Chapter 25

[034] Addison in the 477th number of the _Spectator_ in alluding to Kensington Gardens, observes; "I think there are as many kinds of gardening as poetry; our makers of parterres and flower gardens are epigrammatists and sonnetteers in the art; contrivers of bowers and grottos, treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London are our heroic poets; and if I may single out any passage of their works to commend I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such an unsightly hollow unto so beautiful an area and to have hit the eye with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought into."

[035] Lord Bathurst, says London, informed Daines Barrington, that _he_ (Lord Bathurst) was the first who deviated from the straight line in sheets of water by following the lines in a valley in widening a brook at Ryskins, near Colnbrook; and Lord Strafford, thinking that it was done from poverty or economy asked him to own fairly how little more it would have cost him to have made it straight. In these days no possessor of a park or garden has the water on his grounds either straight or square if he can make it resemble the Thames as described by Wordsworth:

The river wanders at its own sweet will.

Horace Walpole in his lively and pleasant little work on Modern Gardening almost anticipates this thought. In commending Kent's style of landscape-gardening he observes: "_The gentle stream was taught to serpentize at its pleasure."_

[036] This Palm-house, "the glory of the gardens," occupies an area of 362 ft. in length; the centre is an hundred ft. in width and 66 ft. in height.

It must charm a Native of the East on a visit to our country, to behold such carefully cultured specimens, in a great glass-case in England, of the trees called by Linnaeus "the Princes of the vegetable kingdom," and which grow so wildly and in such abundance in every corner of Hindustan. In this conservatory also are the banana and plantain. The people of England are in these days acquainted, by touch and sight, with almost all the trees that grow in the several quarters of the world. Our artists can now take sketches of foreign plants without crossing the seas. An allusion to the Palm tree recals some criticisms on Shakespeare's botanical knowledge.

"Look here," says _Rosalind_, "what I found on a palm tree." "A palm tree in the forest of Arden," remarks Steevens, "is as much out of place as a lioness in the subsequent scene." Collier tries to get rid of the difficulty by suggesting that Shakespeare may have written _plane tree_. "Both the remark and the suggestion," observes Miss Baker, "might have been spared if those gentlemen had been aware that in the counties bordering on the Forest of Arden, the name of an exotic tree is transferred to an indigenous one." The _salix caprea_, or goat-willow, is popularly known as the "palm" in Northamptonshire, no doubt from having been used for the decoration of churches on Palm Sunday--its graceful yellow blossoms, appearing at a time when few other trees have put forth a leaf, having won for it that distinction. Clare so calls it:--

"Ye leaning palms, that seem to look Pleased o'er your image in the brook."

That Shakespeare included the willow in his forest scenery is certain, from another passage in the same play:--

"West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom. The _rank of osiers_ by the murmuring stream, Left on your right hand brings you to the place."

The customs and amusements of Northamptonshire, which are frequently noticed in these volumes, were identical with those of the neighbouring county of Warwick, and, in like manner illustrate very clearly many passages in the great dramatist.--_Miss Baker's "Glossary of Northamptonshire Words." (Quoted by the London Athenaeum_.)

[037] Mrs. Hemans once took up her abode for some weeks with Wordsworth at Rydal Mount, and was so charmed with the country around, that she was induced to take a cottage called _Dove's Nest_, which over-looked the lake of Windermere. But tourists and idlers so haunted her retreat and so worried her for autographs and Album contributions, that she was obliged to make her escape. Her little cottage and garden in the village of Wavertree, near Liverpool, seem to have met the fate which has befallen so many of the residences of the poets. "Mrs. Hemans's little flower-garden" (says a late visitor) "was no more--but rank grass and weeds sprang up luxuriously; many of the windows were broken; the entrance gate was off its hinges: the vine in front of the house trailed along the ground, and a board, with '_This house to let_' upon it, was nailed on the door. I entered the deserted garden and looked into the little parlour--once so full of taste and elegance; it was gloomy and cheerless. The paper was spotted with damp, and spiders had built their webs in the corner. As I mused on the uncertainty of human life, I exclaimed with the eloquent Burke,--'What shadows we are, and what shadows we pursue!'"

The beautiful grounds of the late Professor Wilson at Elleray, we are told by Mr. Howitt in his interesting "_Homes and Haunts of the British Poets_" have also been sadly changed. "Steam," he says, "as little as time, has respected the sanctity of the poet's home, but has drawn its roaring iron steeds opposite to its gate and has menaced to rush through it and lay waste its charmed solitude. In plain words, I saw the stages of a projected railway running in an ominous line across the very lawn and before the windows of Elleray." I believe the whole place has been purchased by a Railway Company.

[038] In Churton's _Rail Book of England_, published about three years ago, Pope's Villa is thus noticed--"Not only was this temple of the Muses--this abode of genius--the resort of the learned and the wittiest of the land--levelled to the earth, but all that the earth produced to remind posterity of its illustrious owner, and identify the dead with the living strains he has bequeathed to us, was plucked up by the roots and scattered to the wind." On the authority of William Hewitt I have stated on an earlier page that some splendid Spanish chesnut trees and some elms and cedars planted by Pope at Twickenham were still in existence. But Churton is a later authority. Howitt's book was published in 1847.

[039] _One would have thought &c._ See the garden of Armida, as described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.

"In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c."

Here was all that variety, which constitutes the nature of beauty: hill and dale, lawns and crystal rivers, &c.

"And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace, "The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place."

Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9.

"E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce a l'opre, "L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre."

The next stanza is likewise translated from Tasso, C. xvi 10. And, if the reader likes the comparing of the copy with the original, he may see many other beauties borrowed from the Italian poet. The fountain, and the two bathing damsels, are taken from Tasso, C. xv, st. 55, &c. which he calls, _Il fonte del riso_. UPTON.

[040] Cowper was evidently here thinking rather of Milton than of Homer.

_Flowers of all hue_, and without thorns the rose.

_Paradise Lost_.

Pope translates the passage thus;

Beds of all various _herbs_, for ever green, In beauteous order terminate the scene.

Homer referred to pot-herbs, not to flowers of all hues. Cowper is generally more faithful than Pope, but he is less so in this instance. In the above description we have Homer's highest conception of a princely garden:--in five acres were included an orchard, a vineyard, and some beds of pot-herbs. Not a single flower is mentioned, by the original author, though his translator has been pleased to steal some from the garden of Eden and place them on "the verge extreme" of the four acres. Homer of course meant to attach to a Royal residence as Royal a garden; but as Bacon says, "men begin to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." The mansion of Alcinous was of brazen walls with golden columns; and the Greeks and Romans had houses that were models of architecture when their gardens exhibited no traces whatever of the hand of taste.

[041] _And over him, art stryving to compayre With nature, did an arber greene dispied_

This whole episode is taken from Tasso, C. 16, where Rinaldo is described in dalliance with Armida. The bower of bliss is her garden

"Stimi (si misto il culto e col negletto) "Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti, "Di natura arte par, che per diletto "L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."

See also Ovid, _Met_ iii. 157

"Cujus in extremo est antrum nemorale necessu, "Arte laboratum nulla, simulaverat artem "Ingenio natura fuo nam pumice vivo, "Et lenibus tophis nativum duxerat arcum "Fons sonat a dextra, tenui perlucidas unda "Margine gramineo patulos incinctus hiatus"

UPTON

If this passage may be compared with Tasso's elegant description of Armida's garden, Milton's _pleasant grove_ may vie with both.[141] He is, however, under obligations to the sylvan scene of Spenser before us. Mr. J.C. Walker, to whom the literature of Ireland and of Italy is highly indebted, has mentioned to me his surprise that the writers on modern gardening should have overlooked the beautiful pastoral description in this and the two following stanzas.[142] It is worthy a place, he adds, in the Eden of Milton. Spenser, on this occasion, lost sight of the "trim gardens" of Italy and England, and drew from the treasures of his own rich imagination. TODD.

_And fast beside these trickled softly downe. A gentle stream, &c._

Compare the following stanza in the continuation of the _Orlando Innamorato_, by Nilcolo degli Agostinti, Lib. iv, C. 9.

"Ivi e un mormorio assai soave, e basso, Che ogniun che l'ode lo fa addornientare, L'acqua, ch'io dissi gia per entro un sasso E parea che dicesse nel sonare. Vatti riposa, ormai sei stanco, e lasso, E gli augeletti, che s'udian cantare, Ne la dolce armonia par che ogn'un dica, Deh vien, e dormi ne la piaggia, aprica,"

Spenser's obligations to this poem seem to have escaped the notice of his commentators. J.C. WALKER.

[042] The oak was dedicated to Jupiter, and the poplar to Hercules.

[043] _Sicker_, surely; Chaucer spells it _siker_.

[044] _Yode_, went.

[045] _Tabreret_, a tabourer.

[046] _Tho_, then

[047] _Attone_, at once--with him.

[048] Cato being present on one occasion at the floral games, the people out of respect to him, forbore to call for the usual exposures; when informed of this he withdrew, that the spectators might not be deprived of their usual entertainment.

[049] What is the reason that an easterly wind is every where unwholesome and disagreeable? I am not sufficiently scientific to answer this question. Pope takes care to notice the fitness of the easterly wind for the _Cave of Spleen_.

No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, The dreaded east is all the wind that blows.

_Rape of the Lock_.

[050] One sweet scene of early pleasures in my native land I have commemorated in the following sonnet:--

NETLEY ABBEY.

Romantic ruin! who could gaze on thee Untouched by tender thoughts, and glimmering dreams Of long-departed years? Lo! nature seems Accordant with thy silent majesty! The far blue hills--the smooth reposing sea-- The lonely forest--the meandering streams-- The farewell summer sun, whose mellowed beams Illume thine ivied halls, and tinge each tree, Whose green arms round thee cling--the balmy air-- The stainless vault above, that cloud or storm 'Tis hard to deem will ever more deform-- The season's countless graces,--all appear To thy calm glory ministrant, and form A scene to peace and meditation dear!

D.L.R.

[051] "I was ever more disposed," says Hume, "to see the favourable than the unfavourable side of things; _a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess, than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year_."

[052] So called, because the grounds were laid out in a tasteful style, under the direction of Lord Auckland's sister, the Honorable Miss Eden.

[053] _Songs of the East by Mrs. W.S. Carshore. D'Rozario & Co, Calcutta_ 1854.

[054] The lines form a portion of a poem published in _Literary Leaves_ in the year 1840.

[055] Perhaps some formal or fashionable wiseacres may pronounce such simple ceremonies _vulgar_. And such is the advance of civilization that even the very chimney-sweepers themselves begin to look upon their old May-day merry-makings as beneath the dignity of their profession. "Suppose now" said Mr. Jonas Hanway to a sooty little urchin, "I were to give you a shilling." "Lord Almighty bless your honor, and thank you." "And what if I were to give you a fine tie-wig to wear on May-day?" "Ah! bless your honor, my master wont let me go out on May-day," "Why not?" "Because, he says, _it's low life_." And yet the merrie makings on May-day which are now deemed _ungenteel_ by chimney-sweepers were once the delight of Princes:--

Forth goth all the court, both most and least, To fetch the flowres fresh, and branch and blome, And namely hawthorn brought both page and grome, And then rejoicing in their great delite Eke ech at others threw the flowres bright, The primrose, violet, and the gold With fresh garlants party blue and white.

_Chaucer_.

[056] The May-pole was usually decorated with the flowers of the hawthorn, a plant as emblematical of the spring as the holly is of Christmas. Goldsmith has made its name familiar even to the people of Bengal, for almost every student in the upper classes of the Government Colleges has the following couplet by heart.

The _hawthorn bush_, with seats beneath the shade, For talking age and whispering lovers made.

The hawthorn was amongst Burns's floral pets. "I have," says he, "some favorite flowers in spring, among which are, the mountain daisy, the harebell, the fox-glove, the wild-briar rose, the budding birch and the hoary hawthorn, that I view and hang over with particular delight."

L.E.L. speaks of the hawthorn hedge on which "the sweet May has showered its white luxuriance," and the Rev. George Croly has a patriotic allusion to this English plant, suggested by a landscape in France.

'Tis a rich scene, and yet the richest charm That e'er clothed earth in beauty, lives not here. Winds no green fence around the cultured farm _No blossomed hawthorn shields the cottage dear_: The land is bright; and yet to thine how drear, Unrivalled England! Well the thought may pine For those sweet fields where, each a little sphere, In shaded, sacred fruitfulness doth shine, And the heart higher beats that says; 'This spot is mine.'

[057] On May-day, the Ancient Romans used to go in procession to the grotto of Egeria.

[058] See what is said of palms in a note on page 81.

[059] Phillips's _Flora Historica_.

[060] The word primrose is supposed to be a compound of _prime_ and _rose_, and Spenser spells it prime rose

The pride and prime rose of the rest Made by the maker's self to be admired

The Rev. George Croly characterizes Bengal as a mountainous country--

There's glory on thy _mountains_, proud Bengal--

and Dr. Johnson in his _Journey of a day_, (Rambler No. 65) charms the traveller in Hindustan with a sight of the primrose and the oak.

"As he passed along, his ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise; he was fanned by the last flutters of the sinking breeze, and sprinkled with dew by groves of spices, he sometimes contemplated the towering height of the oak, monarch of the hills; and sometimes caught the gentle fragrance of the primrose, eldest daughter of the spring."

In some book of travels, I forget which, the writer states, that he had seen the primrose in Mysore and in the recesses of the Pyrenees. There is a flower sold by the Bengallee gardeners for the primrose, though it bears but small resemblance to the English flower of that name. On turning to Mr. Piddington's Index to the Plants of India I find under the head of _Primula_--Primula denticula--Stuartii--rotundifolia--with the names in the Mawar or Nepaulese dialect.

[061] In strewing their graves the Romans affected the rose; the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle: the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes. _Sir Thomas Browne_.

[062] The allusion to the cowslip in Shakespeare's description of Imogene must not be passed over here.--

On her left breast A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drop I' the bottom of the cowslip.

[063] The Guelder rose--This elegant plant is a native of Britain, and when in flower, has at first sight, the appearance of a little maple tree that has been pelted with snow balls, and we almost fear to see them melt away in the warm sunshine--_Glenny_.

[064] In a greenhouse

[065] Some flowers have always been made to a certain degree emblematical of sentiment in England as elsewhere, but it was the Turks who substituted flowers for words to such an extent as to entitle themselves to be regarded as the inventors of the floral language.

[066] The floral or vegetable language is not always the language of love or compliment. It is sometimes severe and scornful. A gentleman sent a lady a rose as a declaration of his passion and a slip of paper attached, with the inscription--"If not accepted, I am off to the war." The lady forwarded in return a mango (man, go!)

[067] No part of the creation supposed to be insentient, exhibits to an imaginative observer such an aspect of spiritual life and such an apparent sympathy with other living things as flowers, shrubs and trees. A tree of the genus Mimosa, according to Niebuhr, bends its branches downward as if in hospitable salutation when any one approaches near to it. The Arabs, are on this account so fond of the "courteous tree" that the injuring or cutting of it down is strictly prohibited.

[068] It has been observed that the defense is supplied in the following line--_want of sense_--a stupidity that "errs in ignorance and not in cunning."

[069] There is apparently so much doubt and confusion is to the identity of the true Hyacinth, and the proper application of its several names that I shall here give a few extracts from other writers on this subject.

Some authors suppose the Red Martagon Lily to be the poetical Hyacinth of the ancients, but this is evidently a mistaken opinion, as the azure blue color alone would decide and Pliny describes the Hyacinth as having a sword grass and the smell of the grape flower, which agrees with the Hyacinth, but not with the Martagon. Again, Homer mentions it with fragrant flowers of the same season of the Hyacinth. The poets also notice the hyacinth under different colours, and every body knows that the hyacinth flowers with sapphire colored purple, crimson, flesh and white bells, but a blue martagon will be sought for in vain. _Phillips' Flora Historica_.

A doubt hangs over the poetical history of the modern, as well as of the ancient flower, owing to the appellation _Harebell_ being, indiscriminately applied both to _Scilla_ wild Hyacinth, and also to _Campanula rotundifolia, Blue Bell_. Though the Southern bards have occasionally misapplied the word _Harebell_ it will facilitate our understanding which flower is meant if we bear in mind as a general rule that that name is applied differently in various parts of the island, thus the Harebell of Scottish writers is the _Campanula_, and the Bluebell, so celebrated in Scottish song, is the wild Hyacinth or _Scilla_ while in England the same names are used conversely, the _Campanula_ being the Bluebell and the wild Hyacinth the Harebell. _Eden Warwick_.

The Hyacinth of the ancient fabulists appears to have been the corn-flag, (_Gladiolus communis_ of botanists) but the name was applied vaguely and had been early applied to the great larkspur (Delphinium Ajacis) on account of the similar spots on the petals, supposed to represent the Greek exclamation of grief _Ai Ai_, and to the hyacinth of modern times.

Our wild hyacinth, which contributes so much to the beauty of our woodland scenery during the spring, may be regarded as a transition species between scilla and hyacinthus, the form and drooping habit of its flower connecting it with the latter, while the six pieces that form the two outer circles, being separate to the base, give it the technical character of the former. It is still called _Hyacinthus non-scriptus_--but as the true hyacinth equally wants the inscription, the name is singularly inappropriate. The botanical name of the hyacinth is _Hyacinthus orientalis_ which applies equally to all the varieties of colour, size and fulness.--_W. Hinks_.

[070] Old Gerard calls it Blew Harebel or English _Jacint_, from the French _Jacinthe_.

[071] Inhabitants of the Island of Chios

[072] Supposed by some to be Delphinium Ajacis or Larkspur. But no one can discover any letters on the Larkspur.

[073] Some _savants_ say that it was not the _sunflower_ into which the lovelorn lass was transformed, but the _Heliotrope_ with its sweet odour of vanilla. Heliotrope signifies _I turn towards the sun_. It could not have been the sun flower, according to some authors because that came from Peru and Peru was not known to Ovid. But it is difficult to settle this grave question. As all flowers turn towards the sun, we cannot fix on any one that is particularly entitled to notice on that account.

[074] Zephyrus.

[075] "A remarkably intelligent young botanist of our acquaintance asserts it as his firm conviction that many a young lady who would shrink from being kissed under the mistletoe would not have the same objection to that ceremony if performed _under the rose_."--_Punch_.

[076] Mary Howitt mentions that amongst the private cultivators of roses in the neighbourhood of London, the well-known publisher Mr. Henry S. Bohn is particularly distinguished. In his garden at Twickenham one thousand varieties of the rose are brought to great perfection. He gives a sort of floral fete to his friends in the height of the rose season.

[077] The learned dry the flower of the Forget me not and flatten it down in their herbals, and call it, _Myosotis Scorpioides--Scorpion shaped mouse's ear_! They have been reproached for this by a brother savant, Charles Nodier, who was not a learned man only but a man of wit and sense.--_Alphonse Karr_.

[078] The Abbe Molina in his History of Chili mentions a species of basil which he calls _ocymum salinum_: he says it resembles the common basil, except that the stalk is round and jointed; and that though it grows sixty miles from the sea, yet every morning it is covered with saline globules, which are hard and splendid, appearing at a distance like dew; and that each plant furnishes about an ounce of fine salt every day, which the peasants collect and use as common salt, but esteem it superior in flavour.--_Notes to Darwin's Loves of the Plants_.