twenty years. He has, indeed, in the opening of the additional matter which he has given us to the advertisement prefixed to the early editions of his work, adverted to this beautiful poem; for, it appears, that he had been charged, especially in this country, with having been too largely indebted to it. "Quelques littérateurs Anglois," he says, "ont cru que j'avois pris l'idée, et plusieurs détails de ce poëme dans celui qu'a composé sur la meme sujet, Mr. Mason, digne ami de Mr. Gray. C'est avec plaisir que je rends justice à quantité de beaux vers qui distinguent cet ouvrage; mais je déclare que longtems avant d'avoir lu le poëme de Mr. Mason j'avois composé le mien, et l'avois recité dans plusieurs séances publiques de l'Académie Françoise et du Collége Royal, auxquels j'avois l'honneur d'appartenir."*

It is somewhat remarkable that the only two poems of any considerable value to which so kindred a subject as the art of embellishing grounds has given birth, should have come before the public nearly at the same time; for though the first book of the "English Garden"

was published in 1772, the fourth and last did not appear until 1782, the very year when the first impression of "Les Jardins," issued from the Parisian press; and it is probable, therefore, from what the Abbé has said in the passage just quoted, that if the conception of the English poem, and a part of its execution, were anterior to that of the French work, the larger portion of both must have been written during the same period; a parallelism which must, of course, as far as it obtained, preclude all idea of imitation, though from the identity of design which occupied the minds of the two poets, its appearance could scarcely be avoided.

But returning to the more immediate subject of my paper, the Anonymous Translation of 1789, I think it right to observe that, in conducting a suite of extracts from its pages, it will be my plan, after commenting slightly on the merits of the version, to endeavour to introduce what may, in some measure, serve, through the medium of comparison, remark, or historical disquisition, to illustrate the subject or sentiment of the original.

In a short, but elegantly written, prefatory ad

dress to his readers, the translator indulges in a slight but pleasing retrospect of what taste and genius had contributed toward the praise and the improvement of his favourite art, observing that the amateur in landscape "will admire, but without regret, the few faint touches etched by HOMER, and by VIRGIL : he will view and pass the luxurious, but fantastic recess of PLINY, to approve, to feel, to envy, the better taste of TULLY in the shades of the more natural Tusculum: he will warm and enrich his imagination with the brilliant enchantments of Tasso and ARIOSTO, with the fond fancies of CHAUCER and SPENSER, with the Paradise of MILTON: he will correct his judgment with the critical lessons of BACON, of TEMPLE, and of POPE, with the various designs of WATELET and MOREL, with the chaste touches of MASON, and the judicious illustrations of BURGH. Thus, with a mind taught to admire, and willing to imitate the fair forms of genuine nature, he will ever follow obedient to the Genius of the Place,' and, as situation may suggest, either walk with the cautious KENT, or tread the fairy footsteps of BROWN."

In this birds-eye view of the progress of his art, the translator has omitted two writers whose influence on the improvement of landscape gardening had been of the most marked and decided kind, namely, WHATELY and GIRARDIN. The former in his "Observations on Modern Gardening," published in 1770, had exhibited, together with a taste singularly pure and correct, the most exquisite talents for delineating (for the embellishment of rural scenery,) its varied features and effect; whilst the latter, in his essay "De la Composition des Paysages, ou des Moyens d'embellir la Nature autour des Habitations, en joignant l'agréable à l'utile, &c." first printed in 1777, and translated by Mr. Malthus, with an admirable introduction in 1783, and which so beautifully describes his own romantic creation at Ermenonville, had proved how effectively he could transfer to unimproved nature the finest conceptions of the great masters of painting, and with what eloquence he could describe their result.

It may be remarked, that at the time when the paragraph we are commenting upon was written, Brown was in the zenith of his reputa

tion, and had, but a very few years before, received from the pen of Mason an eulogy which the lapse of half a century has shown to have been written more in the spirit of poetry than of prophecy. We meet with it at the close of his interesting review of the progress of gardening in England, where, after mentioning Shenstone,

Who knew, perchance, to harmonize his shades
Still softer than his song,

he adds,

Him too, the living leader of thy powers,
Great Nature! him the Muse shall hail in notes
Which antedate the praise true Genius claims
From just posterity: bards yet unborn
Shall pay to BROWN that tribute, fitliest paid
In strains, the beauty of his scenes inspire.

Brown, who had been brought up a kitchen gardener near Woodstock, and had been afterwards head-gardener at Stowe until the year 1750, was, without doubt a man of considerable talents, as his Blenheim has amply proved; but he was deficient in a knowledge of picturesque