Price in 1794.
The first symptoms of disapprobation that were ventured to be uttered against the degradation of the new taste ap pear to be contained in an epistolary novel, entitled Village Memoirs, published in 1775, in which the professors of gar dening arc satirized tinder the name of Mr. Layout. A better taste, how ever, than that of Mr. Layout is acknow ledged to exist, which the author states " Shenstone and nature to have brought us acquainted with." Most of the large gardens arc said to be laid out by some general un dertaker, "who introduces the same objects at the same distances in all." 1'. 143. The translation of Git ardin Dc la composition des paysagea, ou des moyens &en:be/lir la na ture autour des Habitations, en joigncnt ragriab.e d futile, Eric. accompanied an excellent historical by Daniel Malthus, Esq. in 1783, must have had c onside•able influence in purifying the taste of its readers. A poem in Dodsley's collection, entitled Some Thoughts on Building and Planting, addressed to Sir James Lowther, Bait. pub lished in the same year, and in which the poet recommends, that must have had some effect. But the Essay on Prints, and the various picturesque tours of Gilpin, publisaed at L'iffer ent intervals from 1768 to 1790, had the principal on persons of taste. The beauties of light and shade, out line, grouping, and other ingredients of picturesque beauty, were never heft:tie exhibited to the English public in popu lar writings. These works were eagerly read, and brought about that general study of drawing and sketching land scape among the then rising generation, which has ever since prevailed ; and will do more perhaps than any other class of studies towards forming a taste for the harmony and connection of natural scenery, the only secure antidote to the revival of the distinctness and monotony which cha racterize that which we have been condemning. The coup de-main, however, has been given to this system by the works of Mr. Knight and Mr. Price, above mentioned. Their effect has been gradual, but certain ; for, though at first they were violently opposed by professors and periodi cal critics, yet they have carried conviction to all men of taste ; and even, as we have before stated, have converted Mr. Repton himself. The object of The Landscape, a di
dactic poem, is to teach the art of creating scenery, more congruous and picturesque than what is met with in that "tiresome and monotonous scene called pleasure ground." Mr. Price's Essay on the Picturesque, and on the use of stu dying Pictures, with a view to the improvement of real Landscape, is written with the same intention; but, as might be expected from a prose work, enters on the sub ject much more at length. In order to discover " whether the present system of improving is founded on any just principles of taste," Mr. Price begins by inquiring, " whether there is any standard, to which, in point of group ing and of general composition, works of this sort can be referred ; any authority higher than that of the persons, who have gained the most general and popular reputation by those works, and whose method of conducting them has had the most extensive influence on the general taste ?" This standard (which, it will be recollected by the candid reader, is desired only for what relates to grouping and composition, not to utility and convenience, as some have unfairly asserted,) Mr. Price finds in the productions of those great artists, who have most diligently studied the beauties of nature, both in their grandest and most general effects, and in their minutest detail ; who have observed every variety of form and of colour ; have been able to se lect and combine ; and then, by the magic of their art, to fix upon the canvass all these various beauties." Mr. Price recommends the study of the principles of painting, 41 not to the exclusion of nature, but as an assistant in the study of her works." He points out and illustrates two kinds of beauty in landscape ; the one the picturesque, characterized by roughness, abruptness, and sudden varia tion ; the other beauty in the more general acceptation, characterized by smoothness, undulations, intermixed with a certain degree of roughness and variation, producing in tricacy and variety. Such beauty was made choice of by Claude in his landscapes, and such, lie thinks, particularly adapted to the embellishment of artificial scenery. These principles are applied by Mr. Price in a very masterly man ner, to wood, water, and buildings.