The History of Gardening is very learnedly discussed, in a brief inquiry into the knowledge the ancients possessed of the art, by Dr. Faulkner; and the same subject is more lightly, but not less correctly or elegantly, treated by my late ingenious friend, Daniel Malthus, Esq., in a preface to his translation of "D'Ermenonville de la Composition des Paysages" *.
*[From this gentleman I received a letter in 1795, written in so playful a style, and so much connected with the subject of this volume, that I will venture to insert it, even though I should incur the imputation of vanity. "DEAR SIR, I have been lately very much pleased with a letter of yours to Mr. Price, which is so easy, friendly, and gentleman-like, that it defeats at once the pertness of your antagonists, before you enter into the question; at the same time, I think it as perfect an answer as if it were more laboured, and that you have put your finger on the very pith and marrow of the question. Even in the little snatch of acquaintance we have had together, you may have perceived that I am rather too much inclined to the Price and Knight party, and yet I own to you, that I have been often so much disgusted by the affected and technical language of connoisseurship, that I have been sick of pictures for a month, and almost of Nature, when the same jargon was applied to her. I know the abilities of the two gentlemen, and am sorry they have made themselves such pupils of the Warburtonian school, as to appear more like Luther and Calvin than a couple of west country gentlemen, talking of gravel walks and syringas. To be sure, one would imagine they would have broiled poor Brown, but I hope not. I suppose you know Mr. Knight's place, his elegant house, and the enchanting valley which lies under it: no man wants to dot himself about with firs who has such woods as those. He has done nothing to spoil it, and everything that he could have done chastely to adorn it. He has three bridges that are admirable in their way. I was diverted with one of the reviewers, who took him for a poor Grub-street poet, who had never seen any more gardening than the pot of mint at his windows."]
[Daniel Malthus, was born at Lincoln's Inn Fields in Middlesex in 1730. He was wealthy and lived at The Rookery near Dorking in Surrey, until selling it in 1768, and moving to Hadstock in Essex. He was a friend philosophers David Hume and Jean Jacques Rousseau and the father of Thomas Robert Malthus the population theorist. Daniel Malthus also translated the book by Reneï¾´ Louis de Girardin,. Essay on Landscape; or, on the means of improveing and embellishing the country round our habitations. - TT]
