To copy any
performance in a way to do it honor we must discern and adapt its art
without mimicking its act. To miscopy is far easier--we have only to
mimic the act and murder the art. I once heard a man ask an architect
if it would not answer to give his plan to the contractor and let him
work it out without the architect's supervision.
"My dear sir," the architect replied, "you wouldn't know the corpse."
I suppose one reason why even the miscopying of gardens provokes so
little offence is that the acts it mimics have no art it can murder.
Mrs. Budd sets out her one little "high geraingia" in the middle of her
tiny grass-plat (probably trimming it to look like a ballet-dancer on
one leg). Whereupon Mrs. Mudd, the situation of whose house and grounds
is not in the least like her neighbor's, plants and trims hers the same
way and feels sure it has the same effect, for--why shouldn't it?
The prize-winning copyist I am telling of copied principles only. To
have copied mere performance would have been particularly unlucky, for
though his garden stands within fifty yards of the one from which it
drew its inspiration the two are so differently located that the same
art principles demand of them very different performances. An old-time
lover of gardens whom I have to quote at second-hand mentions in
contrast "gardens to look in upon" and "gardens to look out from.
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