GENERAL EDITOR David Stuart Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles EDITORS Charles L. Batten, University of California, Los Angeles William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles ADVISORY EDITORS James L. Clifford, Columbia University Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles Arthur Friedman, University of Chic

This "Explanatory Discourse" first appeared, in the latter part of March 1773, annexed to the second and last edition of Sir William Chambers' Dissertation on Oriental Gardening of the preceding May. As an effort, curiously hedged, to impersonate a Chinese spokesman it seeks to exploit the satiric vantage points of philosophic naivety and trenchant candor enjoyed by Goldsmith's observer Lien Chi Altangi in London a dozen years earlier. But Chambers' ventriloquism is both more defensive and more

[1] The "Explanatory Discourse" is the last of Chambers' works to be reissued in 20th-century facsimile. Chambers' Designs of Chinese Buildings (London, 1757), rpt. in facsim. (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), concludes its text with his essay "Of the Art of Laying Out Gardens Among the Chinese," pp. 14-19, rpt. in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, eds., The Genius of the Place (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 283-288. A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (London, 1772), of which the i

The facsimile of "An Explanatory Discourse" is reproduced from a copy (Shelf Mark: PML 53026) "annexed to" the second and last edition of A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening (1773) in The Pierpont Morgan Library. The total type-page (p. 113) measures 208 × 127 mm....

Every new system naturally meets with opposition; when the monster Novelty appears, all parties, alarmed at the danger, unite to raise a clamour: each cavils at what it doth not like, or doth not comprehend, till the whole project is pulled to pieces, and the projector stands plumed of every feather; not only robbed of the praise due to his labour and good intentions, but, like a common enemy, branded with scorn and abuse. In the first hurry of criticism, every deviation is accounted an error; e

All the world knew Chet-qua, and how he was born at Quang-chew-fu, [20] in the fourth moon of the year twenty-eight; also how he was bred a face-maker, and had three wives, two of whom he caressed very much; the third but seldom, for she was a virago, and had large feet. He dressed well, often in thick sattin; wore nine whiskers and four long nails, with silk boots, callico breeches, and every other ornament that Mandarins are wont to wear; equalling therein the prime macarones, and sçavoir vivr

Tan lou ty tchan yué [21] Ko ou, pou ko choué. Ou yun king tai pan Fou fou teou lo ty If, in the hurry and warmth of speaking, Chet-qua has used expressions that seemed disrespectful, or inadvertently started notions that appeared extravagant, as you, Gentlemen, are pleased to assert, it is more than he intended; his sole aim at this meeting, has been to point out a style of Gardening preferable to your's; and to shew how much more may be done in that Art, than has hitherto been thought on, by y