“It is true that Pope was infirm and deformed; but he could walk, and he could ride (he rode to Oxford from London at a stretch), and he was famous for an exquisite eye.  On a tree at Lord Bathurst’s is carved, ’Here Pope sang,’—­he composed beneath it.  Bolingbroke, in one of his letters, represents them both writing in a hayfield.  No poet ever admired Nature more, or used her better, than Pope has done, as I will undertake to prove from his works, prose and verse, if not anticipated in so easy and agreeable a labour.  I remember a passage in Walpole, somewhere, of a gentleman who wished to give directions about some willows to a man who had long served Pope in his grounds:  ’I understand, sir,’ he replied:  ’you would have them hang down, sir, somewhat poetical.’  Now if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would suffice to prove Pope’s taste for Nature, and the impression which he had made on a common-minded man.  But I have already quoted Warton and Walpole (both his enemies), and, were it necessary, I could amply quote Pope himself for such tributes to Nature as no poet of the present day has even approached.

“His various excellence is really wonderful:  architecture, painting, gardening, all are alike subject to his genius.  Be it remembered, that English gardening is the purposed perfectioning of niggard Nature, and that without it England is but a hedge-and-ditch, double-post-and-rail, Hounslow-heath and Clapham-common sort of a country, since the principal forests have been felled.  It is, in general, far from a picturesque country.  The case is different with Scotland, Wales, and Ireland; and I except also the lake counties and Derbyshire, together with Eton, Windsor, and my own dear Harrow on the Hill, and some spots near the coast.  In the present rank fertility of ‘great poets of the age,’ and ’schools of poetry’—­a word which, like ‘schools of eloquence’ and of ‘philosophy,’ is never introduced till the decay of the art has increased with the number of its professors—­in the present day, then, there have sprung up two sorts of Naturals;—­the Lakers, who whine about Nature because they live in Cumberland; and their under-sect (which some one has maliciously called the ’Cockney School’), who are enthusiastical for the country because they live in London.  It is to be observed, that the rustical founders are rather anxious to disclaim any connection with their metropolitan followers, whom they ungraciously review, and call cockneys, atheists, foolish fellows, bad writers, and other hard names, not less ungrateful than unjust.  I can understand the pretensions of the aquatic gentlemen of Windermere to what Mr. B * * terms ‘entusumusy’ for lakes, and mountains, and daffodils, and buttercups; but I should be glad to be apprised of the foundation of the London propensities of their imitative brethren to the same’ high argument.’  Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge have rambled over half Europe, and seen Nature in most of her varieties (although I think that they have occasionally not used her very well); but what on earth—­of earth, and sea, and Nature—­have the others seen?  Not a half, nor a tenth part so much as Pope.  While they sneer at his Windsor Forest, have they ever seen any thing of Windsor except its brick?