He might have added, "... like unto my own literary style."
Fig. 119.—Maze Design by S. Switzer (1742).
A labyrinth of a most fantastic character is said to have occupied a large area in the palace garden of the Prince of Anhalt, in Germany. It was allegorical and was intended to typify the course of human life. It was composed not only of hedges, but of rocks and trees, streams and caverns, and tortuous deeply cut paths, which were for the most part covered in, with very scanty illumination. At every other turn the visitor was pulled up by some puzzling or terrifying allegory, or some didactic inscription after the manner of those which adorn the rocks at Tilly Whim, on the Dorset coast. By way of compensation he was refreshed here and there by the sight of a choice example of the sculptor's art, or a flowery dell, or some verdurous presentation of the architect's idea of Elysium. As in the case of Versailles, expense seems to have been no obstacle.
At H.M. Records Office is preserved in "Survey No. 72" a rather pathetic document headed "A Survey of the Manor of Wymbledon alias Wimbleton, with the Rights, Members and Appurtenances thereof, lying and being in the Countie of Surrey, late Parcell of the Possessions of Henrietta Maria, the Relict and late Queene of Charles Stuart, late King of England, made and taken ... in the Moneth of November 1649." A transcript of the document was communicated to "Archaeologia" in 1792 by John Caley, F.A.S., the following portion being worth noting in connection with our present subject:
"... On the South syde of the sayd turfed tarras there are planted one great maze, and one wilderness, which being severed with one gravelled Alley, in or near to the midle of the sayd turfed tarras, sets forth the maze to lie towards the east, and the wilderness towards the west; the maze consists of young trees, wood and sprayes of a good growth and height, cutt into severall meanders, circles, semicircles, wyndings and intricate turnings, the walks or intervalls whereof are all grass plotts; this maze, as it is now ordered, adds very much to the worth of the upper levell ... which maze and wilderness over and besides the trees thereof, which are hereafter valewed amongst the other trees of the sayd upper garden and the materialls of the sayd two shadowe or summer houses, wee valew to bee worth £90.0.0."
Whether the maze referred to was afterwards destroyed is not clear, but possibly it was preserved and was identical with that mentioned by the writer of the "Encyclopaedia Britannica" article as having formerly existed at Wimbledon House, the seat of Earl Spencer, which was conjectured to have been laid out by Brown in the eighteenth century. ("Capability" Brown, we may note, was no lover of mazes, though his official residence at Hampton Court adjoined the maze.)
Fig. 118. Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, with two Mazes. (J. Kip, 1720)
There are records of various other old mazes in the immediate vicinity of London, apart from the "tea-garden" mazes of the last century. Pepys in 1666 speaks of "several labyrinths" in the gardens of Lord Brooke at Hackney, and Evelyn in 1700 mentions mazes at Marden, Surrey. Sutton Court also contained a fine example.