"Pope has given not only some of our _first_ but _best_ rules and observations on _Architecture_ and _Gardening_." (See Warton's Essay, vol. ii. p. 237, &c. &c.) Now, is it not a shame, after this, to hear our Lakers in "Kendal Green," and our Bucolical Cockneys, crying out (the latter in a wilderness of bricks and mortar) about "Nature," and Pope's "artificial in-door habits?" Pope had seen all of nature that _England_ alone can supply. He was bred in Windsor Forest, and amidst the beautiful scenery of Eton; he lived familiarly and frequently at the country seats of Bathurst, Cobham, Burlington, Peterborough, Digby, and Bolingbroke; amongst whose seats was to be numbered _Stowe_. He made his own little "five acres" a model to princes, and to the first of our artists who imitated nature. Warton thinks "that the most engaging of _Kent_'s works was also planned on the model of Pope's,--at least in the opening and retiring shades of Venus's Vale." It is true that Pope was infirm and deformed; but he could walk, and he could ride (he rode to Oxford from London at a stretch), and he was famous for an exquisite eye. On a tree at Lord Bathurst's is carved "Here Pope sang,"--he composed beneath it. Bolingbroke, in one of his letters, represents them both writing in the hay-field. No poet ever admired Nature more, or used her better, than Pope has done, as I will undertake to prove from his works, _prose_ and _verse_, if not anticipated in so easy and agreeable a labour. I remember a passage in Walpole, somewhere, of a gentleman who wished to give directions about some willows to a man who had long served Pope in his grounds: "I understand, sir," he replied: "you would have them hang down, sir, _somewhat poetical_." Now, if nothing existed but this little anecdote, it would suffice to prove Pope's taste for _Nature_, and the impression which he had made on a common-minded man. But I have already quoted Warton and Walpole (_both_ his enemies), and, were it necessary, I could amply quote Pope himself for such tributes to _Nature_ as no poet of the present day has even approached.