PORTRAITS OF ENGLISH AUTHORS ON GARDENING. Your painting is almost the natural man.— -Timon of Athens. A snapper-up of unconsidered trifles.-Shakspeare. BY S. FELTON. LONDON: 1828. SOLD BY J. RIDGWAY, PICCADILLY; WILSON, ROYAL EXCHANGE, AND BY ALL BOOKSELLERS. Price Two Shillings. P14639 THE following pages apply only to those English writers on That there have been portraits gardening who are deceased. taken of some of those fifty-four English writers, whose names first occur in the following pages, there can be no doubt; and those portraits may yet be with their surviving relatives or descendants. I am not so presumptuous or so vain and weak as to apply to the following most slight memorials (and some of which relate to very obscure persons), any part of the high testimony which Sir Walter Scott has lately so justly paid to the merit of Mr. Lodge's truly splendid work of the portraits of celebrated personages of English history. I can only take leave to disjoint, or to dislocate, or copy, a very few of his words, and to apply them to the following scanty pages, as it must be interesting to have exhibited before our eyes" our fathers as they lived, accompanied with such memorials of their lives and characters, as enable us to compare their persons and countenances with their sentiments and actions:" portraits shewing us how "our ancestors looked, moved, and dressed,"-as the pen informs us "how they thought, acted, lived and died.” ii What native of the county of Hereford, but must wish to see their town-hall, ornamented with a life-breathing portrait of Dr. Beale, embodying, as it were, in the resemblance of the individual, (to use the words of a most eloquent person on another occasion), "his spirit, his feelings, and his character?" Or what elegant scholar but must wish to view the resemblance of the almost unknown Thomas Whateley, Esq., or that of the Rev. William Gilpin, whose vivid pen (like that of Uvedale Price), has "realized painting," and enchained his readers to the rich scenes of nature? The horticultural intercourse that now passes between England and France, induces one to express a wish, that the portraits of many of those delightful writers on this science, whose pens have adorned France, (justly termed from its climate la terre classique de l'horticulture), were selected and engraved; for many of their portraits have never yet been engraved. If this selection were accompanied with a few brief notices of them and their works, it would induce many in this country to peruse some of the most fascinating productions that ever issued from the press. Amongst so many, whose portraits and memoirs would interest us, I will merely mention those of Champier, who distinguished himself at the battle of Aignadel, and who published at Lyons in 1533 Campus Elisius Galliæ amenitate referens; Charles Etienne, who in 1529 produced his Prædium Rusticum; and who with Leibault published the Maison Rustique, of which upwards of thirty editions have been published; Paulmier de Grenlemesnil, a most estimable man, physi |