AN INQUIRY INTO THE CHANGES OF TASTE IN LANDSCAPE GARDENING: TO WHICH ARE ADDED SOME OBSERVATIONS ON ITS THEORY AND PRACTICE, INCLUDING A DEFENCE OF THE ART. BY H. REPTON, Esq. [Originally published in 8vo. in 1806.] ADVERTISEMENT. THE following" Inquiry into the Changes of Taste in Landscape Gardening" has been produced in consequence of a request from Professor Martyn, that I would furnish him with some matter for his elaborate edition of Miller's Gardener's Dictionary; in the Preface to which, he proposes to "take up the History of Landscape Gardening from the period when Mr. Walpole left off, and to trace it from Kent, through Brown, to the present time." Having also been called on by my bookseller for a new edition of my "Observations on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening," I have directed that work to be reprinted without any alteration or addition, considering it an act of justice to the original subscribers and purchasers of so expensive a volume, not to make the second edition more perfect than the first. I have also been desired to publish a new edition of my first work, entitled, "Sketches and Hints on Landscape Gardening," of which, only 250 copies being published by Messrs. Boydells in 1794, the book is become so scarce, that above four times the original price has been paid for some copies. In compliment to the present possessors of that work, I have determined never to publish another costly edition of it with plates, but rather to extract from it such matter as may not interfere with the quarto volume; incorporating it with such further observations on the Theory and Practice of the Art as have occurred from more recent practice: to which are added, answers to the attacks made on the art by some late publications. Although I am aware of the utility of plates to exemplify many parts of this subject, and that one stroke of the pencil will often say more than a page with the pen, yet the enormous expense of engraving has hitherto so confined my opinions to a certain class of purchasers, that they have been either not generally known, or they have been repeated by some without acknowledgment, and misrepresented by others without sufficient quotation. Harestreet, near Romford, 1806. [The greater part of this volume being a republication of "Hints and Sketches," we have, of course, confined ourselves to reprinting what has not before appeared, either in that work or in the Observations.—J. C. L.] |