China and the West

Temple, William. Upon the gardens of Epicurus [ID D22082].
[Erste Erwähnung der Kunst des chinesischen Gartens].
Er schreibt : "What I have said of the best forms of garden, is meant only of such as are in some sort regular ; for there may be other forms wholly irregular, that may, for ought 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 judgment in the contrivance, which may produce 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 that can tell an hundred, may plant walks of trees in straight lines, and over against one another, and to what length and extent he pleases. But their greates 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 communly 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."