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Repton, Humphry, 1752-1818 / Fragments on the theory and practice of landscape gardening: including some remarks on Grecian and Gothic architecture, collected from various manuscripts, in the possession of the different noblemen and gentlemen, for whose use they were originally written; the whole tending to establish fixed principles in the respective arts
(1816)
Fragment XVI. Concerning villas, pp. [68]-69
Page [68]
FRAGMENT XVI. CONCERNING VILLAS. IT has often been hinted to me, when called on for my opinion concerning places of small extent, that I can hardly be ex- pected to give to them the same attention as to those of many hundred acres. My answer has generally been, that, on the contrary, they often require more attention than larger places. They may be compardd to the miniature, with respect to the portrait large as life: the former requires to be more highly finished, but the likeness is the chief object; and this likeness in the picture may be compared in Landscape Gardening to that peculiar identity which adapts the place to the wants and wishes of the proprietor, and the character exclusively belong- ing to each. To pursue the simile one step further: if the nbbleman will be painted as a mail coachman, or the plain country gentleman in the dress he wore at a masquerade, we shall look for the likeness in vain: so if the park be plowed and sown with corn, or a field of twenty acres affect to be a park, the art of Landscape Gardening becomes useless: it does not profess to improve the value of land, but its beauty: it does not profess to gratify vanity, by displaying great extent, but to ex- tend comfort, as far as it is feasible; and, if possible, to incul-
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