Connected with this love of nature are Mrs. Collyer's ideas on gardening. When she and Lucius bought their estate it was in the formal style, but they at once changed it to make it appear as much like nature as possible. In this Mrs. Collyer was not entirely original, for the _Spectator_ and the _Guardian_, Pope, Switzer, and Batty Langley had decried the stiff regularity of the formal garden, and Kent's great gardens came between 1730 and 1748. But Mrs. Collyer promptly took up the new ideas and she ranks among their early defenders. Mrs. Collyer is very interesting because she showed herself in these various ways so sensitive to new ideas. She seemed to know what was in the air even before it had had any but the most casual expression. She sat down very modestly and with much trepidation to write anonymous translations and novels for the support of her family, but she was, quite unconsciously it may be, treading the path of the pioneer. [Sidenote: Sarah Fielding (1710-1768)] Sarah Fielding's first and most important novel, _The Adventures of David Simple in search of a Faithful Friend_ (1744), received extraordinary commendation from the two contemporary authors whose judgments might be counted authoritative, Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson. Fielding's satiric picture of Mrs. Western in _Tom Jones_ is more than offset by his utterances in connection with his sister Sarah's books. When _David Simple_ appeared, _Joseph Andrews_ had been two years before the public, and it was natural that her popular little book should be attributed to Fielding. But when the second edition came out (also 1744) he took occasion to disavow his supposed authorship, and likewise to commend the book. A third, and indeed the strongest, reason which hath drawn me into print, is to do justice to the real and sole author of this little book; who, notwithstanding the many excellent observations dispersed through it, and the deep knowledge of human nature it discovers, is a young woman; one so nearly and dearly allied to me, in the highest friendship as well as relation, that if she had wanted any assistance of mine I would have been as ready to have given it to her as I would have been just to my word in owning it; but, in reality, two or three hints which arose on the reading it, and some little direction as to the conduct of the second volume, much the greater part of which I never saw till in print, were all the aid she received from me. Indeed, I believe there are few books in the world so absolutely the author's own as this....