His gardens next your admiration call
On every side you look, behold the wall!
No pleasing intricacies intervene,
No artful wildness to perplex the scene;
Grove nods at grove, each alley has a brother,
And half the platform just reflects the other.
Pope's taste, indeed, tolerated various old-fashioned excrescences which
we profess to despise. He admired mock classical temples and obelisks
erected judiciously at the ends of vistas. His most famous piece of
handiwork, the grotto at Twickenham, still remains, and is in fact a
short tunnel under the high road to connect his grounds with the lawn
which slopes to the river. He describes in a letter to one of his
friends, his "temple wholly comprised of shells in the rustic manner,"
and his famous grotto so provided with mirrors that when the doors are
shut it becomes a camera obscura, reflecting hills, river, and boats,
and when lighted up glitters with rays reflected from bits of
looking-glass in angular form. His friends pleased him by sending pieces
of spar from the mines of Cornwall and Derbyshire, petrifactions,
marble, coral, crystals, and humming-birds' nests. It was in fact a
gorgeous example of the kind of architecture with which the cit
delighted to adorn his country box. The hobby, whether in good taste or
not, gave Pope never-ceasing amusement; and he wrote some characteristic
verses in its praise.
In his grotto, as he declares in another place, he could sit in peace
with his friends, undisturbed by the distant din of the world.
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