ow;
In vain fair Thames reflects the double scenes
Of hanging mountains and of sloping greens;
Joy lives not here, to happier seats it flies,
And only dwells where Wortley casts her eyes.

What are the gay parterre, the chequered shade,
The morning bower, the evening colonnade,
But soft recesses of uneasy minds,
To sigh unheard in to the passing winds?

So the struck deer, in some sequestered part,
Lies down to die, the arrow at his heart;
He, stretched unseen, in coverts hid from day,
Bleeds drop by drop, and pants his life away.

These are exquisite lines, and have given delight to innumerable
readers, but they gave no delight to Lady Mary. In writing to her
sister, the Countess of Mar, then at Paris, she says in allusion to
these "most musical, most melancholy" verses--"_I stifled them here; and
I beg they may die the same death at Paris_." It is not, however, quite
so easy a thing as Lady Mary seemed to think, to "stifle" such poetry as
Pope's.

Pope's notions respecting the laying out of gardens are well expressed
in the following extract from the fourth Epistle of his Moral
Essays.[015] This fourth Epistle was addressed, as most readers will
remember, to the accomplished Lord Burlington, who, as Walpole says,
"had every quality of a genius and an artist, except envy. Though his
own designs were more chaste and classic than Kent's, he entertained him
in his house till his death, and was more studious to extend his
friend's fame than his own."

Something there is more needful than expense,
And something previous e'en to taste--'tis sense;
Good sense, which only is the gift of Heaven,
And though no science fairly worth the seven;
A light, which in yourself you must perceive;
Jones and Le Notre have it not to give.
To build, or plant, whatever you intend,
To rear the column or the arch to bend;
To swell the terrace, or to sink the grot;
In all let Nature never be forgot.
But treat the goddess like a modest fair,
Nor over dress nor leave her wholly bare;
Let not each beauty every where be spied,
Where half the skill is decently to hide.
He gains all points, who pleasingly confounds,
Surprizes, varies, and conceals the bounds.
_Consult the genius of the place in all_;[016]
That tells the waters or to rise or fall;
Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale,
Or scoops in cir