1736); “I wish you had any motive to see this kingdom.  I could keep you:  for I am rich, that is, have more than I want, I can afford room to yourself and two servants.  I have indeed room enough; nothing but myself at home.  The kind and hearty housewife is dead!  The agreeable and instructive neighbour is gone!  Yet my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing nothing of the guests they have lost.  I have more fruit trees and kitchen garden than you have any thought of; and, I have good melons and apples of my own growth.  I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy, for Tully says, Agricultura proxima sapientiae.  For God’s sake, why should not you, (that are a step higher than a philosopher, a divine, yet have too much grace and wit than to be a bishop) even give all you have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done every thing else,) so quit the place, and live and die with me?  And let tales anima concordes be our motto and our epitaph.”

[013] The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below.  Shakespeare’s knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of the numberless evidences of the poet’s minute observation of external nature.

[014] See Mr. Loudon’s most interesting and valuable work entitled Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum.

[015] All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads:  the contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the bounds.  “Pray, what is it you mean by the contrasts?” “The disposition of the lights and shades.”—­“’Tis the colouring then?”—­“Just that.”—­“Should not variety be one of the rules?”—­“Certainly, one of the chief; but that is included mostly in the contrasts.”  I have expressed them all in two verses[140] (after my manner, in very little compass), which are in imitation of Horace’s—­Omne tulit punctum.  Pope.—­Spence’s Anecdotes.

[016] In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the genius of the place.  Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is all plain, and nothing can please without variety. Pope—­Spence’s Anecdotes.

[017] The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in Buckinghamshire.  Pope concludes the first Epistle of his Moral Essays with a compliment to the patriotism of this nobleman.

    And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
    Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death: 
    Such in those moments as in all the past
    “Oh, save my country, Heaven!” shall be your last.