On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening." Neither Was Old

L I B RA R.Y OF THE U N I VLRSITY OF ILLINOIS 7lO CPLA THE PORTRAITS OF <&W\m autijortf on tSarttnins, WITH BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF THEM. Lately published, by the same Author, price os. GLEANINGS ON GARDENS; Chiefly respecting those of the Ancient Style in England. PRINTED nv LOW] MID HARVEY. PLATHOV81 fARD, BLACKFRIARS ON THE PORTRAITS OF ENGLISH AUTHORS ON GARDENING, BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES. Your painting is almost the natural man.— Timon of Athens. A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.— Winter's Talc. I will make a prief of it in my note-book. —M. W. of Windsor. By S. FELTON. SECOND EDITION, WITH CONSIDERABLE ADDITIONS. -^SS^Idto LONDON: 1830. PUBLISHED BY EFFINGHAM WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE ; AND JOSEPH ONWHYN, CATHARINE STREET, STRAND. 1 i PREFACE. The following pages apply only to those English writers on gardening who are deceased. That there have been portraits taken of some of those sixty-nine English writers, whose names first occur in the following pages, there can be no doubt ; and those portraits may yet be with their surviving relatives or des- cendants. I am not so presumptuous as to apply to the following most slight memorials, some of which relate to very obscure persons, who claimed neither " the boast of heraldry, nor the pomp of power," but whose useful toil, Their homely joys and destiny obscure t benefited society by their honest labour;— I am not so vain as to apply to these, any part of the high tes- paid to ( timony which Sir Walter Scott has so justly the merit of Mr. Lodge's truly splendid work of the ; portraits of celebrated personages of English history. I can only take leave to disjoint, or to dislocate, or copy, a very few of iii^ words, and to apply them to the [following scanty pages, as it must be interesting to have exhibited before our eyes our fathers as they //red, accompanied with such memorials of their lives and characters, as enable us to compare their persons and countenances with their sentiments : — portraits shewing us how " our ancestors looked, moved, and dressed,"—as the pen informs us " how they thought, acted, lived and died." One cannot help feeling kindness for the memories of those whose writings have pleased us.* What native of the county of Hereford, but must wish to see their town-hall ornamented with a life- breathing portrait of Dr. Beale, embodying, as it * Few persons have shewn more attachment to family portraits than Miss Seward. This is strongly exemplified in several be- quests in her will ; not only in her bequest to Emma Sneyd, and in that to Mrs. Powys, but also in the following : —" The miniature picture of my late dear friend, Mr. Saville, drawn in 1770, by the late celebrated artist Smart, and which at the time it was taken, and during many successive years, was an exact resemblance of tlie original, I bequeath to his daughter, Mrs. Smith, who I know will value and preserve it as a jewel above all prize and in case of her previous demise, I bequeath the said precious miniature to her daughter, Mrs. Honora Jager, exhorting the said Honora Jager, and her heirs, into whose hands soever it may fall, to guard it witli sacred care from the sun and from damp, as I have guarded it, that so the posterity of my valued friend may know what, in his prime', was the form of him whose mind through life, by the acknowledgment of all who knew him, and could discern the VII were, in the resemblance of the individual, (to use the words of a most eloquent person on another occasion), " his spirit, his feelings, and his character V Or what elegant scholar but must wish to view the resemblance of the almost unknown Thomas Whately, Esq., or that of the Rev William Gilpin, whose vivid pen (like that of the late Sir Uvedale Price), has " realized painting," and enchained his readers to the rich scenes of nature ? Dr. Johnson calls portrait painting " that art which is employed in diffusing friendship, in reviving tender- ness, in quickening the affections of the absent, and continuing the presence of the dead." The horticultural intercourse that now passes be- tween England and France, induces one to express a superior powers of talent and virtue, was the seat of liberal endow- ment, warm piety, and energetic benevolence." Being thus on the subject of portraits, let me remark, that it is not always that we meet with a faithful likeness. A review of Mad. de Genlis's Petrarch ct Laure, justly observes, that " it is doubtful if any of the portraits of Petrarch, which still remain, were painted during his life-time. However that may be, it is im- possible to trace in them, either the elevation of his mind, the fire of his imagination, or the pensive melancholy of his soul.'' In the Essays on Petrarch, by Ugo Foscolo, he informs us, that M Pe- trarch's person, if we trust his biographers, was so striking with beauties, as to attract universal admiration. They represent him with large and manly features, eyes full of fire, a blooming com- plexion, and a countenance that bespoke all the genius and fancy that shone forth in his works." Do we yet know one really good likeness of Mary Queen of Scots ? MM wish, that the portraits of many of those delightful writers on this science, whose pens have adorned Fiance, (justly termed from its climate la terre classique d'horticulture), were selected and engraved ; for many of their portraits have never yet been engraved. If this selection were accompanied with a few brief notices of them and their works, it would induce many in this country to peruse some of the most fascinating pro- ductions that ever issued from the press. Amongst so many, whose portraits and memoirs would interest us, I will mention those of Champier, who distin- guished himself at the battle of Aignadel, and who published at Lyons, in 1533, Campus Elisius Gallia? amenitate referens ; Charles Etienne, who, in 1529, produced his Praedium Rusticum ; and who with Lei- bault published the Maison Rustique, of which up- wards of thirty editions have been published, (and which our Gervase Markham calls a work of infinite excellencie) ; Pauhnier de Grenlemesnil, a most esti- mable man, physician to Charles IX., and who (bed at Caen in 1588, and wrote a treatise de Vino et Po- maceo ; and the only act of whose long life that one regrets is, that his great skill was the means of re-es- tablishing the health of Charles, who, with his mo- ther, directed the horrid Massacre of St. Bartholo- mew; Cousin, who died in the prison of Besancon, and wrote De Ilortorum laudibus ; that patriarch of agriculture and of horticulture, Olivier de Serres, whose sage and philosophic mind composed a work rich with the most profound reflections, and whose genius and merit were so warmly patronized by " le ix bon Henri," and no less by Sully ;* Boyceau, attend- ant of the gardens of Louis XIII., who, in 1638, published Traite du Jardinage, selon les raisons de la nature, et de Tart, avec divers desseins de parterres, pelouses, bosquets, &c; Andre Mollet, who wrote gar- Le Jardin de plaisir, &c. ; Claude Mollet, head dener to Henry IV. and Louis XIIL, who, in 1595, planted the gardens of Saint Germain-en-laye, Mon- * It has often struck me (perhaps erroneously), that the attachment which the great Sully evinced for "gardens, even to the last period of his long-protracted life, (eighty-two), might in some de- gree have been cherished or increased from the writings of the great Lord Bacon. When this illustrious duke retired to his country seats, wounded to the heart by the baseness of those who had flattered him when Henry was alive, his noble and honest mind in- dulged in the embellishment of his gardens. I will very briefly — Vil- quote what history relates : " The life he led in his retreat at lebon, was accompanied with grandeur and even majesty, such as might be expected from a character so grave and full of dignity as his. His table was served with taste and magnificence; he admitted to it none but the nobility in his neighbourhood, some of the principal gen- tlemen, and the ladies and maids of honour, who belonged to the duchess of Sully. He often went into his gardens, and passing through a little covered alley, which separated the flower from the kitchen garden, ascended by a stone staircase (which the present duke of Sully has caused to be destroyed), into a large walk of linden trees, upon a terrace on the other side of the garden. It was then the taste to have a great many narrow walks, very closely shaded with four or five rows of trees, or palisadoes. Here he used to sit upon a settee painted green, amused himself by beholding on the one side an agreeable landscape, and on the other a second alley on a terrace extremely beautiful, which surrounded a large piece of wa- ter, and terminated by a wood of lofty trees. There was scarce one of his estates, those especially which had castles on them, b ceau, and Fontainbleau, and whose name and me- mory (as Mr. Loudon observes), has been too much forgotten ; Bornefond, author of Jardinier Francois, et delices de la campagne ; Louis Liger, of consummate experience in the florist's art, "auteur d'un grand nombre d'ouvrages sur l'agriculture, et le jardinage," and one of whose works was thought not unworthy of being revised by London and Wise, and of whose where he did not leave marks of his magnificence, to which he was chiefly incited by a principle of charity, and regard to the public good.

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