as my Friend Will Dry. Will, who is acquainted with Tom’s Logick, when he finds him running off the Question, cuts him short with a What then?  We allow all this to be true, but what is it to our present Purpose? I have known Tom eloquent half an hour together, and triumphing, as he thought, in the Superiority of the Argument, when he has been non-plus’d on a sudden by Mr. Dry’s desiring him to tell the Company what it was that he endeavoured to prove.  In short, Dry is a Man of a clear methodical Head, but few Words, and gains the same Advantage over Puzzle, that a small Body of regular Troops would gain over a numberless undisciplined Militia.

C.

[Footnote 1:  [its]]

[Footnote 2:  It is said of Colon in the second Canto,

  ’Hourly his learn’d Impertinence affords
  A barren Superfinity of Words.’]

* * * * *

No. 477.  Saturday, September 6, 1712.  Addison.

’—­An me ludit amabilis Insania? audire et videor pios Errare per lucos, amoenae Quos et aquae subeunt et aurae.’

  Hor.

  SIR,

Having lately read your Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination, I was so taken with your Thoughts upon some of our English Gardens, that I cannot forbear troubling you with a Letter upon that Subject.  I am one, you must know, who am looked upon as an Humorist in Gardening.  I have several Acres about my House, which I call my Garden, and which a skilful Gardener would not know what to call.  It is a Confusion of Kitchin and Parterre, Orchard and Flower-Garden, which lie so mixt and interwoven with one another, that if a Foreigner who had seen nothing of our Country should be convey’d into my Garden at his first landing, he would look upon it as a natural Wilderness, and one of the uncultivated Parts of our Country.  My Flowers grow up in several Parts of the Garden in the greatest Luxuriancy and Profusion.  I am so far from being fond of any particular one, by reason of its Rarity, that if I meet with any one in a Field which pleases me, I give it a place in my Garden.  By this means, when a Stranger walks with me, he is surprized to see several large Spots of Ground cover’d with ten thousand different Colours, and has often singled out Flowers that he might have met with under a common Hedge, in a Field, or in a Meadow, as some of the greatest Beauties of the Place.  The only Method I observe in this Particular, is to range in the same Quarter the Products of the same Season, that they may make their Appearance together, and compose a Picture of the greatest Variety.  There is the same Irregularity in my Plantations, which run into as great a Wildness as their Natures will permit.  I take in none that do not naturally rejoice in the Soil, and am pleased when I am walking