ABSTRACT
What I have said of the best forms of gardens is meant only of such as are in some sort regular; for there may be other forms wholly irregular that may, for aught I know, have more beauty than any of the others. But they must owe it to some extraordinary dispositions of nature in the seat, or some great race of fancy or judgement in the contrivance which may reduce many disagreeing parts into some figure which shall yet upon the whole be very agreeable. Something of this I have seen in some places but heard more of it from others who have lived much among the Chinese, a people whose way of thinking seems to lie as wide of ours in Europe as their country does. Among us, the beauty of building and planting is placed chiefly in some certain proportions, symmetries, or uniformities; our walks and our trees ranged so as to answer one another, and at exact distances. The Chinese scorn this way of planting and say a boy who can count to a hundred may plant walks of trees in straight lines and over against one another, and to what length and extent he pleases. But their greatest reach of imagination is employed in contriving figures, where the beauty shall be great and strike the eye, but without any order or disposition of parts that shall be commonly or easily observed. And though we have hardly any notion of this sort of beauty, yet they have a particular word to express it; and, where they find it hit their eye at first sight, they say the Sharawadgi is fine or is admirable or any such expression of esteem. And whoever observes the work upon the best Indian gowns or the painting upon their best screens or porcelain will find their beauty is all of this kind [that is] without order. But I should hardly advise any of these attempts in the figure of gardens among us; they are adventures of too hard achievement for any common hands; and though there may be more honour if they succeed well, yet there is more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one they will; whereas, in regular figures, it is hard to make any great and remarkable faults.
