But Ellison
maintained that the richest, the truest, and most natural, if not
altogether the most extensive province, had been unaccountably
neglected. No definition had spoken of the landscape-gardener as of
the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the creation of the
landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most magnificent of
opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for the display
of imagination in the endless combining of forms of novel beauty;
the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast superiority,
the most glorious which the earth could afford. In the multiform and
multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the most direct
and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And in the
direction or concentration of this effort- or, more properly, in its
adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth- he
perceived that he should be employing the best means- laboring to
the greatest advantage- in the fulfilment, not only of his own destiny
as poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had
implanted the poetic sentiment in man.
"Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth." In
his explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward
solving what has always seemed to me an enigma:- I mean the fact
(which none but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of
scenery exists in nature as the painter of genius may produce.
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