But however much we may chuckle over the inconsistencies of Bacon it must be remembered that the age in which he lived (1561–1626) was remarkable rather for ostentatious display than for good taste,—as we count good taste,—and consequently his horticultural purview was limited and obscured. As the poet Mason puts it:—
“The age of tourney triumphs, and quaint masques, Glar’d with fantastic pageantry, which dimm’d The sober eye of truth, and dazzled ev’n The sage himself; witness the high arch’d hedge, In pillar’d state by carpentry upborne, With coloured mirrors deck’d, and prison’d birds.”
Bacon was in many things far in advance of the Tudor times in which he lived, so far indeed, in respect of our present subject, that no outstanding protest against Topiary appears to have been made by those who endeavoured to promote sound public taste, until nearly another century had elapsed. Then the literary genius of Addison was directed against the evils and extravagances of his age.
“Addison, Thou polished sage, or shall I call thee bard, I see thee come: around thy temples play The lambent flames of humour, bright’ning mild Thy judgment into smiles; gracious thou com’st With Satire at thy side, who checks her frown, But not her secret sting.”—_Mason._
“With bolder rage Pope next advances; his indignant arm Waves the poetic brand o’er Timon’s shades, And lights them to destruction; the fierce blaze Sweeps through each kindred vista, groves to groves Nod their fraternal farewell and expire.”—_Mason._
Although Addison and Pope were contemporaries it was the former who led the crusade against formal gardening in general and the art of Topiary in particular. Less satirical than his one-time friend, Addison nevertheless pointed out with remarkable clearness that the gardens of the early part of the eighteenth century were not nearly so beautiful as they might have been, owing to the excessive use of clipped trees and the extreme care which the gardeners of that time took to secure the utmost regularity in their planting and uniformity in design.
Addison was counted one of the most brilliant of the Essayists of his time, and among the numerous contributions made by him to the _Spectator_ is a lengthy one “On the Pleasures of the Imagination.” This took the form of eleven Papers, or epistles, published in regular order from June 21, to July 3, 1712. It is in the fourth paper that he deals more particularly with gardens and therein he shows that the works of nature are more pleasant to the imagination than are those of art, and that the works of art are most pleasing the more closely they resemble those of nature. He does not openly denounce Topiary and other formal gardening, but with subtle skill contrasts it with a picture of a more natural style, and does so in a manner that enforces the beauty of the latter and indicates the origin of that taste in landscape gardening which many a gardener of the nineteenth century thought was peculiarly his own.