleased to have our trees in the most awkward figures of men and animals, than in the most regular of their own.
“‘Here interwoven branches form a wall, And from the living fence green turrets rise; There ships of myrtle sail in seas of box; A green encampment yonder meets the eye, And loaded citrons bearing shields and spears.’
“I believe it is no wrong observation, that persons of genius, and those who are most capable of Art, are always most fond of Nature: as such are chiefly sensible, that all art consists in the imitation and study of nature. On the contrary, people of the common level of understanding are principally delighted with the little niceties and fantastical operations of Art, and constantly think that finest which is the least natural. A citizen is no sooner proprietor of a couple of yews, but he entertains thoughts of erecting them into giants, like those of the Guildhall. I know an eminent cook, who beautified his country seat with a coronation dinner in greens; where you see the champion flourishing on horseback at one end of the table, and the queen in perpetual youth at the other.”