Note 554 — Chapter V · GARDENING

Sir Walter Scott said of this sketch, “I can trace, even to childhood, a pleasure derived from Dodsley’s description of Shenstone’s Leasowes, and I envied the poet much more for the pleasure of accomplishing the objects detailed in his friend’s sketch of his grounds, than for the possession of pipe, crook, flock, and Phyllis to boot.” For another full prose description of Leasowes and the neighboring place, Hagley, see Hugh Miller’s “Impressions of England and English People,” pp. 95–132, 147–69. See also “On the Tenants of the Leasowes,” Essay XXI in “Essays” (1758–65) by Goldsmith, for a description of Leasowes gone to decay. There is an interesting supposed conversation between Shenstone and a utilitarian cockney visitor in “Blackwood’s,” XIV, 262 (1823). Another early description is in “Letters on the Beauties of Hagley, Envil, and the Leasowes,” by Joseph Heeley, 1777. There are poetical descriptions in Woodhouse’s “Poems” and in Giles’ “Miscellanies.” In Shenstone’s “Works,” published by Dodsley in 1773 are collected nine poetical tributes to the place. In “The Spiritual Quixote” (1773) one of the noted exploits of Mr. Geoffry Wildgoose, the quixotic reformer, is an attempted defacement of the gardens at Leasowes in order thereby to save the soul of his friend Shenstone from being wedded to idols. The influence and fame of this garden are indicated by the fact that the Marquis de Giradin at Ermonville called his own place “The Leasowes of France.” Anderson, in his Preface to Shenstone’s “Works” says that the planning of pleasure grounds in the manner of Leasowes “seems to require as great powers of mind as those which we admire in the descriptive poems of Thomson, or in the noble landscapes of Salvator Rosa, or the Poussins.” For later descriptions see “Shenstone and the Leasowes” in “Once a Week,” 1862, by Edward Jesse.