Note 107 — DESCRIPTION OF THE PRINTS, Etc.
Reading edition
"Yet shall (my Lord) your just, your noble rules, Fill half the land with imitating fools, Who random drawings from your sheets shall take, And of one beauty many blunders make."
His Lordship was then publishing copies from the designs of Palladio and Inigo Jones.
The elegant but ill-natured stanzas which allude to the Duke of Chandos, beginning, "At Timon's villa let us pass a day," everybody knows. The delicately turned compliments to Lord Burlington display the poet's art; his precepts on ornamental gardening prove his taste and judgment. I cannot resist the temptation of recalling six or eight lines to the reader's recollection, were it only to subjoin Dr. Warburton's curious note, which admirably illustrates the remark that
"A perfect judge will read each work of wit With the same spirit that its author writ:"— "Consult the Genius of the place in all;[108] That tells the waters or to rise or fall; Or helps the ambitious hill the heavens to scale, Or scoops in circling theatre the vale; Calls in the country, catches opening glades, Joins willing woods, and varies shades from shades. Now breaks or now directs th' intending lines, Paints as you plant, and as you work designs."