Thou, who couldst make immortals, art thou dead?
Of his Essay on Man, the Nouveau Dict. Hist. Portatif thus speaks:—"Une metaphysique lumineuse, ornée des charmes de la poësie, une morale touchante, dont les leçons pénetrent le cœur et convainquent l'esprit, des peintures vives, ou l'homme apprend a se connoître, pour apprendre à deviner meilleur; tels sont les principaux caracteres qui distinguent le poëme Anglois. Son imagination est également sage et féconde, elle prodigue les pensées neunes, et donne le piquant de la nouveanté, aux pensées anciennes; il embelloit les matieres les plus seches, par la coloris d'une élocution noble, facile, energèque, variée avec un art infini."
In the gardens of Stowe is the following inscription to
ALEXANDER POPE,
Who, uniting the correctness of judgment
To the fire of genius,
By the melody and power of his numbers,
Gave sweetness to sense, and grace to philosophy.
He employed the pointed brilliancy of his wit
To chastise the vices,
And the eloquence of poetry
To exalt the virtues of human nature;
And, being without a rival in his own age,
Imitated and translated with a spirit equal to the originals,
The best Poets of antiquity.
William Kent, whose portrait appears in Mr. Dallaway's rich edition of the Anecdotes of Painting. Kent, with Bridgman, Pope, and Addison, have been termed the fathers of landscape gardening.[82] Mr. Walpole, after reviewing the old formal style of our gardens, in language which it is painful to me thus only to advert to, instead of copying at length, (for I am fully "aware of the mischiefs which generally ensue in meddling with the productions of genius"); and after stating that when nature was taken into the plan, every step pointed out new beauties, and inspired new ideas: "at that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opiniative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden. Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled. But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpassed his management of water. Thus, dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its most favourable features, men saw a new creation opening before their eyes." And again he calls him "the inventor of an art that realizes painting, and improves nature: Mahomet imagined an elysium, but Kent created many." The greatest of all authorities tells us, that in Esher's peaceful grove, both
Kent and Nature vied for Pelham's love.
Mr. Mason, in his English Garden, thus panegyrises his elysian scenes:—
—— Kent, who felt
The pencil's power; but fix'd by higher hopes
Of beauty than that pencil knew to paint,
Work'd with the living lives that nature lent,
And realized his landscapes.
Mr. Pope, as well as Kent, would, and Mr. Walpole, and Mr. Mason, must each of them have read with high approbation the following remark of the late Sir Uvedale Price:—"the noble and varied works of the eminent painters of every age and every country, and those of their supreme mistress, Nature, should be the great models of imitation."
Mr. Whateley paints in glowing language, the genius of Kent, both at Stowe, and at Claremont. Mr. George Mason thus honestly and finely pleads for him:—"According to my own ideas, all that has since been done by the most deservedly admired designers, as Southcote, Hamilton, Lyttleton, Pitt, Shenstone, Morris, for themselves, and by Wright for others, all that has been written on the subject, even the gardening didactic poem, and the didactic essay on the picturesque, have proceeded from Kent. Had Kent never exterminated the bounds of regularity, never actually traversed the way to freedom of manner, would any of these celebrated artists have found it of themselves? Theoretic hints from the highest authorities, had evidently long existed without sufficient effect. And had not these great masters actually executed what Kent's example first inspired, them with, the design of executing, would the subsequent writers on gardening have been enabled to collect materials for precepts, or stores for their imaginations? Mr. Price acknowledges himself an admirer of the water-scene at Blenheim. Would it ever have appeared in its present shape, if no Kent had previously abolished the stiffness of canals! If this original artist had barely rescued the liquid element from the constraint of right lines and angles, that service alone would have given him an indubitable claim to the respect of posterity." The Rev. Mr. Coventry, in his admirable exposure of the grotesque absurdities in gardening, (being No. 15 of the World) thus speaks of Kent:—"The great Kent at length appeared in behalf of nature, declared war against the taste in fashion, and laid the axe to the root of artificial evergreens. Gardens were no longer filled with yews in the shape of giants, Noah's ark cut in holly, St. George and the Dragon in box, cypress lovers, laurustine bears, and all that race of root-born monsters which flourished so long, and looked so tremendous round the edges of every grass-plat. The great master above mentioned, truly the disciple of nature, imitated her in the agreeable wildness and beautiful irregularity of her plans, of which there are some noble examples still remaining, that abundantly show the power of his creative genius." Mr. Dallaway, when treating on architecture, in his Anecdotes of the Arts, says, "Kent designed the noble hall at Holkham, terminated by a vast staircase, producing, in the whole, an imposing effect of grandeur not to be equalled in England." Kent died in 1748. He was a contemporary therefore of Horace Walpole. He was buried in the vault at Chiswick, belonging to his friend and patron, Lord Burlington.