To his mind statues, urns, terraces, mounds, parterres, topiary work, though all “against Nature,” were preferable to a whole estate “shorn and shaved” after the manner of Brown. Sir Uvedale Price (1747–1829) to whom Knight dedicated his poem also opposed Brown, saying in prose with almost equal heat what his friend had put into verse.[562] The points made against the works of Brown, and likewise of his master, Kent, were the tameness and monotony, the over-cultivated appearance, of their grounds. The central thought of Knight and Price, as of Gilpin,[563] their contemporary, and, earlier, of Mason in “The English Garden,” was that a garden should be “picturesque,” that is, should be “composed” as a picture is. Landscape painting secured its best effects from rough, natural, varied scenes, hence gardens should, if possible, show similar combinations. The essential difference between Brown and the advocates of the picturesque is brought out by two plates published by Knight. The first of these shows the truly picturesque. The elements of the landscape are: a stream flowing at its own will between natural and uneven banks; groups of spreading trees and shaggy shrubs in natural union; fern-covered knolls; intricate thickets; mossy stones; “cherished weeds;” a prostrate tree, rough and gnarled; “native stumps and roots” overgrown with wild vines; and a rude bridge. The second plate shows the same scene as “dressed by an improver,” evidently of the Brown school. We now see the stream flowing between close-shaven banks; over it a frail Chinese bridge; clumps of trees in the most orderly and trim fashion; the grounds smoothed and cleaned like a drawing-room; unmeaning curves in stream and walk; and a vast expanse of lawn stretching in monotonous undulations to the bare-looking modern house.