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which the common understanding of the poetic sentiment has declared it
capable of expatiating. But Ellison maintained that the richest, the
truest, and most natural, if not altogether the most extensive province,
had been unaccountably neglected. No definition had spoken of the
landscape-gardener as of the poet; yet it seemed to my friend that the
creation of the landscape-garden offered to the proper Muse the most
magnificent of opportunities. Here, indeed, was the fairest field for
the display of imagination in the endless combining of forms of
novel beauty; the elements to enter into combination being, by a vast
superiority, the most glorious which the earth could afford. In the
multiform and multicolor of the flowers and the trees, he recognised the
most direct and energetic efforts of Nature at physical loveliness. And
in the direction or concentration of this effort--or, more properly,
in its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth--he
perceived that he should be employing the best means--laboring to the
greatest advantage--in the fulfilment, not only of his own destiny as
poet, but of the august purposes for which the Deity had implanted the
poetic sentiment in man.
"Its adaptation to the eyes which were to behold it on earth." In his
explanation of this phraseology, Mr. Ellison did much toward solving
what has always seemed to me an enigma:--I mean the fact (which none
but the ignorant dispute) that no such combination of scenery exists in
nature as the painter of genius may produce. No such paradises are to
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