But Nature might not be trusted to shine here by her own unvarnished charms; and the Richmond Gardens were bedecked with “follies” in the taste of the time: “Merlin’s Cave,” that appears to have housed a waxwork collection as well as the library of which Stephen Duck was keeper; a hermitage, inhabited by busts of distinguished men; a menagerie, a maze, and, of course, a grotto, to gratify “heav’nly Caroline’s” admiration for what “royal George” bluntly denounced as “childish silly stuff.” Rival poets celebrated “the much sung grotto of the Queen,” one under the sly pseudonym of “Peter Drake, a fisherman of Brentford,” making fun of Stephen Duck, the so-called thresher-poet. The widowed Princess of Wales, prompted by her friend Bute, showed a warm interest in horticulture; and under her was nursed the Botanic Garden of exotic plants that became the special feature of the Kew grounds. They were laid out by Lancelot Brown, a self-taught gardener, so celebrated in his day as to be known by the name of “Capability” Brown. He, indeed, rather than Kent, is sometimes styled the father of landscape improvers, among whom Repton, for one, speaks of him as his master or forerunner. Brown appears to have insisted masterfully on the carrying out of his own ideas, if we are to believe the story of George III. chuckling over his death to an under-gardener: “Now you and I can do as we please here!” In Mason’s _Heroic Epistle_, Brown is said to have had a free hand over the Richmond Garden also, where he destroyed Queen Caroline’s fanciful structures, so as to be accused of having “transformed to lawn what late was Fairyland.” Under Bute’s patronage the post of superintendent of the Botanic Garden was given, but seems not to have been made _pukka_, to Sir John Hill, as he styled himself on the credit of a Swedish decoration, that humbug physician and author, best remembered now by Garrick’s epigram:--- For physic and farces, his equal there scarce is: His farces are physic, his physic a farce is. [Illustration: THE RUINED ARCH] Another questionable authority in taste, introduced by Bute to the Princess and her son, was William Chambers, an architect who built himself into no small note. In his youth, as supercargo of a vessel he had travelled as far as China, then a land of fresh wonder, to bring back extravagant notions, set forth in his _Dissertation on Oriental Gardening_, and in a mania for _Chinoiseries_, which was let loose at Kew. Hence the building of the Pagoda in 1762, of a House of Confucius, and of a mosque, with temples, grottos, and other outlandish erections, most of which have long disappeared. He also built the Observatory where Richmond Lodge came to be demolished. His innovations were not confined to buildings, as appears in Mason’s satire:-- Now to our lawns of dalliance and delight, Join we the groves of horror and affright.