On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening,

Part 1

Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net

THE PORTRAITS

English Authors on Gardening,

WITH

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THEM.

Lately published, by the same Author, price 3s.

GLEANINGS ON GARDENS;

Chiefly respecting those of the Ancient Style in England.

PRINTED BY LOWE AND HARVEY, PLAYHOUSE YARD, BLACKFRIARS.

ON THE

PORTRAITS

ENGLISH

AUTHORS ON GARDENING,

WITH

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES.

Your painting is almost the natural man.--Timon of Athens.

A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.--Winter's Tale.

I will make a prief of it in my note-book.--M. W. of Windsor.

BY S. FELTON.

SECOND EDITION, WITH CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONS.

LONDON: 1830.

PUBLISHED BY EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE; AND JOSEPH ONWHYN, CATHARINE STREET, STRAND.

PREFACE.

The following pages apply only to those English writers on gardening who are deceased. That there have been portraits taken of some of those sixty-nine English writers, whose names first occur in the following pages, there can be no doubt; and those portraits may yet be with their surviving relatives or descendants. I am not so presumptuous as to apply to the following most slight memorials, some of which relate to very obscure persons, who claimed neither "the boast of heraldry, nor the pomp of power," but whose

----useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure

benefited society by their honest labour;--I am not so vain as to apply to these, any part of the high testimony which Sir Walter Scott has so justly paid to the merit of Mr. Lodge's truly splendid work of the portraits of celebrated personages of English history. I can only take leave to disjoint, or to dislocate, or copy, a very few of his words, and to apply them to the following scanty pages, as it must be interesting to have exhibited before our eyes our fathers as they lived, accompanied with such memorials of their lives and characters, as enable us to compare their persons and countenances with their sentiments:--portraits shewing us how "our ancestors looked, moved, and dressed,"--as the pen informs us "how they thought, acted, lived and died." One cannot help feeling kindness for the memories of those whose writings have pleased us.

What native of the county of Hereford, but must wish to see their town-hall ornamented with a life-breathing portrait of Dr. Beale, embodying, as it were, in the resemblance of the individual, (to use the words of a most eloquent person on another occasion), "his spirit, his feelings, and his character?" Or what elegant scholar but must wish to view the resemblance of the almost unknown Thomas Whately, Esq., or that of the Rev. William Gilpin, whose vivid pen (like that of the late Sir Uvedale Price), has "realized painting," and enchained his readers to the rich scenes of nature?

Dr. Johnson calls portrait painting "that art which is employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tenderness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead."

Part 2

The horticultural intercourse that now passes between England and France, induces one to express a wish, that the portraits of many of those delightful writers on this science, whose pens have adorned France, (justly termed from its climate la terre classique d'horticulture), were selected and engraved; for many of their portraits have never yet been engraved. If this selection were accompanied with a few brief notices of them and their works, it would induce many in this country to peruse some of the most fascinating productions that ever issued from the press. Amongst so many, whose portraits and memoirs would interest us, I will mention those of Champier, who distinguished himself at the battle of Aignadel, and who published at Lyons, in 1533, Campus Elisius Galliæ amenitate referens; Charles Etienne, who, in 1529, produced his Prædium Rusticum; and who with Leibault published the Maison Rustique, of which upwards of thirty editions have been published, (and which our Gervase Markham calls a work of infinite excellencie); Paulmier de Grenlemesnil, a most estimable man, physician to Charles IX., and who died at Caen in 1588, and wrote a treatise de Vino et Pomaceo; and the only act of whose long life that one regrets is, that his great skill was the means of re-establishing the health of Charles, who, with his mother, directed the horrid Massacre of St. Bartholomew; Cousin, who died in the prison of Besançon, and wrote De Hortorum laudibus; that patriarch of agriculture and of horticulture, Olivier de Serres, whose sage and philosophic mind composed a work rich with the most profound reflections, and whose genius and merit were so warmly patronized by "le bon Henri," and no less by Sully; Boyceau, intendant of the gardens of Louis XIII., who, in 1638, published Traité du Jardinage, selon les raisons de la nature, et de l'art, avec divers desseins de parterres, pelouses, bosquets, &c.; André Mollet, who wrote Le Jardin de plaisir, &c.; Claude Mollet, head gardener to Henry IV. and Louis XIII., who, in 1595, planted the gardens of Saint Germain-en-laye, Monceau, and Fontainbleau, and whose name and memory (as Mr. Loudon observes), has been too much forgotten; Bornefond, author of Jardinier François, et délices de la campagne; Louis Liger, of consummate experience in the florist's art, "auteur d'un grand nombre d'ouvrages sur l'agriculture, et le jardinage," and one of whose works was thought not unworthy of being revised by London and Wise, and of whose interesting works the Biographie Universelle (in 52 tomes) gives a long list, and mentions the great sale which his Jardinier fleuriste once had; Morin, the florist, mentioned by Evelyn, and whose garden contained ten thousand tulips; the justly celebrated Jean de la Quintinye, whose precepts, says Voltaire, have been followed by all Europe, and his abilities magnificently rewarded by Louis; Le Nôtre, the most celebrated gardener (to use Mr. Loudon's words) that perhaps ever existed, and of whom the Biographie Univer. observes, that whatever might have been the changes introduced in whatever Le Nôtre cultivated, "il seroit difficile de mettre plus de grandeur et de noblesse;" Charles Riviere du Fresnoy "qu'il joignot a un goût général pour tous les arts, des talens particuliers pour la musique et le dessein. Il excelloit sur-tout dans l'art de destribuer les jardins. Il publia plusieurs Chansons et les Amusemens serieux et comiques: petit ouvrage souvens re-imprimé et pleins de peintures vives et plaisantes, de la plupart des états de la vie. On remarques dans touts ses productions une imagination enjouée et singuliere;" Pontchasteau, who wrote on the cultivation of fruit trees, whose penitence and devotion were so severely austere, and whose very singular history is given us in the interesting "Lettres de Madame la Comtesse de la Riviere;" Linant, to whom Voltaire was a warm protector and friend, and who, in 1745, wrote his poem Sur la Perfection des Jardins, sous la regne de Louis XIV.; and of whom it was said that "les qualités du coeur ne le caractérisoient pas moins que celles de l'esprit;" Le Pere Rapin; D'Argenville; Le Maistre, curate of Joinville, who in 1719 added to his "Fruitier de la France," "Une Dissertation historique sur l'origine et les progrés des Jardins; Vaniere, who wrote the Prædium Rusticum; Arnauld d'Andilli, in so many respects rendered illustrious, who retired to the convent of Port Royal, (that divine solitude, where the whole country for a league round breathed the air of virtue and holiness, to quote Mad. de Sevigné's words), and who sent each year to the queen some of that choice fruit which he there with such zeal cultivated, and which Mazarin "appelloit en riant des fruits bénis." This good man died at the age of eighty-six, and the letter of Mad. de Sevigné, of the date of Sept. 23, 1671, will alone consign him to the respect of future ages; Jean Paul de Ardenne, superior of the congregation of the oratory of Marseilles, one of the most famous florists of the period in which he lived, and who devoted great part of his time in deeds of charity; Francis Bertrand, who, in 1757, published Ruris delicæ, being poems from Tibullus, Claudian, Horace, and from many French writers, on the pleasures of the country; Mons. de Chabanon; Morel, who assisted in laying out Ermenonville, and who wrote, among other works, Théorie des Jardins, ou l'art des Jardins de la Nature; the animated Prevost; Gouges de Cessieres, who wrote Les Jardins d'Ornament, ou les Georgiques Francoises; he, too, whom the Prince de Ligne calls

----enchanteur De Lille! O Virgile moderne!

and whose generous invocation to the memory of Captain Cook must endear his name to every Englishman; the Viscount Girardin, who wrote De la Composition des Paysages, who buried Rousseau in his garden at Ermenonville, and who kept a band of musicians to perambulate those charming grounds, performing concerts sometimes in the woods, and at other times on the water, and at night in a room adjoining his hall of company; the venerable Malherbes, the undaunted defender of the oppressed, who throughout his life lost no opportunity of drying up the tears of the afflicted, and never caused one to flow; whose whole life had been consecrated to the happiness of his fellow-creatures and the dignity of his country, but whose spotless reputation could not save him from the guillotine at his age of seventy-two; Schabol; Latapie, who translated Whately's Observations on Modern Gardening, to which he added a discourse on the origin of the art, &c.; Watelet, who wrote Essai sur les Jardins, and whose name has given rise to some most charming lines in De Lille's poem, and whose biography is interestingly drawn in the Biog. Univers.; Lezay de Marnesia, whose poems de la Nature Champêtre, and le Bonheur dans les Campagnes, have passed through many editions, and of whom pleasing mention is made in the above Biog. Univers.; M. de Fontaine, author of Le Verger; Masson de Blamont, the translator of Mason's Garden, and Whately's Observations; François Rosier; Bertholan, the friend of Franklin.

Continue reading On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, free in the Wunder reader →