REESE LIBRARY

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

Received
Accessions

*^Sf^

~

The Book-Lover's Library.

Edited by
Henry B. Wheatley, F.S.A.

CLEANINGS IN

LD ARDEN ITERATURE

BY

W. CAREW HAZLITT

Author of "Old Cookery Books "

LONDON

ELLIOT STOCK, 62 PATERNOSTER ROW
1887

<?

CONTENTS.

I. PRELIMINARIES i

II. LITERARY ANTIQUITIES— THE VOCABU-
LARIES— THE FIRST ENGLISH WORK
ON GARDENING 1 1

III. ELIZABETHAN GARDENING — THE EAR-

LIEST GARDENER'S CALENDAR —
BACON AND EVELYN ... 22

IV. THE FRENCH AND DUTCH SCHOOLS —

EVELYN AND THE "FRENCH GAR-
DENER " — His " SYLVA " — JOHN
WORLIDGE— GARDENING IN SCOT-
LAND 34

V. HERBALS, PHYSIC-GARDENS, AND BEES 46
VI. THE KITCHEN-GARDEN — ALEXANDER
NECKAM AND JOHANNES DE GAR-
LANDIA — THE GARDENS AT SHEEN,
GREENWICH, AND SOMERSET HOUSE
—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE'S GARDEN
AT SHEEN — KEW GARDENS — GAR-
DENS IN AND ABOUT LONDON IN 1691

vi Contents.

PAGE

— EARLY CATALOGUES OF PLANTS—
THE DUKE OF BEDFORD'S BOTANICAL

PUBLICATIONS 54

VII. THE ANCIENT AND MODERN ARBOUR

— GROTTOES— GARDEN LIFE . . 72
VIII. WINDOW-GARDENING—COTTAGE GAR-
DENS IN 1677— INFLUENCE OF ASTRO-
LOGY — WARMING APPARATUS —
VARIEGATION OF FOLIAGE . . 78

IX. BACON AS A GARDENER ... 90
X. HERBS AND VEGETABLES — HIGH
PRICE OF VEGETABLES IN EARLY
TIMES — THE SUBURBS OF LONDON
CELEBRATED AS A GROWING-GROUND
— RARITY AND ESTIMATION OF THE
POTATO — ASPARAGUS — SANITARY
VALUE OF VEGETABLES . . . 115

XL FRUIT-TREES — HOME-MADE WINE-
BEER — BACON AND SHAKESPEARE
ON THE STRAWBERRY . . . 127
XII. FRUIT-TREES (continued}— THE PEACH,
THE QUINCE, THE MEDLAR, THE
PlNE-APPLE, AND THE POMEGRAN-
ATE— INTRODUCTION OF THE BLACK
MULBERRY. — RHUBARB — LEMONS —
THE TOOL-HOUSE— ESPALIERS AND
PRUNING — FOREST TREES — ANCIENT
SURVIVALS — HOOKE'S " MICRO-
GRAPH1A " AND MOSSES . . .142

Contents. vii

PAGE

XIII. FLORA — THE TULIP, THE ROSE, THE

JESSAMINE— -ABERCROMBIE'S WORKS 161

XIV. MARKET GARDENS IN THE SUBURBS

OF LONDON — TESTIMONY OF AN
ITALIAN VISITOR IN 1614— NURSE-
RIES AND GROUNDS AT OLD BROMP-
TON, FULHAM, BATTERSEA, AND

DEPTFORD 169

XV. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE — WALPOLE AND
THE GARDENERS OF THE EIGHT-
EENTH CENTURY . . . .182
XVI. BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GARDENING LITERA-
TURE (1603 — 1800), AND OF HERBALS
AND BEE CULTURE — WILLIAM AND
SAMUEL CURTIS — JAMES AND
GEORGE SOWERBY — THE LINDLEYS
ANDLOUDONS — CRYPTOGAMIC FLORA
OF SCOTLAND— SIRWILLIAM JACKSON

HOOKER 203

APPENDIX 225

INDEX 243

GLEANINGS

IN

OLD GARDEN LITERATURE.

I.

PRELIMINARIES.

[RS. MATTHEWS, in her Memoirs
of her husband, 1839, mentions
the gratification which it afforded
Coleridge, when he came from the Gilmans',
to visit them at Highgate Hill, to walk
round the garden and gather a handful of
flowers to take home with him.

We know how some of the wisest and
best of mankind have delighted in gardens.
Even such an inveterate Londoner as Charles
Lamb, when he went down to live at Edmon-
ton, took a pleasure in superintending the

2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

small plot of ground behind his house there,
and watched with interest the progress to-
ward maturity of his Windsor pears and
jargonelles.

How affectionately attached to their gar-
dens and the pursuits connected with the
culture of trees, fruits, and flowers Bacon,
Evelyn, Temple, Walpole, and other eminent
Englishmen have been, it will form part of
my duty in the following pages to demon-
strate.

General Lambert, who was lord of the
manor of Wimbledon in 1656, was very fond
of his garden at that place, and grew, it is
said, the finest tulips and gilliflowers procur-
able. It is to his passion for this pursuit that
he owed his place on a pack of satirical cards
published during the Commonwealth, where
the Eight of Hearts bears a small full-length
of him, holding a tulip in his right hand, with
" Lambert Kt. of ye Golden Tulip " beneath.
He had withdrawn into what was then the
country from political life ; but, amid his
recreations as a florist, was doubtless watch-
ing the opportunity for a return to the field

Preliminaries. 3

of his professional work. Next to Monk he
was probably the most able of the generals
of the Commonwealth and Protectorate, and
it was an error on the part of Cromwell to
have estranged him. But to his temporary
retirement we owe this little glimpse of his
taste for a pursuit more genial and more
humane than that of war.

The earliest human scene is laid in a
garden. The Old Testament contains
numerous allusions to gardens. Throughout
Oriental literature and folk-lore, and in most
of the stories derived from the East, a
garden occupies a conspicuous position ; and
likewise in the mythology of other countries
we find legendary or traditional witness to the
instinctive love of our race toward the neigh-
bourhood of verdure and shade, toward
whatever vegetation conditions of tempera-
ture and climate begot.

"God Almighty," says Bacon, "first planted a
garden ; and, indeed, it is the purest of human plea-
sures ; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of
man ; without which buildings and palaces are but
gross handy-works ', and a man shall ever see that,

4 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

when ages grow to civility and elegance, man comes
to build stately sooner than to garden finely : as if
gardening were the greater perfection."

Modern science has brought our gardens
to their present state, and the development
of society evolved from the ancient and
original idea of plantations for the general
benefit, of which we seem to have a sort of
foreshadow in the Book of Genesis, the
conception of enclosures dedicated to par-
ticular service. Our nature, modified by
circumstances and interests, gradually out-
grew its contentment with the free and
unrestricted use of the fruits of the earth,
and each man or each tribe claimed and
held, personally or in common, the ground
adjacent to the dwelling or the settlement.

Centuries elapsed before the garden became
what we see it ; and at the present moment
every country is governed in its system of
planting, and in its principles of cultivation
and husbandry, by the resources of its soil
and the demands of its population.

The dawn of the British primeval life
was spent amid dark and boggy forests, and

Preliminaries. 5

on the barren and interminable moor, in a
harsh and precarious climate, with slender
opportunities of development within, and
the scantiest external communications. Our
knowledge of their social organisation is very
slight, and is almost entirely drawn from
the imperfect testimony of Caesar. But we
obtain no insight, from that or any other
source, into their mode of preparing such
portions of their food as depended on the
cultivation of the ground.

The ancient English garden was, indeed,
as widely divergent from those to which our
eyes have grown accustomed, as the hanging
terraces of Babylon or the Platonic groves of
Athens. There was, till the sixteenth century
at least, no attempt at artistic arrangement
or methodical distribution. The fruit and
forest trees seem to have grown side by side ;
and the flower-borders and beds would have
fallen very short of modern demands, or even
of the views of the men who introduced into
our country the foreign schools of horticulture.
But the fifteenth century saw something like
an advance in the direction of separation

-

_

"•

6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

and order, for we hear of the orchard and
the herbary ; and another useful institution
was the midden or muck-hill.

I can do no more within the restricted
space which is accorded me, than call atten-
tion to the very admirable picture which
Mr. J. A. St. John has drawn of the system
of horticulture and floriculture among the
Greeks, in his Manners and Customs of
Ancient Greece (1842) ; and, to some extent,
the English versions of the Charicles and
Gallus of Bekker will prove of service to
the student.

Perhaps the best summary of this subject
of gardening among the Ancients is that of
Sir William Temple, in the second part of his
Miscellanea^ the very valuable paper headed
" Upon the Gardens of Epicurus ; Or, Of
Gardening in the Year 1685."

Every reader is familiar at least with the
reputation of the Georgics of Virgil, which, with
Hesiod, Varro, and the other Rei Rustica
Scriptores, form the source to which we
must go for information on the subject in
hand ; and during the mediaeval period such

Preliminaries. 7

writers as Petrus de Crescentiis of Bologna,
whose Ruralia Commoda appeared at Florence
in 1471, helped to carry down the old Roman
traditions and experiments, and constituted
a link between ancient and modern agricul-
tural economy.

Until certain later publications enjoyed
a long run and experienced a succession of
issues during forty or fifty years, — even when
they had been, in some measure, superseded,
like Mrs. Loudon's botanical manuals, — the
books on gardening do not appear, as a rule,
to have had a very prolonged life, or to
have often passed into a second impression.
Evelyn's Kalendarium Hortense, which first
came out in 1664, and arrived at a tenth im-
pression in 1706, was an exceptional long-
liver.

This fact may be possibly explained by the
preference of those, who felt an interest in the
subject, for actual practice, and the appeal
of the majority of publications to the
book-buyer rather than the horticulturist.
Besides, the proportion of persons of both
sexes, whose education enabled them to

I o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

one of the external insignia of the cloth, and
has at last been transmitted as an heirloom
to the florist's cousin-german, the green-
grocer.

II.

LITERARY ANTIQUITIES — THE VOCABULA-
RIES— THE FIRST ENGLISH WORK ON
GARDENING.

T cannot be very surprising to find the
firstfruits of gardening literature
tinctured by the prevailing supersti-
tions of the day about astronomical influences.
In the library of Trinity College, Cambridge,
is the poem of John the Gardener, written
in the fourteenth century, and the most
ancient production of the sort in our
language. It was to have been edited for
the Early English Text Society by Mr. Aldis
Wright ; but the plan was not carried out. I
regret that I have not seen it. But even at
a much later period the faith in astrology
governed the operations of the gardener, as
we can easily judge from the tract in the

1 2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

Porkington MS. (fifteenth century),1 entitled
A Treatise for a man to know which time of
the year it is best to graft or to plant trees, and
also to make a tree to bear all manner of fruit
of divers colours and odours, with many other
things.

This compilation sounds voluminous, but
it occupies only ten small octavo pages in
type. You are instructed what you should
do under sundry signs of the zodiac, and
lessons are given in pruning and grafting. A
good deal of it seems to be abstracted from
Aristotle and Palladius ; but the under-quoted
reads like a little trait of primitive English
whimsicality :—

" Also, for to make that a pearl, or a precious
stone, or a farthing, or any other manner of thing be
found in an apple, take an apple or a pear, after it has
flowered, and somewhat waxen, and thrust in hard at
the bud's end which one thou wilt of these things
aforesaid, and let it grow, and mark well the apple
that thou didst put in the thing, whatever it be."

Some very fanciful ideas are advanced

1 Early English Miscellanies > Wart on Club, 1855,
pp. 66-72.

First English Work on Gardening. 1 3

here on the subject of grafting, and great
stress is laid on the use, not only in that
process, but where a limb was severed from
any tree, of a bandage of clay to exclude the
air and prevent haemorrhage. It is evident
that in the fifteenth century a taste prevailed
for novelties and hybrids : how to grow cherries
without stones, how to have peaches with
kernels like nuts, how to make a peach
produce pomegranates; and the same in-
genious experiments were made in the flower-
garden.

The first regular treatise on gardening was
the work, not of a technist, but of a man of
letters, Thomas Hill, a native and inhabitant *
of London, but at a time when the limits of
the City were infinitely more contracted than
now, and even Holborn was regarded as a
suburb. It appeared in or about 1560, and
was often republished. But it is scarcely a
satisfactory performance, as Hill fills up a
good deal of his not very substantial volume
with passages from ancient writers; he be-
longed to the old school, which loved to
begin at the beginning. But luckily he

14 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

draws the line at the Old Testament, and
chiefly cites Varro and Columella; and
whatever the shortcomings of Hill's work
may be, it marked an advance in horticultural
knowledge, and presents some valuable sug-
gestions for the position and arrangement of
a garden. He recommends that the garden
should be near to a plain or level field, or
should be, if possible, on a slope, with
courses of water flowing through it, and in
default of this, that there should be either a
well or a pond within its limits. We find
careful directions for planting, sowing, and
other operations; an account of the medi-
cinal virtues of certain herbs ; advice as to
hedges, of which Hill prefers one composed
of briars and thorns ; and two schemes for
forming a maze, a round and a square
one. We have learned to identify this as
a feature peculiar to Hampton Court and a
few other historical places ; but it was once
considered an ordinary adjunct to pleasure-
grounds of any pretension or size. These
mazes were contrived by the gardener, and
seem to have been very usually rendered

First English Work on Gardening. 1 5

useful as well as ornamental and decorative,
by consisting of kitchen herbs. It might
have been judged, from the low growth of
the latter, that the structure was of a different
kind from that with which we have grown up
acquainted ; but Hill clearly says that the
object was "to sport there at times/' so that
the rosemary and other plants must have
been trained in some particular manner, to
carry out our idea of such a thing.

The taste for the capricious and fantastic
in the disposition of the garden and orna-
mental grounds was probably imbibed by
noble or rich Englishmen, who brought back
with them a desire to imitate fashions which
they had seen abroad. The mazes which
Hill introduces into his earlier book were
elaborated by him in one called the Gar-
dener's Labyrinth, which he did not live to
complete, and which was published in 1577
by Henry Dethicke. But the designs in
this volume appear to have been borders
devised in various forms, and not the piece
of intricacy for persons to disport them-
selves, and the title-page explicitly declares

1 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

that the following pages dealt, inter alia,
with "divers herbers [arbours], knots and
mazes, cunningly handled for the beautifying
of gardens"

These artifices, which modern feeling has
by no means eschewed, had of course a
tendency to excite competition, and it was
the aim of every artist to outdo his prede-
cessor. As it is not a production which
belongs to the chronological series, I shall
take the opportunity to indicate as a curio-
sity the engraved views of the gardens at
Wilton, which were laid out probably by
Isaac de Caus, an engineer and a native of
Dieppe, for Philip, Earl of Pembroke and
Montgomery, about 1645, anc^ are at a^

/. events described by De Caus in a series of
engravings called Hortus Penbrochianus^ ou
Le Jar din de Wilton.

It is, no doubt, to be regretted that there
are not other graphic representations of early
English gardens, besides those at Wilton,
Cobham, etc. In his Gleanings on Gardens

) (1829), Felton supplies us with some highly
interesting glimpses of the ornamental grounds

Vestiges of Old Gardens. 1 7

which once abounded even in London and
its immediate vicinity ; his pages are pro-
fessedly experimental and tentative ; and he
laments that even then it would have been
probably vain to acquire an accurate and
complete pictorial view of the horticultural
achievements and progress of -our ancestors.
The chief difficulty which Felton perceived
was the cost of properly executing such a
work • but to that difficulty is now superadded,
in numerous instances, a second still more in-
superable— the disappearance of the material,
the gardens themselves.

Let us take an illustration from such a
place as Twickenham House, once the resi-
dence of Sir John Hawkins, at a more recent
time and until quite lately that of Dr. Dia-
mond, who loved to gather round him all
the men of taste and culture of his acquaint-
ance on Sundays. Every one who had the
entree was at liberty to come every week,
if he chose ; and the talk over and after
dinner, which was at half-past three, was of
old china, old books, old friends, and old
recollections.

1 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

The present writer has met under that
roof Durham and Woolner, the sculptors,
Hepworth Dixon, Cordy Jeaffreson, and
many more men of mark in their respective
ways. But the house and its grounds will
soon be numbered with the things of the
past, and nearly all those who contributed
to make the Sundays pleasant and profita-
ble, including the Doctor himself, are no
more.

But I must confine myself to my more
immediate point. In the Thames Valley
Times of February 2nd, 1887, occurs this
paragraph : —

"The threatened ravages of the builder in the
grounds of Twickenham House seem specially un-
welcome, not only because of associations, but also
on account of the extreme beauty of the ancient turf,
which, in the times to which we have referred, was a
finely-kept lawn of exceptional verdure and springi-
ness. Like stately trees, such singularly rich turf is
the result of time, suitable soil, and careful conserva-
tion, as those well know who are familiar with the
verdant beauty of the lawns of the ancient Oxford
Colleges. The grounds are also interesting on account
of an extraordinary and luxurious growth of all kinds

Leonard Mascall. 1 9

of old herbs, and a curious fence of sword-blades,
which are said to have been collected on the field of
Culloden,"

Such notices as these, brief and imperfect
as they are, of the numerous seats in early
suburban London, more especially in Old
Brompton, Kensington, Putney, and Fulham,
are what we should have desired to possess,
and are sorry to have lost for ever, except in
a few isolated and accidental cases, or to such
a limited extent as Felton has rescued them
from oblivion.

A conversance with the arts of planting
and grafting was promoted by a curious
Elizabethan publication, which purports to
have been rendered into English from two
distinct sources — a French book by a brother
of the Abbey of St. Vincent, and a Dutch
one, of which the author is not suggested.
The English editor was Leonard Mascall,
and the volume became popular. It doubt-
less supplied a want, and was reprinted
several times between 1569 and 1596.
Mascall, who is known as the compiler of
two or three other treatises on husbandry and

2O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

angling, set forth his gardening manual under
this title : — A Booke of the Arte and Maner
howe to plant and graffe all sortes of trees,
howe to set stones, and sowe Pepines to make
wylde trees to graffe on, as also remedies and
medicines. With divers other new practises,
with an Addition in the ende of this Booke,
of certaine Dutch practises.

This production owes its chief value to
the fact that it is seemingly the parent
attempt to enlarge the still narrow enough
experience of our native gardeners by en-
abling them to see in print, if not in actual
working, what was being done in the same di-
rection abroad, and not only in France, with
which the English had always had tolerably
close relations, but in the Netherlands, where
the science of horticulture was receiving
greater attention than at any former period.

But it does not appear that the Dutch
ideas met at this time with much favour at
our hands. Those who did not admire
French models for laying out their grounds
had recourse to the Italian ; and there were
some who adopted a sort of compound of

Various Schools of Gardening. 2 1

various styles, or struck out an original pro-
gramme for themselves, as Bacon may per-
haps have done, if the notions broached in
his essay Of Gardens were carried by him
into effect at home.

III.

ELIZABETHAN GARDENING — THE EARLIEST
GARDENER'S CALENDAR — BACON AND
EVELYN.

[ARRISON, in his Description of
England (1586), imputes to our
wealth and idleness the neglect
or loss of many articles of food, and
even of luxury, which had been plentiful
under the earlier Plantagenets. But he
chronicles a great revival under the Tudors,
and assures us that in his time not only the
better classes, but the poor commons, had
plenty of melons, pumpkins, gourds, cucum-
bers, radishes, skirrets, parsneps, carrots,
cabbages, turnips, and all kinds of salad
herbs, as he calls them. Hops were also
once more cultivated, he informs us, and the
great difficulty as to poles surmounted by

Elizabethan Gardening. 2 3

the establishment of ashyards, whence the
hop-growers could be supplied from season
to season. Tusser, before Harrison's time,
lays down regulations for the culture of the
hop and the arrangement of hopyards; but
perhaps the earliest monograph on the sub-
ject is that of Reginald Scot, who published
his Perfect Platform of a Hop Garden in
I574.1 It seems, from Harrison's account,
that our gardens in Elizabeth's reign were
beginning to wear a very improved aspect,
not only as regarded the variety of flowers,
trees, and herbs, but as regarded the colour
and size of the species, which the nurserymen
and others were then taking great pains to
study and develop. At this period the spirit
of adventure, which led many of our country-
men to explore distant regions, gave a
powerful stimulus to botanical science, and
was of infinite service to our horticulturists
and florists, as the vessels which had touched

1 Lysons notes that in 1 792 about seven arres were
employed in Barnes, Surrey, as a hopyard, — a cir-
cumstance to be remarked, since nowhere else in the
vicinity or county has such a crop been grown within
memory.

24 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

at American and West Indian ports, and in
certain cases remained there for some time,
brought back plants and seeds previously un-
known, and laid the foundation of that
passionate taste for the pursuit, which
gradually converted the suburbs of London
into a girdle of nurseries and market-
grounds.

There is one point in which the evidence
of Harrison is to be received with allow-
ance, and that is, where he begs us to believe
that in very remote days the English raised
plenty of wine, but afterwards, as in other
matters, lost the art. Now, it is out of the
question to suppose that at any epoch our
climate permitted the free cultivation of the
vine in sufficient measure to yield a vintage ;
Orazio Busino, to whom I shall return
presently, manifestly entertained a very in-
different opinion of the grapes reared at such
a place as Burleigh, when he visited it in
1617-18; there was not sufficient sun to
ripen the fruit in the open air ; and artificial
mediums had scarcely come into existence,
for Evelyn, on his visit to the Physic Gardens

The Earliest Gardener's Cal

\

at Chelsea, as comparatively late as 1685,
was struck by the warming apparatus used
in the conservatory there, as an interesting
innovation. The utmost that our prede-
cessors set themselves, as a rule, to achieve,
was the exclusion of the cold or damp air,
and the frost, by a very experimental pro-
cess described in a future section.

Richard Weston, in the Gentlemarfs Maga-
zine for 1804, terms Evelyn's Kalendarium
Hortense (1664) the earliest gardener's calen-
dar ; but such is not really the case ; for
Bacon, in his essay Of Gardens, has in some
sense and measure anticipated him, and set
forth the plants and flowers which were then
in perfection throughout the year. Bacon
says : " I do hold it in the royal ordering of
gardens, there ought to be gardens for all the
months of the year, in which severally things
of beauty may be then in season ; " and then
he leads us through the months, specifying
the flora of each with an affectionate minute-
ness, which augments, if possible, our
admiration of his versatility and grasp. He
concludes his rehearsal thus: "These par-

26 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

ticulars are for the climate of London ; but
my meaning is perceived that you may have
ver perpetuum, as the place affords."

The essayist speaks of the peach-tree as
in blossom in March, but his March might
be our April. It seems useless to copy from
a book so common and so famous ; yet there
are points of some importance to be re-
corded, namely, that artificial warmth was
now effected by means of stoves of some
rude type to the protection in winter of
exotics and delicate trees, and that among
these the lemon occurs for the first time in
company with the orange and the myrtle.
The latter thrives in the west of England in
the open air; but the other two seldom
prosper in this climate, even under a tropical
temperature.

Bacon places under April in his calendar,
with the double white violet, the stock, and
others, the tulip, which has not hitherto
occurred. But he does not mark it as a
novelty. I shall have more to say of
it hereafter. It is an historical flower.
Under February he cites the mezereon-tree

Bacoris Essay on Gardens. 27

as in blossom, and the yellow and grey
crocus.

Bacon's Essay is rather too elaborate and
technical for my immediate purpose. He
contemplates grounds laid out on an ex-
tensive scale, and gives thirty acres as the
area requisite for his scheme, which consists
in a green or lawn of four acres, a heath
or desert of six, and a main garden of twelve,
with alleys between. Bacon preferred the
square form, " encompassed on all the four
sides with a stately arched hedge, the arches
to be upon pillars of carpenter's work, of
some ten feet high and six feet broad, and
the spaces between of the same dimension
with the breadth of the arch." The minute-
ness with which this great man describes all
the particulars, and the interest which he
evidently felt in the subject, are very striking \
he found in his own grounds an agreeable
and soothing diversion from public employ-
ments. It is worth observing that he had
no taste for the fantastic or grotesque. " As
for the making of knots or figures, with
divers- coloured earths, that they may lie

28 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

under the windows of the house on that side
which the garden stands, they be but toys :
you may see as good sights many times in
tarts " ; and when these lines were composed
the fashion was running very strongly in the
direction of these artifices, and two or three
of the writers of the day recommended them
as novel experiments. Nor was Bacon's con-
demnation of them in print sufficiently influ-
ential to suppress a taste which, in some form
or other, has ever since prevailed.

Bacon approved of fountains in a garden,
but not of aviaries. His heath or desert, as
he calls it, he wished to be " framed as much
as may be to a natural wildness." It was to
be a plantation, not of trees, but purely of
undergrowth and bushes, including sweet-
briar, honeysuckle, and the wild vine, "and
the ground set with violets, strawberries, and
primroses ; for these are sweet, and prosper
in the shade." The strawberry here men-
tioned must have been, like the vine, the
wild sort, for the cultivated one prefers and
requires the sun. " I like also," he goes on,
"little heaps, in the nature of molehills

Bacons Essay on Gardens. 29

(such as are in wild heaths) to be set,
some with wild thyme, some with pinks,
some with germander, that gives a good
flower to the eye. ..." Some were to be
creepers, some standards, among the latter
of which he names roses; and altogether
this division was to be a kind of artificial
wilderness, where a man might roam (for
there were to be six acres of it), and forget
the cares of life and statesmanship.

While I am upon Bacon's remarks in
reference to gardens, it may be worth while
to note that in 1658 Ralph Austen pleaded
his practical experience against Bacon as a
speculative writer for publishing observations
on some parts of the Natural History, where
the other treats of flowers, fruit-trees, and
fruit ; and the criticisms of Austen are, it
must be owned, both sound and interest-
ing. I perceive that, among other matters,
he animadverts on Bacon's observations
respecting strawberries and their preference
for the shade, and points out that such, in
his judgment, was not the case. But Bacon
probably intended the wild berry, which

3O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

prospers without much sunshine, whereas
his scholiast had in his mind probably a
cultivated variety.

Austen, when he penned these strictures on
Bacon, was already favourably known by his
Treatise on Fruit- Trees (4°, 1653).

Richard Brathwaite, a contemporary of
Bacon, makes "The Garden" a short
section in his tract on the management of
an earl's household. Among the vegetables
he quotes the cucumber. But he recom-
mends fair bowling-alleys, well-banked, as a
desirable feature in a nobleman's pleasure-
grounds, and he intimates that, if well kept,
they are profitable to the gardeners — they
received gratuities, that is to say, from
visitors to the master.

The name of Evelyn is customarily
associated with his learned book on
Forestry (1664) ; but a few years prior to
that date he was induced by his friend
Thomas Henshaw to put into an English
dress a work called The French Gardener.
The first edition was ready in 1658, and a
third was demanded in 1675. The second I

Evelyris " French Gardener? 3 I

have not seen ; the third has some plates by
Hertochs, and, as I shall presently explain,
an additional tract at the end. Evelyn, it
seems, had met Henshaw abroad, and speaks
of him as an old acquaintance. The French
Gardener was regarded by the translator as
the best extant production on the subjects
of which it treated. In the preface he
observes : —

" I advertize the Reader, that what I have couched
in four sections at the end of this Volume, under the
name of an Appendix, is but a part of the Third
Treatise in the Original ; there remaining three Chapters
more concerning preserving of fruits with sugar, which
I have heretofore expressly omitted, because it is a
mystery that I am assured by a lady (who is a person
of quality, and curious in that art) that there is
nothing of extraordinary amongst them, but what the
fair sex do infinitely exceed, whenever they please to
divertise themselves in that sweet employment."

Beyond the mere technical interest of thi?
volume, which time and experience have
probably much lessened, there is a charm
and a tone about it, which can only belong
to a book produced by a man of letters and
an enthusiast. At page 108 occurs " A

32 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

Catalogue of the Names of Fruits known
about Paris," which occupies no fewer than
twenty-six pages. Thirty-seven varieties of
the peach are enumerated, and many kinds
of early and keeping apples, and plums, early
and late, among which we still notice the
apricot. But of pears there is an astonishing
proportion, parcelled out among the months
of the year, all of which have their share;
allowance must be made for sub-varieties of
the same species ; but the total is 3 1 5 ! One
of those usable in September and October is
the Pear Evelyn ; but the names are, in many
other instances, highly curious and even
historical. We have, for example, the Lady-
Dear Muscat, the Ladies-Thigh, the Two-
headed Pear, the Fine Gold of Orleans, the
Gloutes de Gap, the Pucell of Xaintonge, the
Father-in-Law, the Good Micat of Coyeux,
the Younger Brother, The Maiden's Flesh,
the Ciacciole of Rome, the Graccioli or
Cucumber Pear, the Clown of Anjou, the
Clown of Reatte, the Goose's Bill, Ancy (the
English Pear), the Toad Pear, the St. Samson
or Ditch Pear, the Sausage Pear, the Ugly

Bacon and Evelyn. 3 3

Good, the Great Mary of Amiens, the Grey
Messire John, Messire John Green, the Virgin
of Flanders, the Burnt Cat, Venus' Nipple,
the Musk Bon-Chretien (allied to our
Williams pear), the white Milan Pear, the
Onionet, the Little Dagobert, the Incognito
of Persia, the Winter Bagpipe, the Bourbon,
and a hundred others. It is from France, no
doubt, that we have borrowed our pears ; but
the French, in their turn, evidently trans-
planted from Italy, Savoy, and elsewhere
some of those which form part of Evelyn's
list. His catalogues of apples, plums, cherries>
and figs are also worth study ; but he
admonishes us in a note that some of the
English equivalents are not absolutely reliable,
and that' we had not attained at that time
to " so ample a choice and universal as to
supply the deficiency of the Dictionary."

IV.

THE FRENCH AND DUTCH SCHOOLS— EVELYN
AND THE "FRENCH GARDENER"— His
" SYLVA " — JOHN WORLIDGE — GARDEN-
ING IN SCOTLAND.

[HE second part of the French Gar-
dener (1675) deals with a class
of vegetable-fruits which had be-
come in the seventeenth century common
enough, but of which we hear very little in
more ancient records — melons, cucumbers,
gourds ; and a section is devoted to the
artichoke and asparagus. Of melons and
gourds I trace no cognisance in the technical
treatises of the time ; but they are recited,
with leeks, onions, and garlic, in Newbery's
Dives Pragmaticus (1563).

Vast progress had now been made in the
development of the kitchen-garden and in

The French and Dutch Schools. 3 5

the science of sub-division, by which forest-
trees, fruit-trees, herbs, flowers, and vegetables
were no longer grown side by side, as it
were; and the cultivation of the delicate
plants introduced from milder climates ne-
cessitated systematic precautions for screen-
ing them from the weather. The directions
for rearing and protecting the melon, which
is emphatically termed "the most precious
fruit that your kitchen-garden affords," are
very elaborate indeed. They seem to have
enclosed the ground selected within a palisade
of reeds to exclude the wind, and to have
dressed the soil freely with horse-dung ; and
new sorts were occasionally received from
abroad. Only a few days before his trial,
Charles I. is said to have ordered some
Spanish melons to be planted in his garden
at Wimbledon, then still a royal possession
and residence.

In the last century, the fruit had probably
attained as great a perfection as possible.
A curious note accompanies a copy of Foote's
Dramatic Works (1762)^0 the effect that it
was Foote who taught the owner's father to

36 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

eat melon with a spoon — "So far as the
spoon will cut, it is ripe." We continue to
grow this fine fruit under glass ; but in the
south they flourish like cabbages, or like the
small Indian cucumber, in the open air.

In his early and curious tract on Brewing,
published at Frankfort in 1585, Thaddeus
Hagecius speaks of the melon as a species
of cucumber : " Hie obiter notandum," he
writes, " quod etiam, quae frigida sunt, dulcia
sunt : sicut etia sunt Cucumerum genera,
quae Melones vulgo vocantur." But Hagecius
(or Haycke) may almost be taken to mean
rather the pumpkin, or some other species of
gourd.

Oddly enough, the culture of the artichoke
and of asparagus is treated as if it had been
considered a matter of equal delicacy and
gravity; but we look on asparagus as not
less difficult to handle with the experience of
two or three centuries than it was in Evelyn's
day, while both sorts of the artichoke will
succeed with very little care in ground of
tolerable quality.

The grand and inalienable institution of

Evelyn and the "French Gardener'' 3 7

JAM, as an ingredient in our culinary economy,
does not date much further back than the
middle of the seventeenth century, when the
French Gardener was adapted by Evelyn to
English readers. The third part of this work,
in the original, is occupied by directions for
preserving, candying, and pickling fruits ; and
in the English version this is digested and
abridged in four sections, accompanied by an
engraving, in which we are admitted to the
interior of a chamber, where women are en-
gaged in the various processes.

Evelyn produced in 1664 his tripartite
volume, containing the Sylva or Discourse of
Forest Trees ; Pomona, or An Appendix con-
cerning Fruit-Trees, in relation to Cider ; and
the Kalendarium Hortense, or Gardener's
Almanac, Directing what he is to do monthly
throughout the year. The first division com-
prises many plants, such as jessamine, laurel, /
and holly, which rather belong to the flower-
garden or shrubbery. But it is a piece of
work to be taken as it is found, for it was
really the earliest effort to draw attention, not
merely to the various kinds of trees in our

38 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

plantations and woods, but to the proper
mode of propagating and pruning them, and
of course the writer introduces anecdotes
and touches which impart a zest and price
to the volume. He could hardly go into
print without telling us something new and
useful ; and I must particularly commend to
attention the account of ancient and cele-
brated trees, contributed to his pages by
the Auditor of his friend, Henry Howard of
Norfolk.

The Kalendarium Hortense, which (after
Bacon's essay) was the precursor of all other
experiments of the same nature, proved more
popular and saleable than the Sylva itself,
and passed through several editions. To the
ninth he added a sort of supplementary
or companion volume, called Acetaria, a
Discourse of Sallets, in which he included
many articles which are no longer thought
to fall within that category, such as spinach,
asparagus, melons, dandelion, hops, and a
number more. It was to some of the later
impressions of the Calendar that Cowley ap-
pended his poem of the Garden^ with a

John Worlidge. 39

preface which opens with these words : —

" I never had any other desire so strong, and so like
to Covetousness, as that one which I have had always,
that I might be master at last of a small house and
large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined
to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life to
the Culture of them and study of Nature."

Besides the contributions which he left
behind him to botanical literature, Evelyn
has made his Diary and even his corre-
spondence a small storehouse of curious facts
in relation to the same subject ; he has not
failed to record for us particulars of all
the public and private gardens which came
under his observation, either at home or
abroad ; and there can be little doubt that
he was instrumental, both directly and in-
directly, in naturalising among us numerous
beautiful examples of the flora and sylva of
other countries, and enabled such a book as
Worlidge 's Sy sterna Horticultures, to aspire X
to far greater completeness than it could
otherwise have attained. The benefits of
this thrice-happy possessor of noble tastes,
ample means, and influential friends survive

4O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature,

the triumphs of the politician and the
soldier.

I would particularly solicit the attention of
the reader to Evelyn's letter to the Earl of
Sandwich, of August 2ist, 1668, in which he
exhibits his enthusiasm for the study no less
than his mastery of the details. It is to be
recollected that at this time there was a
method of transporting plants and roots from
distant places in barrels.

Nor can I forbear to put on paper my
pleasurable feeling about Evelyn and Pepys,
that they seem, both of them alike, to form
an inseparable part of the period to which
they belonged. You cannot touch any point
appertaining to the social and domestic
affairs of the second half of the seventeenth
century, without finding yourself in contact
somehow with them ; and they are names
which do not pall by repetition.

The Systema Horticulture of John Wor-
lidge (1677) was apparently the earliest
manual for the guidance of those forming and
cultivating gardens, and it deals methodically
and seriatim with the treatment and virtue of

John Worlidge. 41

different soils ; the form of the ground, of
which he furnishes two schemes, both cal-
culated for a more extensive plot or area than
the majority could command ; the structure
and material of walls, fences, and other
enclosures ; the erection of arbours and
summer-houses, garden seats and benches,
among which he enumerates some within
niches of the wall, protected by a cupola
supported on columns — a fashion not yet
extinct ; the means of irrigation ; fountains
and grottoes, statues, obelisks and dials ; and
then he proceeds to discuss the main subject
— the contents of a garden, and how to choose
and manage them. There are some excel-
lent directions and information on certain
heads ; but the book is scarcely what I
should designate a comprehensive treatise.
It reappeared with some additions in 1683.

Nor is Worlidge very systematic in his
Systema^ for he intermingles in his text plants,
herbs, and forest-trees in an admirable con-
fusion. The same page describes the ever-
green oak, the tree stone-crop, the arbutus,
and the rosemary. Yet it is a book which,

42 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

as Charles Lamb would have put it, we would
much rather not not have; for it is replete
with instruction and interest. The author
was one of those men who wrote from a
love of the subject, begetting practical ex-
perience and insight. We shall never know
how much we owe in the waxing taste about
this time for such studies to the example and
stimulus of Evelyn.

The Scots' Gardener, by John Reid (1683),
is the parent-production in this class of litera-
ture, and purports to have been compiled by
a practical observer with a special view to
the climate of Scotland. It is divided into
two portions, of which the first is occupied
by technical instructions for the choice of a
site for the garden, the arrangement of the
beds and walks, and other particulars, all
tending to shew that the author had in his
eye exclusively the richer class of patrons,
who could afford to carry out operations on
an ambitious and costly scale. The book
concludes with a calendar.

Reid furnishes very explicit rules for graft-
ing, pruning, and propagating by seed, cutting,

Gardening in Scotland. 43

and sucker ; but he does not say so much as
one might have expected about the berry
tribe, which has always been regarded as
thriving northward better than in England.
He enumerates among standards apples,
pears, cherries, gooseberries, currants, bar-
berries, quinces, walnuts, chestnuts, filberts,
and service-nuts. For the wall he recom-
mends apricots, peaches, nectarines, almonds,
the vine, figs, currants, apples, pears, cherries,
plums, etc. ; but, he says, "you need not take
up much with almond, vine, fig, nor necta-
rine." Probably there was not sun enough
to ripen them. The book altogether con-
tains a fair amount of curious information,
serviceable for comparison ; but the method,
as in all these early treatises, is faulty and
confused. He has much to say on the sub-
ject of pruning, and commences by observ-
ing : — " Some Ignorants are against pruning,
suffering their trees to run and ramble to such
a head of confusion, as neither bears well
nor fair."

Reid's book did not acquire much popu-
larity; but it was reprinted in 1721 and 1766.

44 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

The approximation to Holland through
the House of Orange, culminating in the
great political changes of I688,1 affected
every department of horticulture, and intro-
duced the Dutch school, as it is still to be
seen in a few old-fashioned places, where a
corner is kept as a specimen of former ways
of thought, as bygone as a monastic ruin
among new buildings.

This dynastic agency enriched our gar-
dens and conservatories with many rare
and beautiful species of flowers and bulbs,
and perhaps assisted in inoculating the
English collectors with the tulip-mania.

Yet, while that bulb was carried to un-
precedented perfection in the Low Countries,
it had been a familiar object in English
gardens since the time of Elizabeth at
least; but when Bacon wrote, the culti-
vators of it either here or abroad had not
succeeded in procuring that wide variety of

1 Dr. Walter Harris, physician to William III.,
when he was Prince of Orange, printed, in 1699, an
account of His Britannic Majesty's palace and gardens
at Loo, with a plan of the grounds. It is a quarto
tract of considerable rarity.

Gardening in Scotland. 4 5

hues which brought the flower into such
increased celebrity.

At the same time, it is due to the Dutch
to say that, at all events in the first quarter
of the seventeenth century, considerable
progress had been made among them in the
propagation both of the tulip and hyacinth ;
and in 1615 Crispin de Passe the younger
published at Utrecht his Hortus Floridus,
with an English descriptive letterpress, seem-
ing to shew that at that early date the in-
terest in these bulbs had increased with
ourselves. The engravings to the work
above-cited exhibit numerous species of the
tulip and other flowers of the same family
or growth, and in the copy which is in the
British Museum they are presented in their
natural colours.

At a somewhat later period, namely in
1630, Crispin de Passe published at London <
his Book of Beasts, Birds, Flowers, Fruits,
etc., of which there is a copy in the Museum.
The chief part of works of this class there are
from the benefaction of Sir Joseph Banks.

V.
HERBALS, PHYSIC-GARDENS, AND BEES.

| HE most ancient printed Herbals in
our language are translations from
the French and Latin, and are not
anterior to the time of Henry VIII. The
Great Herbal, an English version of a
French work, appeared in 1516, and was
reprinted in 1526, 1529, 1539, and 1561.
The Little Herbal, taken from the Latin, was
published in 1525, and had a second edition
in 1526. Besides these two guides to a
knowledge of the subject, we had only a
translation of the small herbal of Macer, of
which two editions appeared about the middle
of the sixteenth century from the press of
Robert Wyer, and the earlier contributions to
a branch of letters and science which he was
to make his own, of William Turner, who

Herbals, Physic-Gardens, and Bees. 47

printed in 1538 his Libellus de Re Herbaria,
and in 1549 A List of the Names of Herbs,
with their common designations. Turner's
Herbal was partly given to the world in
1551, but was not completed till 1568, when
the author republished it with a remarkable
preface addressed to Queen Elizabeth, in
which he exposes and laments the ignorance
of the apothecaries of those days. This pre-
liminary matter, for its curiosity and per-
manent interest, the present writer included
in his volume of Prefaces (1874).

Turner's example encouraged, perhaps,
Henry Lyte, of Lytescary, in Somersetshire,
to undertake a translation of the Herbal of
Rembert Dodoens, which came out in 1578,
and was reprinted in 1581 and 1619.

But while the printed literature of the
country is comparatively late and barren,
there were of course innumerable MSS.
treatises on the subject in circulation from
the Saxon era downwards, chiefly in the
form of catalogues and glossaries, such as
still exist in the Harleian and other public
collections, and which were prepared some-

48 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

times for professional and sometimes for
scholastic purposes. Many of these are
incidental or fragmentary; but they tend to
impress one with a somewhat more favour-
able notion of the conversance with such
matters than Turner entertained ; and, by the
way, the same may be said of the general
knowledge of medicine which, let us recol-
lect, has not even yet quite lost its old
empirical taint.

The early English apothecary laboured
under the disadvantage of a very defective
training, and of the absence of adequate
literary lights and helps. The education
which he received was necessarily of the
most rudimentary character, and the old
Latin and French companions to the Phar-
macopoeia were a tissue of ignorance and
absurdity. It was only by such men as
Turner, who thought and worked for them-
selves, and broke away from the trammels of
prejudice and usage, that the medical art was
gradually enfranchised and advanced.

In the reign of James I., and perhaps
even earlier, Edward Lord Zouch, of whom

Herbals, Physic-Gardens, and Bees. 49

there is an interesting account in Kennet's
Parochial Antiquities, under " Chilton," had
a physic-garden attached to his seat at
Hackney, the earliest thing of the kind in
England, though of long standing in Italy
and elsewhere on the Continent. It was
under the superintendence of Matthew de
1'Obel, an apothecary, who wrote one of the
earliest books on tobacco.1

Lord Zouch, whose other residence at
Bramshill, in Hampshire (of which there is
a view in Nash's Mansions of the Olden
Time), is commemorated by Browne in the
dedication of his Shepherd's Pipe (1614) to
that nobleman, had also ornamental and
fruit gardens at his place near London ; and y
Sir Hugh Platt, in his Garden of Eden
(1653), quoted by Lysons, states that he
removed apple and damson trees of thirty
years' growth with success.

The second institution of this kind was

1 In the Antiquary for February, 1885, I have
drawn attention to the physic -garden founded at
Venice in 1334 by the surgeon Gualtieri, the most
ancient in Europe.

5O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

established at Oxford by James, Earl of
Derby, in the reign of Charles I. Cata-
logues of the plants were published — of the
Medical Garden in 1648, and of the botanical
collection in 1658, the latter under the care
of Philip Stephens, M.D., and William
Browne, A.M.

Evelyn was here in 1654. " i2th July.
Hence [from Magdalen] to the Physic-Gar-
den, where the sensitive plant was showed
us for a great wonder. There' grow canes,
olive-trees, rhubarb, but no extraordinary
curiosities. ..." He paid a second visit
ten years later, when he saw the locust-tree
and the plane.

The physic-garden at Chelsea dates only
from the year 1673, when it was first rented
by the Apothecaries' Company, and the
ground laid out. It became their freehold
in 1721 by the gift of Sir Hans Sloane, lord
of the manor. The two cedars on the south
side of the garden were planted in 1683,
being then about three feet high. In August,
1793, the girth of the larger at 3 feet from
the ground was found to be 12 feet n|

Herbals, Physic-Gardens^ and Bees. 5 I

inches, that of the smaller 12 feet and
\ inch.

The visit of Evelyn to the garden at
Chelsea was paid on the 7th August, 1685.

"I went," he notes, " to see Mr. Watts, keeper of
the apothecaries' garden of simples, at Chelsea, where
there is a collection of innumerable rarities of that
sort, particularly, besides many rare annuals, the tree
bearing Jesuits' bark, which had done such wonders
in quartan-agues. What was very ingenious was the
subterranean heat, conveyed by a stove under the
conservatory, all vaulted with brick, so as he has
the doors and windows open in the hardest frosts,
excluding only the snow."

This account bespeaks a condition of
affairs which was not at all likely to be
attended by a successful issue.

Mr. and Mrs. Blackwell, of whom the former
wrote a work on Agriculture, and the latter ^
a once popular and celebrated Herbal, lived
opposite the physic-garden, while the lady was
engaged in her work. It consisted of two
folio volumes, and appeared in 1737. The
preparation of such a stupendous production
must have entailed very heavy labour and

52 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

there must have been some good in it ; but
it dealt with a progressive science, and very
much of the paper on which it was made
visible to the public has long " suffered a
change."

Besides the physic-gardens at Chelsea and
elsewhere, considerable acreage has, from the
middle of the last century, been dedicated at
Mitcham, in Surrey, to the cultivation of
medicinal herbs and plants, especially pepper-
mint, lavender, liquorice, aniseed, camomile,
and rhubarb. The peppermint, however, is
used in the preparation of a species of dram,
and in the time of Lysons (1792) one hundred
acres were given up to the growth of this plant
alone, for the purpose of distillation as well as
for the use of the apothecary.

The somewhat extended notice of herbals
in these pages, as well as the list of others,
which will be presently given, will require an
explanation only, I think, from such as are
not aware that this description of book em-
braces a wider category than the mere title
seems to import, and cannot well be neglected
by floricultural inquirers.

y Physic-Gardens, and Bees. 53

It is particularly to be predicated, if I do
not err, of William Turner, that he was the
first, in his little book published in 1549, to
give the vulgar names of herbs and plants,
as well as their scientific denominations.

Our remote forerunners, long before the
Conquest, made mead or metheglin from
the honey of wild bees j and this product
was at the same time, in the absence of
any other sweetening medium, the only
substitute for sugar. Bee-culture, therefore,
acquired by degrees considerable importance
and development, and there were persons
who reared them specially, and owned what
might be termed bee-farms, with hinds to
attend to the hives.

An account of the principal works on bees
will be furnished hereafter.

VI.

THE KITCHEN - GARDEN -- ALEXANDER
NECKAM AND JOHANNES DE GARLANDIA
—THE GARDENS AT SHEEN, GREENWICH,
AND SOMERSET HOUSE — SIR WILLIAM
TEMPLE'S GARDEN AT SHEEN — KEW
GARDENS — GARDENS IN AND ABOUT
LONDON IN 1691 — EARLY CATALOGUES
OF PLANTS — THE DUKE OF BEDFORD'S
BOTANICAL PUBLICATIONS.

|:HE kitchen-garden is supposed by
Wright to have preceded the
flower-garden ; he imagines the
flowers, among the Anglo-Saxons, to have
been planted in enclosed spaces or beds
near the house. The orchard, which we
now identify with fruit-trees, had its origin in
wyrt or ort geard, the garden for wyrtan, a
term generally employed to signify any sort of

The Kitchen- Gar den. 55

vegetable or herb. In ort one recognises the
Latin hortus ; but the Romans gave to the
locality the name which our ancestors bestowed
on the produce. Our word garden, which
used to be understood of a series of en-
closures and plantations for various purposes,
as the apple-yard, the ash-yard (where the
ash for hop-poles was grown), the ort-yard,
and the vine-yard, looks like the plural of
geard ; and this notion is confirmed by the
northern form garth, and apple-garth for
apple-yard.1 The French jardin is evidently
from the same root. In the Privy Purse
Expenses of Henry VII., under 1493, we come
across the term coney-garth, which seems to
be a place for keeping rabbits, rather than, as
the editor explains, a rabbit-warren, particu-
larly as the charge is for a coney-garth pale.
The leek was universally cultivated, and

1 Mr. Lucas, in his Studies in Nidderland, devotes
a section to an etymological essay on Garth and its
allied meanings in sundry northern languages.

But he does not note the application of the plural to
form a collective phrase. Yard and garth are abso-
lutely the same word ; and Mr. Lucas specifies many
other variations in other dialects.

56 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature

was not peculiar to Wales ; it was the
favourite table vegetable, and the onion
(ynne-leac = inula of Johannes de Garlandia)
and garlic (gar-leac, perhaps the Latin
gerum) were so designated, because they
were taken to be varieties of it. Many
kinds of flowers, which form at present
part of the ornamental enclosure, were
considered to belong more properly to
the kitchen department: the sunflower, the
violet, the marigold, the gillyflower, the
honeysuckle, the perriwinkle, the peony,
and the bay-tree; in addition to which the
Saxon had his apple-yard or garth, where
he grew the trees to make what he called
apple- wine — our cyder. Wright has pointed
out that the trees and plants which were
known to the Saxons, are, as a rule, dis-
tinguishable from those which were subse-
quently imported by the Normans and others
by the names, as in the case of the pear,
the cherry, the pea, the turnip, the radish,
the cole wort, the cabbage, and many herbs,
as parsley, mint, rue, and sage.

The picture which Alexander Neckam

Alexander Neck am. 57

draws of a garden in the latter half of the
twelfth century corroborates the opinion that
that institution at the outset corresponded to
our kitchen-garden ; but his description was
taken from some princely or baronial establish-
ment, and bespeaks a certain share of taste in
arranging the herbs, plants, and fruit-trees.
His narrative, although it is of no service as a
guide to the resources of the humbler classes
in this respect, is very precious, from its early
date and the superior intelligence of the
writer, as a kind of clue to what was then in
cultivation and use ; and, in addition to what
I have enumerated from other sources, he
recites fennel, savory, cresses, melons, the
cucumber, the poppy, anise, mustard, white
pepper, wormwood, peaches, pears of St.
Regie, citrons or lemons, pearmains, oranges
(Mala aurea)) almonds, dates, and figs. How
some of these were reared, he omits to
explain ; he characterises them as features
only in a noble garden, it is true ; but artificial
warmth was not available, and in the open
air the almond would scarcely bear, and the
date and the orange would not live.

5 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

The orange, which forms, as we perceive,
part of Neckam's twelfth century list, soon
became a favourite, and was a comparatively
cheap fruit in this country. It appears from
one of the Household Books that in 1480
ten were to be had for a silver penny ; but
in 1290 some had come over from Spain, and
were purchased for the Queen of Edward I.,
Eleanor of Castile. They are described in
the record as Pomes de Orange ; and they
are associated with a variety of other fruit,
so that there is little doubt that the Seville
orange, imported thither from Arabia, is
meant, more especially as the Spanish
parentage and tastes of Eleanor were calcu-
lated to favour the importation of the pro-
duce of her native land. Yet Sir Antonio
More painted Sir Thomas Gresham with an
orange in his hand, as the introducer of it
into England. He was no more entitled to
that distinction than the Flamborough family
mentioned in the Vicar of Wakefield.

The account of Johannes de Garlandia
(an English resident in France) of his own
garden at Paris is not very dissimilar from

Johannes de Garlandia. 59

Neckam's. As the relations between the two
countries became closer and more regular,
the French improvements in horticulture and
additions to the flora were not long in find-
ing their way across the Channel.

This worthy writer divides his grounds into
garden, shrubbery, wood, and grove ; so that,
as he was in the middle class of life, land
must have been cheap at that time, and
space of no moment. He mentions his
gardener (ortolamis], and tells us what the
latter cultivated in the way of kitchen herbs.
We learn that Magister Johannes grew not
only his own onions and cabbages, but his
own mustard. But the cardinal aim of
Master John was to render his strings of
names as long as possible, and he mixes
up fruit-trees and forest-trees, shrubs and
creepers, in a way which one can scarcely
suppose to be true to reality. In his wood
(nemus) he informs us that he had the
celsus bearing celsa, which his editor ex-
plains to be mulberries. Such, however,
is not likely to have been the case. As I
have hinted, the author's aim was lexico-

60 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

graphical primarily, and Mr. Wright himself
points out that in one place he enumerates
among the birds which the fowler captures
in the wood, not only the eagle, which is
improbable enough, but the phoenix !

His twelfth-century labour is very instruc-
tive on many accounts ; but immediately it
transports us across seven centuries of spent
life into the remarkably comfortable quarters
at Paris of a very remote predecessor of Dr.
Johnson in the art of dictionary-making.

The earlier portion of the Diary of Evelyn
may be consulted with advantage for a view
of the public and royal gardens, and private
pleasure-grounds, seen by him during his
continental tour.

Of our own country the development in
the same respect was to some extent retarded
by the climate and the absence of native
talent for the purpose ; and information on
the state of ancient gardens, public and pri-
vate, is at first very scanty. Even Bacon,
though himself a gardener, does not allude
to this part of the matter in \\isLife of Henry
the Seventh.

The Gardens at Sheen, etc. 61

The Privy Purse Expenses of that prince
appear to contain only two direct references
to the king's garden at Sheen, the venerable
riverside manor-house, out of which gradually
developed itself the palace of our Tudor
princes. One is under February lyth,
1497-8, and is a grant of £2 to the gardener
for grafts. The second is of the 26th January,
1498-9, and registers a payment of los. for
" sope hashes," or the lees of soap, which were
found useful in killing slugs and other vermin.

In the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry
VIII., under 1530, there is an item for
"weeding, delving, and ordering the royal
garden at Greenwich," and the amount,
;£i 4.?. 6d., must have been for a considerable
period. At the same time the price of herbs
might appear to have been high, as twenty
shillings were paid to the bringer of some
to the king; but the amount was given in
largess rather than as the commercial value
of the articles, in the same way as Henry
ordered 3*. 8^. to some countryfolk who had
presented him with wild strawberries, and as
elsewhere we meet with a record of a pottle

62 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

of the same fruit realizing io^f. to the seller.
These are early material for any future his-
tory of the " Origin of Tips." According to
some of the entries under 1531, it seems as
if the gardening charges at Greenwich were
paid quarterly, for a man named Walsh re-
ceived £i 5J. 6d. for trimming the garden
there at the end of November in that year ;
and this, like some of the other payments,
may have been in advance for Christmas.

In my edition of Randolph's Poems, with a
view to rendering it more complete, rather
than from any hope of making it more
acceptable to the drawing-room table, I in-
serted from a MS. in the British Museum
some verses " On a Maid seen by a Scholar
in Somerset House Garden." This must
have been before 1635, the date of the
writer's decease ; and it seems to shew that
the indifferent reputation of the mansion was
shared by the grounds. Probably, when
Queen Henrietta Maria resided there, a little
more decorum was observed ; but even this
is questionable. The garden of the old
palace was far more extensive than the

The Gardens at Sheen, etc. 63

present aspect of the site would lead one to
suppose, for the Protector Somerset cleared
a large area before he erected his residence
here, partly to obtain with greater facility
from the demolished buildings the material
for his own. This was in 1549. Part of the
clearance consisted of the old inn of Chancery,
called Strand Inn.

The scholar in these lines was doubtless
Randolph himself. He speaks of the place
as the haunt of glittering courtiers. It was
one of the splendid inns, as they were called,
along the south side of the Strand, and the
grandest, perhaps, of all. Is it changed for
the better or the worse ? Since the last
century the river front has suffered much
alteration.

I would add that Mr. Wheatley, in the
chapter on Hyde Park printed with his
Round About Piccadilly (1870). has collected
some very interesting information concerning
that park itself and Kensington Gardens, and
the Green and St. James's Parks are treated
in the next section.

The same writer has pointed out the

64 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

papers on the subject of horticulture in the
seventh and twelfth volumes of Arch&ologia.
To the latter I shall have to recur ere long.

The reader of Macaulay's essays will call
to mind his account of Sir William Temple
and the delight which the latter took in his
garden at Sheen. This was the site of the
ancient priory, and here, during many years,
Temple amused his leisure in horticultural
experiments, and had for his amanuensis no
less a person than Jonathan Swift. Lysons
says : —

"King William, who had known Sir William
Temple on the Continent, and had a great esteem for
his talents and character, frequently visited him at
this place and pressed him to become his Secretary of
State. When his patron was lame with the gout,
Swift usually attended his Majesty in his walks round
the garden. The king is said on one of these occa-
sions to have offered to make him a captain of horse,
and to have taught him to cut asparagus in the Dutch
manner."

In 1667, it is to be gathered from his
correspondence that Temple was paying
special attention to the culture of cherries,

Kew Gardens. 65

so as to have a succession of kinds from
May to Michaelmas, and also to the more
successful propagation of the vine.

Several publications have appeared in
connection with the gardens at Kew. The
most noticeable is the Hortus Kewensis, first
printed in 1763. At least, that is the earliest
date given by Watt in Mv$> Bibliotheca. But
of course the immense development which
these fine public gardens have experienced
under the Hookers, renders such descriptions
imperfect and obsolete. Nor is there any
special account at present procurable of
the kindred establishments at Chiswick
and Regent's Park.

In an essay dedicated to the literary
rather than to the technical aspect of the
present subject, the labours of such men as
Gibson, Kent, and Capability Brown can
hardly be treated sufficiently at large to do
justice to them or the theme itself. Gibson
enters into my plan so far that he wrote an
account of the gardens near London in 1691
first printed in the twelfth volume of Archczo-
logia.

66 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

There is no doubt that the successive
exertions of Evelyn and Pope, brought to
bear on their noble and powerful friends,
were instrumental in achieving many valuable
improvements, by encouraging, on the one
hand, the taste, and, on the other, the genius
for landscape-gardening. It would be im-
possible, I conceive, to name two Englishmen
who respectively exercised so healthy and im-
portant an influence for good in this direction
as the authors of Sylva and Windsor Forest.

In Gibson's sketch of the principal
gardens, public and private, near London,
in 1691, there is a considerable degree of
interest. He includes some of the nursery-
men. Subjoined is a list of the names which
he furnishes : —

Hampton Court.

Kensington Gardens.

The Queen Dowager's Garden at Hammersmith.

Beddington Garden, leased to the Duke of Norfolk.

Chelsea Physic-Garden.

My Lord Ranelagh's Garden.

Arlington Garden, in the possession of my Lord of

Devonshire.
My Lord Fauconberg's Garden.

Gardens in and about London in 1691.67

Sir William Temple's, at Sheen.

Sir Henry Capel's Garden at Kew.

Sir Stephen Fox's Garden at Chiswick.

Sir Thomas Cook's Garden at Hackney.

Sir Josiah Child's Plantation of walnut, etc., at

Wanstead.
Sir Robert Clayton's Plantation, at Marden, in

Surrey.

The Archbishop of Canterbury's Garden at Lambeth.
Dr. Uvedale's Garden at Enfield.
Dr. Tillotson's Garden near Enfield [? Ilford].
Brompton Park Gardens.
Mr. Raynton's Garden at Enfield.
Mr. Richardson's Garden at East Barnet.
Captain Foster's Garden at Lambeth.
Mr. Anthony Vesprit's Garden.
Ricketts, \

Darby, > Nurseries at Hoxton.
Pearson, j

Mr. Evelyn's Garden at Deptford.
Mr. Webb's Garden near Enfield.
Clement's Nursery at Mile End.

Gibson does not speak very highly of
Evelyn's grounds or greenhouse. He de-
scribes in enthusiastic terms the Orangery at
Beddington, near Croydon, the seat of the
Carews, but then let to the Duke of Norfolk.
He says it was two hundred feet long, and

68 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

the trees thirteen feet high, and growing, not
in pots, but out of the ground. They yielded
in the season when Gibson wrote ten thousand
oranges.1

I have stated that the old grammarian,
Johannes de Garlandia, has furnished us
with a most interesting and precious account
of the contents of his garden at Paris, simply
by way of philological illustration. This was
in the closing years of the thirteenth century.
In our own country we have nothing of the
kind so early; but in 1596 and 1599 John
Gerarde printed a catalogue of the trees and
plants growing in his grounds in Holborn.
The latter is a small, thin folio volume, and
has been lately republished in facsimile.

At a later period these descriptive lists
became common ; but our literature does
not possess many of them till we come
down to comparatively recent times.

Gerarde's was the prototype. He styles
himself on the title-page, " Surgeon and
Citizen of London."

1 See further particulars in the Appendix ; where
Gibson's tract is republished entire.

Duke of Bedford's Publications. 69

John Russell, Duke of Bedford (1802-39)
did good service in his time toward the pro-
motion of objects connected with horticulture,
and by publishing the results of experiments
made on his estate and accounts of his
botanical collections. These works, of which
the first-quoted passed through as many
as four editions between 1816 and 1828,
were : —

1. Hortus Gramineus Woburnensis. With numer-
ous dried specimens of Agricultural Grasses cultivated
by the Duke of Bedford. Folio, 1816 ; royal 8vo,
1824, 1855, 1858. The first edition contains dried
specimens of the grasses, the others lithographic
plates. The editor was Mr. George Sinclair.

This was followed by :—

2. Hortus Ericcceus Woburnensis. A catalogue of
Heaths in the collection of the Duke of Bedford at
Woburn Abbey. Alphabetically and systematically
arranged by James Forbes. 40,1815. With plates,
coloured.

3. Salicefum Woburnense ; or, A Catalogue of
Willows, Indigenous and Foreign, in the collection of
the Duke of Bedford. Systematically arranged by
James Forbes. 4to, 1829. With coloured plates.

7O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

4. Hortus Woburnensis. A Descriptive Catalogue
of upwards of Six Thousand Ornamental Plants,
cultivated at Woburn Abbey. With numerous
Illustrated Plans for the Erection of Forcing
Houses, Green Houses, and an account of the
management throughout the year. By James Forbes.
8vo, 1833. With plates, which in the large-paper
copies were coloured.

5. Pinetum Woburnense : or, A Catalogue of Conifer-
ous Plants in the collection of the Duke of Bedford at
Woburn Abbey. Systematically arranged by James
Forbes. Imperial 8vo, 1839. With plates.

A series such as I have described must
have proved of very great service to the cause
of tree and flower-culture. The design of the
work on grasses was to communicate to those
interested in the subject the results of tests
made in the production and nutritive value
of different species of gramineous plants used
as food by domestic animals. The volume,
illustrated with a hortus siccus of specimens
which had been actually employed, contains
remarks on their natural habits, and points
out the soils best adapted for them, the
kinds most profitable for growth in various

Duke of Bedford's Publications. 71

sorts of ground, permanent pastures, irri-
gated meadows, dry or upland pasture, and
the alternate system.*

* See " A Letter addressed to Dawson Turner, Esq.,
on the Death of the Duke of Bedford, particularly in
reference to his Services to Botany and Horticulture."
By Sir W. J. Hooker. Privately printed, 1840,
imperial 8vo.

VII.

THE ANCIENT AND MODERN ARBOUR —
GROTTOES — GARDEN LIFE.

JHE description of the squire's
garden in the delightful romance
of the Squire of Low Degree is
worth copying, because it corroborates the
notion as to the indiscriminate arrangement
of early times, even allowing for the exigen-
cies of metre : —

" The tree it was of cypress,
The first tree that Jesu chose :
The sothern-wood and sycamore,
The red rose and the lily flower :
The box, the beech, and the laurel-tree :
The date, also the damist ;
The filberts hanging to the ground :
The fig-tree and the maple round :
The peony, the poplar, and the plane. "

But more noteworthy, perhaps, is the fact

The Ancient and Modern Ar(

that our ancestors evidently drew a clear
distinction between the garden and the
arbour — not our modern summer-house, but
an inner enclosure so called. This point has
already received attention in the notes to
Warton's Poetry. But the few lines there
extracted from an old metrical tale may be
worth their room here : —

" And in the garden, as I ween,
Was an arbour, fair and green ;
And in the arbour was a tree,
A fairer in the world might never be."

The curious circumstance, after all, how-
ever, is not that the early Englishman should
have had an inner garden called an arbour,
but that he should make it a receptacle for
forest-trees, and, as we presently learn, that
the heroine had an arbour in which her dwell-
ing lay — a building, too, of some pretension,
according to the story. Therefore, whereas
now the arbour forms part of the garden, it
anciently seems to have been the ornamental
ground which surrounded the house, and if
it be derived from herba, it was perhaps in
grass, with walks interspersed.

74 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

But we might infer from a passage in an
early sixteenth-century poem, the Debate and
Strife between Summer and Winter, which is,
however, little more than a translation from
a French piece with a similar title, that the
arbour was coming into use in the modern
sense of a summer-house in the time of
Henry VIII. For Summer, in this metrical
interlocution, says that it is better to be in
a green arbour (hsrber\ where one may
embrace and kiss one's mistress, than to be
at the fire, chafing one's feet. This notice
of the thing is fortified by the curious item
in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII.
under April 8th, 1503 : " For making of an
arbour at Baynardes Castell, 55-." — which
certainly imports the construction of an in-
expensive summer-house, rather than the
more elaborate contrivance described in the
Squire of Low Degree.

That the arbour had in the commence-
ment or first quarter of the sixteenth century
acquired its actual character, I find a further
proof, if one were needful, in the story
which forms No. 64 of A Hundred Merry

The Ancient and Modern Arbour. 75

Tales (1526), where the fair young lady
admits to her confessor to having been
guilty of an indiscretion in a pleasant green
arbour.

But before Bacon's time, and even so
early as the fifteenth century, the arbour,
in the modern acceptation, had become
a regular institution, and in the pleasure-
grounds of royalty and the wealthy was,
constructed of carpenter's work, and often
expensively decorated. It formed at once a
pleasant retirement for members of the family
and a convenient place for amours.

A sort of survival of the Arbour of our
romances appears in the garden-house of the
early drama. The institution was at this
time in a transitional state from what it had
been — a villa in grounds — to what it has
become among ourselves, a mere summer-
house. The old garden house is stigmatised
by Stubbes in his Anatomy of Abuses (1583)
as a medium and theatre for intrigues and
assignations.

But in 1644, when A. Looking-Glass oj
the World was written (as I presume) by

7 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature,

Colonel Mercer, something like the modern
summer-house had come into regular vogue,
for the author there speaks of " seated
arbours covered with woodbine."

In reference to grottoes in noblemen's
grounds, Worlidge observes : —

" The most famous of this kind that this kingdom
affords, is that Wiltonian Grotto near unto Salisbury,
on which no cost was spared to make it compleat, and
wherein you may view, or might have lately so done,
the best of water-works, far excelling what Rapinus
sings of late Richlieu's palace in France."

Mr. Wright has inserted in his volume of
Domestic Manners and Sentiments an en-
graving from the romance of Alexander, in
which we are introduced to a garden where
two crowned personages are playing at chess,
and a third individual in some outer court
is apparently engaged in making a selection
from the plants around him. We can see
most of him, as, although there is a palisade
nearly as high as the gateway between us, it
reaches very little beyond his knee, and if he
stretched across, he might, judging from the
very Chinese perspective, readily pick a man

Garden Life. 77

off the chessboard, or tap one of the kings
on the crown with the bough in his hand.

There is a mediaeval Latin fabliau of a
man who invited some friends to dinner,
and insisted on having the table spread at
the riverside, contrary to the wish of his
wife, who was not fond of being crossed.
She sat with her back to the stream, and the
more he begged her to look pleasant, the
nearer she pushed her seat to the water, till
at last she fell plump in. Her husband
thereupon procured a boat, and went up
against the tide in search of her ; and when
his friends remonstrated with him for rowing
up the stream, he said that his wife was so
opposite all her life that he was sure her
body must have floated against the current.
This story occurs in a mutilated form in
Merry Tales and Quick Answers, and again
in PasquiVs Jests. Its value to us lies in its
casual elucidation of old English al fresco
life.

In the romance of Sir Cleges, the hero
kneels in prayer under a cherry-tree.

VIII.

WINDOW-GARDENING — COTTAGE GARDENS
IN 1677 — INFLUENCE OF ASTROLOGY —
WARMING APPARATUS — VARIEGATION
OF FOLIAGE.

jjHE taste for window-gardening is of
very remote antiquity, and even
before the use of glass the lattice
was embowered in foliage and flower, or
the hardy out-of-door vine — the "vinettes
running in the casements" of the poet
Lydgate. Alexander Neckam, who flourished
in the twelfth century, long before Dan
John, makes us love the damsels of his day,
and think that they must have had other
gentle and pretty tastes, when, in his treatise
Of the Nature of Things, he tells us of their
fondness for this innocent and sweet species
of decoration.

Window- Gardening. 7 9

The love and extension of window-garden-
ing in London is illustrated by one of the
stories in Pasquirs Jests (1604). Some
merrymakers at a country inn, inquiring of
the landlady after the latest news, she tells
them of one of the greatest wonders that she
ever saw or heard of, and it was the work of
a stranger in London in respect to gardens
and the preservation of flowers ; and she
had seen it, she averred, with her own eyes ;
and it was the new art, which this person
taught the citizens, of taking in their gardens
every night at their windows, and letting
them out again in the morning. They agreed
to go up with mine hostess to judge for
themselves; and the tale proceeds to relate
that, after taking her friends through Cheap-
side, to the Exchange, Westminster, London
Bridge, the top of St. Paul's, and the Bear
Garden, their conductor eventually shewed
them, in a little lane, a widow putting out of a
garret-casement a box, in which she arranged
pots of gillyflowers, carnations, and herbs.
The point for us here is, of course, the casual
indication of what was a more or less general

8o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

usage in London itself, if not in other
towns.

This little pleasantry and hoax becomes of
peculiar interest as an aid to our knowledge
of this branch of the inquiry, and to a more
accurate realisation of the appearance of the
thoroughfares, or at least some of the minor
arteries, of Jacobean London.

The liking for this sort of ornament has
of late years increased among the inhabitants
of all crowded centres. The earliest com-
mencement of the fashion preceded the
present necessity for it, and the casements
of the citizens of London were planted and
trellised, at a time when the City itself was
far more thinly populated and built, and all
beyond a limited area was open and verdant.
But the facilities for rendering the window-
sill a receptacle for flowers scarcely existed
until the apertures for the admission of light
and air into dwellings were placed on a more
or less modern footing.

Speaking of a garden, Worlidge says,
writing in 1677 : —

" Such is its pre-excellency, that there is scarce a

Cottage Gardens in 1677. 81

cottage in most of the southern parts of England but
hath its proportionable garden, so great a delight do
most of men take in it, that they may not only please
themselves with the view of the flowers, herbs, and
trees, as they grow, but furnish themselves and their
neighbours upon extraordinary occasions, as nuptials,
feasts, and funerals, with the proper products of their
gardens. "

The cottage garden is a subject of special
interest, inasmuch as it comes home to so
many who have neither the space nor the
fortune to cultivate on any ambitious scale.
I do not suppose that it is an institution
which can be confidently referred to a date
much anterior to Worlidge ; and many of the
lovelinesses of the sweet small plots which
stand before our cottages were unknown
even in his day. But the succeeding century
saw most of the productions which now grace
the cottage garden supplied from various
sources.

Hazlitt, recalling the scenes and memories
of his childhood, brings up before us in one
of his essays the Montpelier Tea Gardens, at
Walworth, as they appeared in 1787. They

6

82 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

exhibited a flora analogous to that of the
cottage ground.

" I see," he says, " the beds of larkspur with purple
eyes ; tall hollyhocks, red and yellow ; the broad sun-
flowers, caked in gold, with bees buzzing round them ;
wildernesses of pinks and hot-glowing peonies ;
poppies run to seed, the sugared lily, and faint
mignonette."

He remembered, too, the barberries, which
he had seen in America, while he was there
from 1783 to 1787.

"The taste of barberries which have hung out in
the snow during the severity of a North- American
winter, I have in my mouth still, after an interval of
thirty years ; for I have met with no other taste in all
that time at all like it. It remains by itself, almost
like the impression of a sixth sense."

The early gardener restricted his culture
to the proper periods for planting and sow-
ing, and that was partly influenced by the
writings of the ancients, or traditional pre-
cepts derived from them, and partly by
astrological laws. He was not altogether
ignorant of professional subtleties, for it

Influence of Astrology. 83

appears that by grafting and other more
occult processes, he endeavoured to modify
the colour and flavour of fruit, and to bring
it forward, so that, for instance, the grape
and the cherry might be ready at the
same time, which the mediaeval expert
sought to accomplish by grafting a vine slip
on a cherry stock. The use of clay in graft-
ing was already familiar. But seeing how
imperfectly this important branch of the
science is at present understood, we need not
wonder at the rudeness of its development
in the middle ages.

In Bacon's time tender fruit and other
trees appear to have been protected by some
system of stove, as he tells us in a passage
of his Essays, already quoted ; but neither
Evelyn nor Worlidge goes beyond a hot-bed
constructed in the ordinary way for bottom
heat, and screened from the weather at night,
or during the prevalence of frost, by an arched
canopy of thatch or matting. Worlidge
thought that the best description of a hot-
bed which he had yet (1677) seen was in
Evelyn's Philosophical Discourse of Earth,

84 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

commonly called his Terra; and he has
transferred it to his own pages.

Evelyn considered stoves prejudicial in
the conservatories, however. In his letter to
the Earl of Sandwich, August 2ist, 1668,
he observes : —

" Stoves absolutely destroy our conservatories ; but
if they could be lined with cork I believe it would
better secure them from the cold and moisture of the
walls, than either mattresses or reeds with which we
commonly cover them."

Beyond question, the science of construct-
ing heating apparatus and regulating it, with
the use of proper fuel, was in its infancy ;
and if certain classes of coal, heavily charged
with sulphur, were burned, or coke, no deli-
cate vegetation could exist in the atmosphere
so created ; and at Chelsea, according to
Evelyn's testimony, a remedy for the smoke
seems to have been found by keeping the
doors and windows open ! An account of
the subterranean contrivance and other pre-
cautions formerly in use at the Apothecaries'
Garden seemed to belong more fitly to the
antecedent section, where it occurs.

Warming Apparatus. 8 5

Breton, in his Fantasticks (1626), tells his /
reader to beware of hot-houses in November,
lest he should catch cold. But whether
he intends the word in a horticultural
sense, or in what was in his time the
more common one of a bagnio, is not
altogether clear.

But there is little doubt that it was
always the case in our country, as Breton
states under March, that the cultivation
of such delicate fruit as lemons, oranges,
and pomegranates cost a good deal more
than the result commercially justified.

The occupations connected with horticul-
ture multiplied as time progressed, and the
necessities or experience of consumers deve-
loped themselves more and more. To the
simple gardener were gradually added the
hoer, the engrafter or pruner, the fieldman,
the mower, although these latter two apper-
tain more properly to the agricultural depart-
ment ; and where, as at present, pigs, cows,
and poultry were kept as part of the demesne,
they had their cowherds, swineherds, and the
like ; and, on the whole, in looking over the

86 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

historical and literary evidences, one is irre-
sistibly led to the conclusion, that the facilities
possessed by the fifteenth-century gardener
and husbandman, while they were of course
vastly inferior to those in our hands, were
neither scanty nor relatively barbarous.

In the treatise of Walter de Biblesworth
(fourteenth century), which is a general man-
ual of education and demeanour, the author
instructs his reader, as children of good
right love to eat apples, to pare the fruit,
take out the stalks, and plant the pips.

In his Fantasticks (1626) Breton says,
under March: —

" The dayes begin to lengthen apace : the forward
Gardens give many a fine Sallet ; and a nose-gay of
violets is a present for a Lady : the Prime- Rose is
now in his Prime, and the Trees begin to bud, and
the green spices (spikes) of grasse to peep out of the
earth. Now is Nature as it were waking out of her
sleep.

" It is now time, honest Country-man, to make an
end of sowing of all sorts of small pulse. GrafFe all
sorts of fruit-trees, and with young Plants and Syens
(scions) replenish your Nurcery. Cover the roots of
all Trees that are bared, and with fat and pregnant

Variegation of Foliage. 87

Earth lay them close and warme. If any Trees grow
barren, bore holes in the Roots, and drive pins or
hard wedges of Oake wood therein ; and that will
produce fruitfulnesse. Transplant all sort of Summer
Flowers, especially the Crown imperiall, Tulips,
Hyacinths, and Narcissus of all shapes and colours."

He instructs us under September to make
conserve of quince and barberry, to sow
winter herbs, and set artichokes, rose-trees,
apple-trees, wardens, strawberries, violets, and
gillyflowers, to sow parsnips, and in dry
weather to gather hops. Nor is it, says he,
bad housewifery to make verjuice and pluck
hemp.

Under April, in the same work, are
enumerated citrons, melons, cucumbers,
artichokes, and pole-hops. That month was
considered the proper season for setting
all these.

Breton gives us some good advice under
September on the subject of windfalls : —

"Now as touching Windfalls, or such fruit as
falleth from the trees, and are not gathered, they must
not be laid with the fruit that is gathered ; and of
fallings there are two sorts, one may fall through

88 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

ripeness, rand they are best, and may be kept to
bake or roast ; the other beaten down by the wind,
and they must be spent as fruit (not being ripe), else
they will wither and come to nothing ; and therefore
it is not good by any means to beat down fruit with
poles, or to carry them in carts, loose or jogging, or
in half filled Sacks, where they may be bruised."

The practice of variegating the foliage of
plants and shrubs was in the time of
Charles II. evidently of some standing,
for Worlidge devotes a chapter to what he
calls " Variegated or Gilded Leafed Plants."
He specifies the laurel, the box, the peri-
winkle, and rosemary. But he relates an
anecdote, which may shew that the process
was sometimes accidentally accomplished
without human agency:

"Travelling," he writes, "through some part of
Glamorganshire, and discoursing of these Variegated
greens, one of that country assured me that in that
country was a very large Holly with all its leaves
curiously Gilded, growing wild in a wood, which was
not unlikely, for from the woods they first came."

He brings his narrative about variegation

Variegation of Foliage. 89

of foliage to a close with an account of an
embroidered elder.

" It happened about two years since (being Anno
1674), A Gardener near London by accident discovered
in a hedge an Elder-tree, whose leaves seem'd to be
embroidered by the swelling of the veins that spread
themselves throughout the Leaf, and appearing of
a different colour from the rest of it ; they being of
a curious texture made them appear to the eye most
beautiful and rare."

IX.

BACON AS A GARDENER.

HAVE drawn attention in a former
place to the warm interest mani-
fested by this great man in his
Essays in the subject before us. But there
the topic was treated in an incidental and
cursory way. In his Sylva Sylvarum, or A
Naturall Historic, In Ten Centuries, a posthu-
mous publication edited by Rawley, and
printed in 1627, he enters upon the matter
copiously and systematically ; it occupies in
fact the whole of the fifth and sixth, and part
of the seventh, Century.

Bacon, for whose immense intellectual
grasp no point of research was too large or
too small, is supposed to have had a hand
in laying out the fine grounds which, before

Bacon as a Gardener. 91

their lamentable curtailment, adorned his own
Inn of Court ; and doubtless the experi-
ments in horticulture which he reports in
the Sylva Sylvarum were made by himself
or under his auspices and direction at
Gorhambury. It is affecting, even at so
long a distance of time, to contemplate the
lifelong struggle for the mastery of universal
knowledge in the regions of philosophy and
science, and the indefatigable labours in-
volved even in arriving at the results, which
are presented to us in this volume.

Bacon did not witness the appearance of
his Natural History in print, and from the
mode in which the text is arranged, it is
almost inferable that the editor is responsible
for the order of the contents. For the section
opens rather abruptly with an account of
tests made with various sorts of manure, as
regards their influence on crops : —

" There were sowen in a Bed, " the author tells
us, "Turnip-seed, Radish-seed, Wheat, Cuccumber-
seed, and Pease. The Bed we call a Hot-bed, and
the Manner of it is this. There was taken Horse-dung,
old, and well-rotted. This was laid upon a Banke,

92 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

halfe a foot high, and supported round about with
Planks ; And upon the Top was cast Sifted Earth, some
two Fingers deepe, and then the seed Sprinkled upon
it, having beene steep'd all night in Water mixed
with Cow-dung. The Turnip-Seed, and the Wheat
came up halfe an inch above Ground, within two
days after, without any Watring. The Rest the third
day. The experiment was made in October ; And (it
may be) in the Spring the Accelerating would have
been the speedier. This is a Noble Experiment ; For
without this helpe this would have beene foure times
as long in comming up. ... It may be tried also with
Cherries, Strawberries, and other Fruit, which are
dearest, when they come early. "

He adds as to strawberries : —

" Strawberries watered now and then (as once in
three dayes) with Water, wherein hath beene steeped
Sheepes-Dung, or Pigeon-dung, will prevent and come
early. And it is like the same Effect would follow in
other Berries, Herbes, Flowers, Graines, and Trees.
And therefore it is an Experiment, though vulgar in
Strawberries, yet not brought into use generally : For
it is usuall to helpe the Ground with Mucke ; And
likewise to recomfort it sometimes with Mucke put
to the Roots ; But to water it with Muckewater,
which is like to be more forcible, is not practised."

Here we have our liquid manure fore-

Bacon as a Gardener. 93

shadowed. I proceed to cite another experi-
ment with different kinds of dressing : —

"There was Wheat, steeped in Water, mixed with
Cow-Dung, other in Water mixed with Horse-Dung,
other in Water mixed with Pigeon-Dung, other in
Urine of Man, other in Water mixed with Chalke
powdred : other in Water mixed with Soot, other in
Water mixed with Ashes, other in Water mixed with
Bay-salt, other in Claret wine, other in Malmsey,
other in Spirit of wine. The proportion of the mix-
ture was, a fourth part of the Ingredients to the others,
save that there was of the Salt not above an eighth
part. The Urine, and Wines, and Spirit of wine, were
simple without mixture of water. The time of the
steeping was twelve houres. The Time of the yeare
October. There was also other Wheat sowen un-
steeped, but watered twice a Day with warme water.
There was also other Wheat sowen simple to compare
it with the rest. The Event was : that those that were
in the mixture of Dung, and Urine, and Soot, Chalke,
Ashes, and Salt, came up within six dayes : And those
that afterwards proved the Highest, Thickest, and most
Lustie, were : first, the Urine ; next, the Salt ; next, the
Wheat simple of it selfe, unsteeped and unwatered ;
next, the watered twice a day with warme water^;
next, the Claret wine. So that these three [two] last
were slower than the ordinary Wheat of it selfe ; and
this Culture did rather retard than advance. As for
those that were steeped in Malmsey and Spirit of

94 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

Wine, they came not up at all. This is a Rich Experi-
ment for Profit."

In the Jewel- House of Art and Nature, by
Sir Hugh Platt, 1594, there is a representa-
tion of an ear of summer barley, forty-five
inches long, grown in ground manured with
soap ashes. In South Australia the experi-
ment has been tried of placing a peach-stone
in the ground, and dressing the latter regularly
with soapsuds, with the result that a strong
plant has been reared, and abundance of fruit
obtained.

Bacon was, of course, aware that excessive
nourishment was prejudicial to vegetation;
but we are accustomed to consider that that
is more universally the case than he seems to
intimate as his opinion, for he says : " Dung,
or Chalke, or Bloud, applied in Substance
(seasonably) to the Roots of Trees, doth set
them forwards. But to doe it unto Herbs,
without a mixture of water or earth, it may
bee these Helpes are too Hot." No doubt ;
and the result often is also in regard to many
fruit-trees, that where the ground is too rich,
they run to wood, except such plants as

Bacon as a Gardener. 95

strawberries and raspberries, or such as the
rose, which are not easily over-manured.

He does not forget that there is another
essential requisite in keeping trees in a state
of full bearing strength.

" Besides the two Means of Accelerating Germina-
tion formerly described, the Mending of the Nourish-
ment and Comforting of the Spirit of the Plant, there
is a third ; which is the Making way for the Easie
Comming to the Nourishment, and drawing it. And
therefore gentle Digging and Loosening of the Earth
about the Roots of Trees, And the Removing Herbes
and Flowers into new Earth, once in two yeares,
(which is the same thing ; For the new Earth is ever
looser,) dothe greatly further the Prospering and
Earlinesse of Plants.

"But the most admirable Acceleration by Facili-
tating the Nourishment, is that of Water. For a
Standard of a Damaske Rose with the Root on, was
set in a Chamber, where no Fire was, upright in an
Earthen Pan, full of Faire Water, without any Mixture,
halfe a Foot under the Water, the Standard being more
than two foot high above the Water : Within the
Space of ten dayes the Standard did put forth a faire
Greene leafe, and some other little buds, which stood
at a stay, without any Shew of decay or withering,
more than seven Daies. But afterwards that Leafe
faded, but the young Buds did sprout on ; which after-

9 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

ward opened into faire Leaves, in the space of three
Moneths ; and continued for a while after, till upon
Removall wee left the Triall. But note that the Leaves
were somewhat paler, and lighter-coloured, than the
Leaves use to bee abroad. Note that the first Buds
were in the End of October ; and it is likely that if it
had beene in the Spring time, it would have put forth
with greater strength, and (it may be) to have growne
on to beare Flowers. By this Meanes, you may have,
(as it seemeth) Roses set in the Middest of a Poole,
being supported with some stay ; Which is Matter of
Rarenesse and Pleasure, though of little Use. This
is the more strange, for that the like Rose-standard was
put, at the same time, into Water mixed with Horse-
dung, the Horse-dung about the fourth Part to the
Water ; and in foure Moneths space (while it was
observed) put not forth any Leafe, though divers Buds,
at the first, as the other.

"A Dutch Flower, that had a Bulbous Root, was like-
wise put, at the same time, all under Water, some two
or three Fingers deepe; and within several dayes rooted,
and continued long after further Growing. There were
also put in a Beet-Root, a Borrage-Root, and a Raddish-
Root, which had all their Leaves cast almost close to
the Roots, and within six weekes had faire Leaves,
And so continued till the end of November.

" Note that if Roots, or Pease, or Flowers may bee
Accelerated in their Comming and Ripening, there is
a double Profit ; The one in the high price which these
things bear when they come early ; the other in the

Bacon as a Gardener. 97

Swiftnesse of their Returnes : For in some Grounds
which are strong, you shall have a Raddish, etc., come
in a Month ; that in other Grounds will not come in
two ; And so make double Returnes."

These and other similar memoranda have
for us a high and enduring interest — an in-
terest created and sustained by the vast
and imperishable fame of the writer. It is
excessively likely that we have at the pre-
sent moment among us many respectable
nurserymen who have never heard the name
of Bacon, and who, if this book were placed
in their hands, would pronounce his experi-
ments empirical and his remarks obsolete.
From a commonplace standpoint most
assuredly they are, and yet I deem them
worth reproducing here, because they illus-
trate one of the less familiar aspects of a
many-sided intellect.

The value and bearing of these observa-
tions in the eyes of practical or scientific
specialists of our day are not a matter, I
apprehend, of the smallest consequence.
But we have to look at the man and the
time. We have to r nember his imperfect

98 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

training and opportunities, the incessant
demands on him from official and social
duties, and his manifold literary engage-
ments. Yet what minute and affectionate
attention to all the details of the garden,
what a wide and inexhaustible sympathy with
the beauties and wonders of Nature, these
pages of the Sylva Sylvarum disclose to us !
No point is too minute to attract and deserve
his notice ; and the operations conducted
under his eye are described as copiously and
enthusiastically, although they may refer to
some comparatively trivial matter, as if they
formed the key-stone to a new system of
philosophy. Of this we have witnessed
evidence in the passages already cited, and
we shall meet with abundance of similar
traits as we proceed.

After a series of elaborate directions for
grafting roses, Bacon refers to a common
notion of his time in relation to fruit trees.

" Men have entertained a Conceit," says he, "that
sheweth prettily, Namely, that if you graft a Late-
comming Fruit upon a Stocke of a Fruit-tree that
commeth early, the Graft will beare Fruit Early ; as a

Bacon as a Gardener. 99

Peach upon a Cherry ; And contrariwise, if an Early-
Comming Fruit upon a Stocke of a Fruit Tree that
Commeth late, the Graft will beare Fruit late, As a
Cherry upon a Peach. But these are but Imagina-
tions, and untrue. The cause is, for that the Cions
overruleth the Stocke quite ; And the Stocke is but
Passive onely, and giveth Aliment, but no Motion to
the Graft."

Here is another idea, which still forms
part of the popular creed, and perhaps
rightly : —

" A Tree, at the first Rooting, should not bee shaken,
until it hath taken Root fully : And therefore some
have put two little Forkes about the Bottome of their
Trees, to keepe them upright ; But after a yeares
Rooting, then shaking doth the Tree good, by Loosen-
ing of the Earth, and (perhaps) by exercising (as it
were) and stirring the Sap of the Tree."

It is in this case, as in others, a truism,
that there is scarcely perhaps a first-class
florist of the day, who could not revise every
page of the Sylva Sylvarum, and who might
not characterize it as a waste of time even to
peruse such a volume. Of course, the same
argument may be employed towards all
obsolete treatises on progressive sciences ;

I OO Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

but it is really one of small validity as a rule,
and so far as Bacon is concerned of none
whatever.

What we have to do here is to throw our-
selves back two centuries or so, and stand
by the side of this illustrious man, realizing
the difficulties under which he worked, the
important public avocations which demanded
his time and thought, the slender encourage-
ment afforded to such subjects and such
inquiries ; and then, when we have armed
ourselves with the means of more truly
judging, let us consider his ardour in experi-
mental philosophy, his minute attention to
details, his cordial interest in all topics
connected with Nature, his wide range of
culture and largeness of sympathy, his
comprehensive grasp and his profound and
delicate insight, and his descent from the
woolsack to investigate the economy of
manure beds. Only More before him had
displayed any share of this versatility of
genius and breadth of learning on the part of
a professional lawyer and a lord chancellor;
and in the long roll of keepers of the Great

Bacon as a Gardener. 101

Seal there is but a single other name which
we can couple with those earlier two — the
name of BROUGHAM. But to return to the
Sylva Sylvarum. Speaking of wall fruit, the
author observes : —

" It is usually practised, to set Trees that require much
Sunne, upon Walls against the South ; as Apricots,
Peaches, Plums, Vines, Figs, and the like. It hath a
double Commoditie ; The one, the^dtfofthe Wall\>y
Reflexion ; The other, the Taking away of the Shade ;
For when a Tree groweth round, the upper Boughes
over-shadow the lower : But when it is spread upon a
Wall, the Sunne commeth alike, upon the upper, and
lower Branches.

" It hath also been practised (by some) to pull off
some Leaves from the Trees so spread, that the Sunne
may come upon the Bough and Fruit the better.1 There
hath been practised also a Curiositie, to set a Tree upon
the North-Side of a Wall, and at a little height, to draw
him thorow the Wall, and spread him upon the South-
Side: Conceiving that the Root and lower Part of the
Stocke should enjoy the Freshnesse of the Shade ;
and the Upper Boughes, and Fruit, the Comfort of
the Sunne. But it sorted not ; the Cause is, for that

1 This idea is not generally approved at present,
because, if the foliage is too thin when the fruit is
swelling, the heat of the autumn sun on the wall
is apt to draw the moisture.

IO2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

the Root requireth some Comfort from the Sunne,
though under the Earth, as well as the Bodie : and
the Lower Part of the Bodie more than the Upper,
as wee see in Compassing a Tree below with straw.

" The Lownesse of the Bough, where the Fruit com-
meth, maketh the Fruit greater, and to ripen better; For
you shall ever see in Apricots, Peaches, orMelo-Cotones,
upon a wall, the greatest Fruits towards the Bottome.
And in France the Grapes that make the Wine, grow
upon low Vines, bound to small Stakes. And the raised
Vines in Arbours make but Verjuyce. It is true, that in
Italy, and other Countries, where they have hotter
Sunne, they raise them upon Elmes, and Trees ; But I
conceive, that if the French Manner of Planting low,
were brought in use there, their Wines would be
stronger and sweeter. But it is more chargeable in
respect of the props. It were good to trie whether a
Tree grafted somewhat neare the Ground, and the
lower boughes onely maintained, and the higher con-
tinually proined off, would not make a larger Fruit"

These are his remarks and suggestions on
grafting :—

' ' There is no doubt but that Grafting (for the most
Part) doth meliorate the Fruit. The Cause, is manifest ;
For that the Nourishment is better prepared in the
Stocke, than in the Crude Earth: But yet note well, that
there bee some Trees, that are said to come up more
happily from the Kernell, than from the Graft ; As the

Bacon as a Gardener. 103

Peach and Melocotone. The Cause I suppose to bee,
for that those Plants require a Nourishment of great
Moisture ; And though the Nourishment of the Stocke
be finer, and better prepared, yet it is not so moist,
and plentifull, as the Nourishment of the Earth. And
indeed we see those Fruits are very Cold Fruits in their
Nature.

" It hath beene received, that a Smaller Peare, grafted
upon a Stocke that beareth a greater Peare, will become
Great. But I thinke it is as true, as that of the Prime-
Fruit upon the Late Stocke; Kn&econtroverso; which we
rejected before : for the dons will governe. Neverthe-
lesse it is probable enough, that if you can get a dons
to grow upon a Stocke of another kinde, that is much
moyster than his own Stocke, it may make the Fruit
Greater, because it will yeeld more plentifull Nourish-
ment ; Though it is like it will make the Fruit Baser.
But generally the Grafting is upon a drier Stock; As the
Apple upon a Crab; the Peare upon a Tkorne; &c. Yet
it is reported, that in the Low-Countries they will graft
an Apple-Cions upon the Stock of a Colewort, and it will
beare a great flaggy Apple; The Kernell of which, if it
be set, will bee a Coltxvort, and not an Apple. It were
good to trie, whether an Apple-Cions will prosper, if it
be grafted upon a Sallow, or upon a Poplar, or upon an
Alder, or upon an Elme, .or upon an Horse- Plumme,
which are the moystest of Trees. I have heard that it
hath been tried upon an Elme, and succeeded.

" It is manifest by Experience, that Flowers Removed
wax greater, because the Nourishment is more easily

1 04 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature^

come by. in the loose Earth. It may bee, that Oft
Regrafting of the same Cions, may likewise make Fruit
greater ; As if you take a Cions, and graft it upon a
Stocke the first yeare ; And then cut it off, and graft it
upon another Stock the second yeare ; and so for a third ;
Or fourth yeare; And then let it rest, it will yeeld after-
ward, when it beareth, the greater Fruit."

Naturally Bacon is more or less frequently
found basing his conclusions on imperfect
information or data ; but at all events he dis-
carded most of the vulgar errors of his time
in relation to philosophical and scientific
investigations. He says : —

"There are many Ancient and Received Traditions
and Observations, touching the Sympathy and Antipathy
of Plants; For that some will thrive best growing neare
others ; which they impute to Sympathy: And some
worse ; w* they impute to Antipathy. But these
are Idle and Ignorant Conceits ; And forsake the true
Indication of the Causes; as the most Part of Experi-
ments, that concerne Sympathies and Antipathies doe.
For as to Plants, neither is there any such Secret Friend-
ship, or Hatred, as they imagine ; And if we should be
content to call it Sympathy, and Antipathy, it is utterly
mistaken ; For then- Sympathy is an Antipathy, and
their Antipathy is a Sympathy : For it is thus ; Whereso-
ever one Plant draweth such a particular Juyce out of

Bacon as a Gardener. 105

the Earth, as it qualified! the Earth ; So as that Juyce
which remaineth is fit for the other Plant, there the
Neighbourhood doth good ; Because the Nourishments
are contrarie, or severall : But where two Plants draw
(much) the same Juyce, there the Neighbourhood
hurteth ; For the one deceive th the other."

A little farther on, he has more to tell us
about these superstitions, absurdities, and
prejudices : —

" Some of the Ancients, and likewise divers of the
Moderne Writers, that have laboured in Naturall
Magick, have noted a Sympathy, between the Sunne,
Mootie, and some Principall Starres; And cetaine Herbs,
and Plants. And so they have denominated some Herbs
Solar, and some Lunar ; And such like Toyes put
into great Words. It is manifest, that there are
some Flowers, that have Respect to the Sunne, in
two Kindes ; The one by Opening and Shutting; And
the other by Bowing and Inclining the Head. For
Mary-golds, Tulippas, Pimpernell, and indeed most
Flowers, doe open or spread their Leaves abroad,
when the Sunne shineth serene and faire : And
againe, (in some part,) close them, or gather them in-
ward, either towards Night, or when the Skie is over-
cast. Of this there needeth no such Solemne Reason to
be assigned ; As to say, that they rejoyce at the pre-
sence of the Sunne; And mourne at the absence thereof.
For it is Nothing else, but a little Loading of the Leaves.

106 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

and Swelling them at the Bottome, with the Moisture
of the Aire ; whereas the drie Aire doth extend them :
And they make it a Peece of the wonder, that Garden
Clover will hide the Stalke, when the Sunne sheweth
bright ; Which is nothing, but a full Expansion of the
leaves. For the Bowing 'and Inclining the Head ; it is
found in the great Flower of the Sunne; in Marigolds,
Wart-wort, Mallow- Flowers j and others. The Cause
is somewhat more Obscure than the former ; But I take
it to bee no other, but that the Part against which the
sunne beateth, waxeth more faint and flaccide in the
Stalke ; And therby lesse able to support the Flower"

Like his contemporary Shakespeare, he
did not scruple or disdain to avail himself
of all possible vehicles for illustration or
comparison. When he wrote the passage
which I copy below, he had in his remem-
brance a scene at which he had been present;
it is a curious bit — a fragment of the popu-
lar street-life of London, which one would
have rather expected to encounter in the
pages of Strutt or Brand : —

" What a little Moisture will doe in Vegetables , even
though they be dead, and severed from the Earth,
appeareth wel in the Experiment of higlers. They
take the Beard oi an Oate; which (if you marke it well,)

Bacon as a Gardener. 107

is wreathed at the Bottome and one smooth entire
Straw at the Top. They take onely the Part that is
Wreathed, and cut off the other, leaving the Beard
halfe the Breadth of a Finger in length. Then they
make a little Crosse of a Quill, long-wayes of that Part
of the Quill, which hath the Pith ; And Crosse-wayes of
that Peece of the (?«i7/ without Pith ; The whole Crosse
being the Breadth of a. Finger high. Then they pricke
the Bottome where the Pith is, and thereinto they put
the Oaten-beard, leaving halfe of it sticking forth of
the 'Quill : Then they take a little white Box of wood,
to deceive Men, as if somewhat in the Box did worke
the Feat : In which, with a Pinne, they make a little
Hole, enough to take the Beard, but not to let the
Crosse sinke downe, but to stick. Then likewise by
way of Imposture, they make a Question; As, Who is
the Fairest Woman in the Company ? Or, Who hath a
Glove, or Card ? And cause Another to name divers
persons : And upon every Naming they stick the Crosse
in the Box, having first put it towards their mouth, as if
they charmed it ; And the Crosse stirreth not ; But
when they come to the Person that they would take ;
As they hold the Crosse to their Mouth, they touch the
Beard with the Tip of their Tongue, and wet it ; And so
stick the Crosse in the Box ; And then you shall see it
turne finely and softly, three or foure Turnes ; which is
caused by the untwining of the Beard\sy the Moisture.
You may see it more evidently, if you sticke the
Crosse betweene your fingers, in stead of the Box ; And
therefore you may see, that this Motion, which is

io8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

Effected by so little Wet, is stronger than the Closing
or Bending of the Head of a Marigold"

His Sixth Century Bacon opens with a dis-
quisition on what he calls Curiosities, such
as the growth of several kinds of fruit on
one tree, coreless fruit, double flowers, and
flowers of special colours. I wish very
heartily that I had space to accommodate a
few more extracts from this extraordinary
work ; but I must ask the reader to be satis-
fied with one more, and that on the subject
of degeneration by neglect : —

" The rule is certaine, that Plants for want of Cul-
ture, degenerate to be baser in the same Kinde ; And
sometimes so farre, as to change into another Kinde.
I. The Standing long, and not being Removed, inaketh
them degenerate. 2. Drought, unlesse the Earth of it
selfe bee moist, doth the like. 3. So doth Removing
into worse Earth, or Forbearing to compost the Earth ;
As wee see that Water-Mint turneth into Field-Mint ;
And the Colewort into Rape by Neglect, &c.

" Whatsoever Fruit useth to be set upon a. Root, or a
Slip, if it be sowne, will degenerate. Grapes so^vne, Figs,
Almonds, Pomgranate Kernels sowne ; make the Fruits
degenerate, and become Wilde. And againe, Most of
hose Fruits that use to be grafted, if they be set of

Bacon as a Gardener. 109

Kermis, or Stones, degenerate. It is true, that Peaches,
(as hath beene touched before,) doe better upon Stones
Set, than upon Grafting: And the Rule of Exception
should seeme to be this ; That whatsoever Plant re-
quireth much Moisture, prospereth better upon the
Stone, or Kernell, than upon the Graft. For the
Stocke, though it giveth a finer Nourishment, yet it
giveth a scanter, than the Earth at large.

" Seeds, if they bee very Old, and yet have strength
enough to bring forth a Plant, make the Plant degene-
rate. And therefore skilfull Gardiners make triall of
the Seeds, before they buy them, whether they be good
or no, by Putting them into Water gently Boyled j
And if they bee good, they will sprout within halfe
an Houre.

" It is strange which is reported, that Basill too much
exposed to the Sunne, doth turne into Wilde Time :
Although those two Herbs seeme to have small Affinity;
but Basill is almost the onely Hot Herbe, that hath Fat
and Succulent Leaves ; Which Oylinesse, if it be
drawne forth by the Sunne, it is like it will make a
very great Change.

" There is an old tradition, that Boughs of Oake, put
into the Earth, will put forth Wilde Vines : Which if it S\
be true, (no doubt, ) it is not the Oake that turneth into
a Vine, but the Oake-Bough Putrifying, qualifieth the
Earth, to put forth a Vine of it selfe."

He has a good deal to say about the colours
of flowers and fruit, and after pointing out to

1 1 o Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

us that in berries the white is commonly
more delicate and sweet in taste, as in grapes,
rasps, currants, and strawberries, so in fruit
the white is usually inferior : —

"As in Peare-Plums, Damasins, &c. And the
Choicest Plummes are blacke ; The Mulberrie, (which
though they call it a Berry ', is a Fruit,*) is better the
Blacke, than the White. The Harvest White- Plumme,
is a base Plumme ; And the Verdoccio and White Date-
Plumme, are no very good Plummes. The Cause is, for
that they are all Over- watry : Whereas an higher Con-
coction is required for Sweetnesse, or Pleasure of
Taste ; And therefore all your dainty Plummes, are a
.little drie, and come from the Stone ; As the Muskle-
Plumme, the Damasin- Plumme, the Peach, the Apricot,
&c. Yet some Fruits, which grow not to be Blacke,
are of the Nature of Berries, sweetest such as are
Paler; As the Cceur-Cherry, which inclineth more to
White, is sweeter than the Red ; but the Egriot is
more sowre."

Bacon was instrumental in laying out and
planting the garden and grounds of the Inn,
of which he is the greatest ornament. Much
of the space which he secured for this object
still remains consecrated to the original
purpose; but Verulam Buildings have en-

Bacon as a Gardener. 1 1 1

croached on a portion ; the average lawyer
or parson has no sentiment; the Antients
of Gray's Inn are as destitute of esprit as
the members of Convocation or the Dome
of St. Paul's.

Contemporary with Bacon lived Richard
Gardiner, of Shrewsbury, who in 1603 put
forth Profitable Instructions for the Manuring,
Sowing, and Planting of Kitchen Gardens.

The Preface of this work is addressed by
the writer to "his loving neighbours and
friends, within the towne of Shrewsburie, in
the countie of Salop ; " and it is manifest
from the tone and language of it, as well as
from the presence of two prayers at the end
by way of peroration, that Gardiner was in
holy orders, although no mention of that fact
occurs on the title. He seems to say that
at that date the condition of horticulture in
Shropshire among the lower ranks was very
unsatisfactory ; but he trusts that his publica-
tion will inaugurate an improved state of
affairs, and in a copy of encomiastic verses
by a friend, Edward Thome (or Thornes, of
Melverley), this sanguine view is supported

112 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

and echoed. I am afraid that I should not
be thanked for quoting Thorne at large ;
yet let me give four lines of his doggerel
eulogy : —

4 ' The rich likewise and better sorte,

His labours could not misse :
Which makes them many times to thinke,
That Salop London is."

To do no more than justice to Gardiner
himself, however, his tract deals in a sensible
and practical way enough with the subject
undertaken. He includes beans, carrots,
turnips, onions, cucumbers (which Thorne,
by the way, approaches nearer to the French
by terming concombers), artichokes, cabbages,
lettuces, and parsnips ; and he very strongly
represents the advantage which might accrue
from a more extended cultivation of these
vegetables, especially carrots, instead of de-
pending on the continental supply, which
afforded to the foreigners so lucrative a
trade. He dwells most in detail on the
carrot.

He particularises three species as being

Bacon as a Gardener. 113

then known among us, or at least in
Shropshire, — the great long yellow carrot,
the great short carrot, and the wild carrot ;
of which the last was worthless for culinary
purposes. We cannot help observing that,
besides his devout preface and the prayers
which wind up his Instructions, he lays stress,
in common with most, if not all, of the old
school, on an observance of the planetary
conditions essential to the successful growth
of crops. But he quaintly intersperses
ordinary rules for sowing or planting with
pious sentiments and even objurgations ;
for, in speaking of the vendors of bad
seed, he denounces them as Caterpillars,
declares them worthy of execution, avers
that the Almighty God doth behold this
monstrous deceit, and trusts that He will
either turn their hearts or confound their
proceedings.

So saith the mild and meek pastor. If he
had only known it, his little book would
have been infinitely more agreeable without
this theological bitterness and invective. It
is so far a gain that in the concluding Prayers

8

114 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

he has not brought in any pleasant wishes
for the fraudulent seedsmen, and, indeed,
these compositions seem to have nothing to
do with the rest of the volume, as they might
with equal propriety have been tacked on to
anything else.

If one turns back to Bacon, after perusing
the pages of such a man, what a distance in
intellect there seems to be between the
Viscount St. Alban and this worthy Salopian
kitchen-gardener ; and yet, measured by his
rural contemporaries, the latter is to be
viewed as a reformer and the holder of
enlightened opinions.

X.

HERBS AND VEGETABLES — HIGH PRICE OF
VEGETABLES IN EARLY TIMES — THE
SUBURBS OF LONDON CELEBRATED AS A
GROWING-GROUND — RARITY AND ESTI-
MATION OF THE POTATO — ASPARAGUS —
SANITARY VALUE OF VEGETABLES.

|ARSLEY, garlic, fennel, chibbals
or small onions (the civolli or
cepula of Johannes de Garlandia),
the leek, and other important factors in
the culinary art were now in general use, not
only among the professed cooks of the
wealthier classes, but among the cottagers,
whose humble fare they contributed to
render more savoury.

Among vegetables the surviving records
of the fifteenth century indicate the parsnep,
the beetroot, the lettuce, the green pea, and

1 1 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

others of which I shall give an account ; and
of fruit and other trees, the pearmain (a
species of apple mentioned in Drayton's
Polyolbion as a novelty), the pomegranate, the
bullace-plutn, the mulberry, the masculum
(which is glossed orange), the damson, the
filbert, the almond, the dog-rose, the syca-
more, and the cedar. The peach was also
known, as well as the apricot or apricock;
but the nectarine is not specified ; it may,
like the apricot, have been included among
the plums, although in the stone and skin
both so materially differ therefrom.

Onion (yne-leac) and garlic (gar-leac) have
been noticed as entering into the cookery of
the eleventh or twelfth century.

Now enters the onion-seller as an inde-
pendent calling, shewing how largely that
precious esculent began to enter into our
cookery ; and also the vendor of apples.

The Spanish onion was in use in the time
of Charles II. Evelyn reports it in his letter
to Lord Sandwich (1668) : —

"The Spanish onion seed is of all other the most
excellent, and yet I am not certain whether that which

High Price of Vegetables. 1 1 7

we have out of Flanders and St. Omers be all the
Spanish seed which we know of. My Lady Clarendon
(when living) was wont to furnish me with seed that
produced me prodigious crops."

The radish, as well as the onion, had been
known in the eleventh century. Worlidge
says: " Radishes in the more Southern
Countries are a delicate meat, especially if
sown in brackish lands, or watered with
brackish waters, and therefore were they in
such esteem with the Egyptians." He goes
through the various known kinds, including
the horse-radish, which was then already in
vogue as a sauce.

An entry in the Privy Purse Expenses of
Henry VII., under May 24th; 1496, seems
to point to the payment of a reward — and a
very handsome one — for a dish of green
peas very early indeed in the season. They
must have been reared in a very sheltered
spot, or with artificial warmth. The amount
given to the donor was 3^. 4^/.=^i of our
money. The item runs thus : " To a man
for a present of pescoddes $s. ^d" This
could scarcely have been for seed, as it was

1 1 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

too late to sow them ; the character of the
premium offered suggests a more immediate
gratification of the royal palate.

The peck of green peas, which is said
to be offered for sale annually at Covent
Garden Market for sixpence as a customary
obligation, is not claimed till the ist of
June.

The artichoke described by Turner and
Gerarde, authors of Herbals between 1550
and 1597, is that of which the head supplies
the edible portion. Turner recommends that
the leaves should be boiled with wine and oil.
Gerarde tells us that they were sometimes
eaten raw with pepper and salt, or else
boiled in broth with pepper seasoning, and
served "with other junkets." Parkinson, in
his Theatre of Plants (1629), speaking of the
Jerusalem or sun-flower artichoke, which is
totally distinct, seems to say that they used
in his day to make pies of the tubers boiled,
" which," he assures us, " are a delicate kind
of baked meat."

The common artichoke is evidently, as
Pliny noticed, an evolution from the thistle ;

Subtirbs of Lonaon< 119

and it is the only species of the latter which
is eaten on the hither side of the Tweed.

The suburbs of London were enjoying in
the time of James I., as they probably had
under his predecessor, a high character for
the vegetables, especially cabbages and
lettuces, which they sent to market. Busino
the Italian, who was here in 1617 — 18, and
who disparages our wine and our fruit, speaks
highly of our cabbages. It is highly curious
to find a custom, which I remember still
prevalent at Brompton in and about 1840,
mentioned by our visitor as coming under
his observation more than two centuries
before — I allude to the practice of partaking
of fruit at the nurseries, and gathering it
on the spot ; and another odd thing Busino
noted, which was the way the people in
London had of eating fruit in the streets as
they went along, as well as at places of
amusement.

It is incidentally brought to light, at the
same time, that in 1619 the prices for some
descriptions of vegetables were extravagantly
high. Lysons says that " in the bill for

1 20 Gleanmgs in Old Garden Literature.

Alleyn's foundation dinner at Dulwich,
September 13th, 1619, two cauliflowers are
charged 3^. (about QS. perhaps according to
the present value of money), thirty lettuces
4^/., sixteen artichokes $s. 4^., while carrots,
turnips, rosemary, and bays are estimated
only at ^d. altogether.

It is well known that the POTATO was
introduced into England in the reign of
Elizabeth, and Gerarde the Herbalist, who
had some in his garden in Holborn, figures
a specimen in his book printed in 1597.
He informs us that he had received one
from Virginia ; but we are left under the
necessity of conjecturing whether he was
indebted for the present to the hands of
Sir Walter himself, and whether it is the
very one engraved. Both he and Dr.
Venner of Bath considered the potato con-
ducive to flatulency, like the Jerusalem arti-
choke.

A recipe for a tart which occurs in Dawson's
Good Housewife's Jewel (i 596) treats a potato
as a leading ingredient, — a testimony to the
rate at which the vegetable was then prized,

Rarity of the Potato. 1 2 r

like some newly-landed product from rich
Cathay or Araby the Blest :—

" Take two quinces, and two or three burre rootes
and a Potaton, and pare youre Potaton and scrape your
roots, and put them into a quart of wine, and let them
boyle till they bee tender, and put in an ounce of dates,
and when they be boiled tender, drawe them through
a strainer, wine and all, and then put in the yolkes of
eight eggs, and the braynes of three or four cocke-
sparrowes, and straine them into the other, and a
little rosewater, and seeth them all with sugar, cinna-
mon, and ginger, and cloves, and mace ; and put in a
little sweet butter, and set it upon a chafing-dish of
coles between two platters, to let it boyle till it be
something bigge."

Long after the age of Elizabeth the potato
remained a rarity in this country. As Dr.
Rimbault has pointed out, it was long ranked
with the date, the orange, and the plum of
Genoa ; and from a passage in Massinger's
New Way to pay Old Debts (1633), it may
be inferred that it was at that period still
regarded as a dainty.

It seems to be thought that potatoes were
first propagated in Ireland in 1610 or there-

122 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

abouts, just when James I. was carrying out
the plantation of Ulster.

Worlidge remarks that potatoes are much
used in Ireland and in America as bread,
and are of themselves also an usual food ;
which is to some extent an explanation of
the pa'ins which John Forster, of Hanlop,
took in 1664 to bring the potato into notice
and more general use as a vegetable. They
planted them in the same way as ourselves ;
and Worlidge acquaints us that in Wales they
were accustomed to cultivate both them and
the artichoke on the vacant spaces along the
highways, — those green slips of ground about
which so much is being now said.

But while we listen to what Worlidge has
to tell us about the conversion of the potato
to farinaceous objects, we must bear in mind
what Venner has set down about its ordinary
employment as a vegetable in 1620. The
reader of these pages will recollect the tradi-
tion that the first tubers from Virginia were
given by Sir Walter Raleigh to the grand-
father of Sir Robert Southwell. The root
had, perhaps, been known in Spain prior to

Asparagus. 123

its introduction among us ; but, although
those imported from Spanish ports hither
were distinguished from such as came from
America, both doubtless were of a common
Virginian parentage. In the earlier part of
the seventeenth century, however, the Spanish
potato was still preferred to those of English
growth.

In the' most ancient bills of fare many
products of the kitchen-garden, which have
long acquired a commonplace character, were
still deficient, as asparagus, sea-kale, the
cucumber, the artichoke, and, among fruits,
the melon, the gooseberry, and the currant ;
unless, owing to the obscure nomenclature,
they evade our recognition.

But the asparagus was extensively grown
in the seventeenth century, and the cultivated
sort seems to have been brought from
Holland, although it was found wild in
Worlidge's time (1677) in many places, in-
cluding some meadows near Bristol; "wild
or at least some bastard kind of them," are
his words, and he adds, " But our more fair
and large, usually called Dutch Asparagus,

124 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

are propagated from seed." He goes at
greater length into the method of propagation
than I have any commission or need to do ;
but I may just note that he judged it time
to let the plants run to seed, when green peas
and the Jerusalem artichoke came in.

Evelyn, in his letter to Lord Sandwich,
August 2isr, 1668, confirms his lordship's
estimate of the wild asparagus in Lincolnshire
and elsewhere, and describes it as " small and
bitter, and not comparable to the cultivated."

The practice of salting vegetables in early
days probably arose from the imperfect know-
ledge of the succession of sorts, especially in
the north, rather than from their scarcity.
But it appears that so late as 1595 high
prices were still paid for imported cabbages
and carrots. At a later date, Hull was a
celebrated mart for cabbages and onions, of
which the latter were sold, as now, by the
rope. From abroad, particularly from the
Netherlands, new varieties found their way
to us, and a specimen for seed was, of
course, at all times a welcome gift either to
the professional or private grower.

Value of Vegetables. 1 2 5

Vegetables, however, in the course of
time, really abounded. With the exception
of a few, which have been more modernly
introduced, the tables of Charles II.'s Eng-
lishman and Englishwoman wanted little in
this way.

Their more extensive use in England was
attended by the unexpected and beneficent
effect of diminishing the ravages of leprosy.
This fact was first pointed out by Gilbert
White, in his Natural History of Selborne ;
and there is little doubt, as I have suggested
elsewhere, that the public health of England,
and our pecuniary interests also, would be
profited by a larger recourse to fish and
green food and a more restricted employ-
ment of butcher's meat.

A free resort to vegetables, together with
the removal of the necessity for using salt
flesh to so great an extent, has also been
instrumental in liberating us from a second
scourge, — the scurvy, for which an English
naval surgeon, * in the time of Charles I., was

* The Surgeon's Mate, or Military and Domestique

126 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

the earliest who discovered and recom-
mended the old remedy of lemon-juice.

Surgery. By John Woodall, Master in Chirurgery.
London, 1639, folio. For fuller particulars see
Hazlitt's Bibliographical Collections, 2nd series, 1882,
P- 659-

XL

FRUIT-TREES — HOME-MADE WINE — BEER
— BACON AND SHAKESPEARE ON THE
STRAWBERRY.

|HE cultivation of the vine was
prosecuted with much assiduity
here in the sixteenth century. A
Nominate of that date devotes a short
section to the several terms applied to that
valuable plant and its parts, and to the
fruit. We find four Low Latin words for
the grape> besides one for what is called the
raisin ; and the compiler, in introducing
vinea, does so in a way which helps us to
believe that grape-growers had become in
his day numerous and successful. He says :
" Hec vinea, est locus ubique usitatus"

The Italian visitor to Burleigh in James I.'s
time, Orazio Busino, already cited, expressed

128 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

to Lord Exeter a doubt whether the grapes
which he tasted there could be made into
good wine ; but there is no doubt that wine
of domestic vintage was commonly used,
though not many degrees removed, perhaps,
from the true vin ordinaire which you find
in the cottages of the French peasantry.
Lord Exeter told his Italian caller that his
people were more hopeful as to the kind of
compound which the Burleigh grapes would
make. But until the artificial process of
growth under glass at a high temperature was
understood, our home-reared grapes were as
sour as the October peach in a cold autumn
is to-day. It is only in exceptional seasons
that our out-of-door sweet-water grape arrives
at present to anything approaching perfection.
Wine of all sorts was, of course, to be had
here from a very early date at a compara-
tively moderate price. Whittinton, in his
Vulgaria (1524), says: "A gallon of swete
wyne is at viii. pens in London." It appears
from an original license, granted by Sir
Walter Raleigh in 1584 to Jeffery Bradshawe
of Bradford, Yorkshire, to keep a wine

Home-made Wine. 129

tavern, that the price of French wines whole-
sale was then about £11 a tun, and the
retail price sixteen pence a gallon, and that
sack, malmsey, and other sweet sorts were
;£8 the butt or pipe, and about two shillings
the gallon.

The culture of the vine and the utilisation
of its fruit as well as that of other trees and
plants for producing wines, attracted con-
siderable attention during the reign of
Charles II.

The principal early authors on this par-
ticular branch of the subject are Hughes,
Worlidge, and Rose, of whom the last had
been gardener to the Duchess of Somerset,
and was subsequently taken into employment
by the king. He was on friendly terms with
Evelyn, and to the third edition of the
French Gardener (1675) is annexed his Eng-
lish Vineyard, on the separate title of which
he is described as " Gardiner to His Majesty
at His Royal Garden in St. James's." The
essay arose out of a conversation between
Rose and Evelyn in the garden at Essex
House, and the remarks of the former ap-

130 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

peared so pertinent, that Evelyn advised him
to commit his notions to paper, and supplied
him with the portion of it which relates to
the preparation of wines.

The other two publications to which I
have referred above were not identical in
scope. That by Hughes, printed before
1670, deals principally with the treatment
and propagation of the vine, while the Vine-
turn Britannicum of the accomplished
Worlidge (1676) was dedicated rather to
the manufacture of cyder and other drinks
derived from fruit, with a description of a
cyder-press; and when he re-issued his
volume in 1678 and 1691, he appended an
Apiarium, or Discourse on Bees, — a subject
which, as I must take this opportunity of
mentioning, had been handled by Thomas
Hill and Edmund Southerne in the reign of
Elizabeth, and by Remnant, Levett, and
others, in the following century, but by no
one so capably as by Worlidge.

Besides such men as Evelyn and Rose, and
the professional writers on the subject, we
find Sir William Temple trying to improve this

Home-made Wine. 131

branch of horticulture, in his beloved retreat
or "corner," as he called it, at Sheen. In
August, 1667, he tells Lord Lisle, that he is
contriving how the riches of Sheen vines may
be improved by half a dozen sorts which are
not known there, " and which I think much
beyond any that are."

There is a vine of hoar antiquity at
Valentines, near Ilford, in Essex, the residence
of my late friend Dr. Ingleby; I question
whether there be many such in England.
That at Hampton Court is venerable enough,
but the Ilford one is alleged to be its
senior, nay, the very plant to which it owed
its being, as sire and son are seen of a
like altitude and girth, the one mounted to
his prime, the other still undeclined from it.

But while natural causes have always
precluded England, as they always will in
human likelihood, from becoming a wine-
growing centre, there is no doubt that for a
considerable length of time in what may be
called the middle period of our history, not
to speak of the Anglo-Saxon epoch, the vine
was industriously cultivated here, and some

132 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

sort of crude beverage extracted from it,
which, under the name of verjuice, was
largely utilized in ancient cookery. In recent
times, moreover, as at Kirke's Nursery, at
Old Brompton, grapes were reared with
success for wine; and no doubt both the
white and black small sorts in favourable
seasons may still serve such a purpose on an
inconsiderable scale ; but that England could
have ever produced grapes as she produces
other crops, or that the manufacture was
ever used at the tables of the great and rich,
I apprehend to be most improbable.

Yet Lysons, in his Environs (1795), refers
to a caper tree in the garden at Campden
House, Kensington, as having flourished and
borne fruit every year for a lengthened period
in the open air. It was sheltered from the
north, and looked to the south-east.

In the fifteenth century it was not a
bunch, but a branch of grapes.

Mead, which was among ourselves, in a
ruder condition of social development, a
staple article of supply and a favourite
stimulant, and for which recipes are found

Beer. 133

in cookery books down to the last century,
continues to be in general demand in Africa,
where most of the tribes, according to the
account of Commander Cameron, manufac-
ture this liquor, just as we used to do, from
the honey of the wild bee.

They have a second liquor there called
pombe, distilled from rice, like our arrack.
There are many still living who recollect the
rack punch at Vauxhall, and at the old
restaurant kept by Simpson at Billings-
gate.

In Norway they have a similar liquor ex-
tracted from the potato, and called Finkel ;
the natives are very partial to it, and not un-
frequently take it to excess. But they also
use arrack.

Mead and metheglin are, of course, the
same word. Horman, in his Vulgaria (1519),
has "we shall drynke methe or metheglen."

The learned and enthusiastic Worlidge, in
the second edition of his Vinetum Britannicum
(1676), describes, as I have mentioned, the
new ingenio or mill for making cyder ; but I
have before me a tract which he published

134 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

some years later, entitled The Most Easie
Method for making the Best Cyder (1687).

He speaks very highly of this beverage,
saying : —

"It is generally known, that few foreign drinks, as
they are handed to us, are comparable to our English
Cyder well made : Those being so adulterated in the
several hands through which they pass, that they
corrupt instead of repair, the Natures of them that
drink them ; "

so that the dishonest sophistication and
illegal marriage of wines are an old story.

He divides his monograph into sections,
thus :—

" I. The choice of the Fruit.

"II. The Times for gathering and grinding Apples
for Cyder.

"III. The manner of grinding and pressing of
Apples for Cyder.

"IV. The ordering of Cyder after it is pressed.

" V. The ordering of Cyder in the first Reeking.

" VI. The ordering of Cyder after it is superfine."

At the end he announces that

" This subject will be treated of more at large in
the Second Part of Vinetum JBritannicum, now ready
for the Press."

Beer. 135

But there was no edition between 1678
and 1691. The account is very interesting,
but at the same time purely technical.

Perry is first named, so far as I can find,
in Nicholas Breton's Fantasticks (1626). I
quote from the edition of 1661, published
under his own name by Matthew Stevenson,
with the title of the Twelve Momths ; he
mentions it under October thus : — " Make
your Winter Cider and Perry."

The pear and apple orchards of Hereford-
shire were already famous in the seventeenth
century.

The early manufacture and development
of beer among the English is of course con-
nected with the culture of the hop plant;
and I may refer the reader to what is,
perhaps, the first work where the matter is
treated technically and specially, though
certainly not in detail — the Treatise on
Brewing, by Hagecius or Hajck (1585),
which seems to be the most ancient mono-
graph upon this science that we possess.

The passage where this author describes
our drink is not very lengthy, and as it

136 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

occurs in a little volume of the utmost rarity,
I shall venture to copy it : —

"Potus, quo communiter Angli vtuntur, multiplex
est : nempe vehemens, medius & imbecillior. Dis-
crime inter hos penes vehemetiam & imbecillitatem
calfactionem & refrigerationem, & penes substantive
crassitiem et tenuitatem habetur. Apud Anglos
triplex semper paratur potus, nempe aquosus, quern
simpliciter Ceruisiam dicunt j medius, quern tricapa-
ninam ; potens, quern duplam Ceruisiam nuncupant.
Simplex eosdem eflfectus praestat, quos vinum aquosum:
aperit siquidem, refrigerat et distributionem adiuvat.
Nee decipiatur aliquis credens, ob eius amaritudine
calfacere partes enim, quse Ceruisiam amaram red-
dunt, pauca admodum sunt, si ad reliquas conferas,
quae in ipsa refrigerant Quod colligere ex ratione
lupulorum poteris ad aquae et hordei portiones. Cito
praeterea amaritudo a Ceruisia euanescit : reliquarum
vero partiu facultas tarn diu permanet, donee in aliam
transmutatur substantiam. Potens Ceruisia, qua
duplium dicunt, potenter calefacit, et aliquid habet
vehementiae, ut potens vinum. Tricapanina mediae
naturae est ; manifeste calefacit, in mallo tamen
vehemens est."

He proceeds to remark on another kind
of beer, called Ale (Alia) ; and the whole
passage is worth attention, since we seem

Bacon on the Strawberry. 137

to be without any English work equally
early, which deals with the malt liquor,
brewed from hops, in use during the Tudor
period.

The raspberry, under the name of the
hindberry, occurs in the eleventh century
vocabulary, which we have so often had
occasion to cite, as a herb. It was probably
the wild variety, and may have been used
for distillation. The strawberry is in the
same list.

The white strawberry Bacon, in his Sy!va\
Sylvarum (1627), seems to prefer to the red,\
just as he does the white currant, white rasp \
berry, and white grape. But the ordinary
red variety is certainly the favourite at
present, and has a superior flavour. The
white, or rather pink, one is very common
in Ireland, and used to be much grown
also here.

In the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry VII.,
under June 3oth, 1493, a woman receives
is. %d. for bringing the king cherries and
strawberries. This amount was, as in other
cases, not the price of the fruit, but "in

138 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

reward," otherwise royal largess. This
fact is nowhere, perhaps, more curiously
exemplified, than in another item in the
same record, where a woman gets five
shillings on November 7th, 1494, for two
glasses of water.

I think it exceedingly probable that both
the strawberry and the raspberry were at first
only known in this country in their wild
varieties still surviving. In Shakespeare's
time both descriptions of fruit had doubt-
less been improved ; and he probably
transfers to the previous century his obser-
vation of the strawberries which grew in
Holborn in his own day, where he makes
the Duke of Gloucester, in Richard III.,
ask the Bishop of Ely to send for some of
the "good strawberries" which the Duke
said he had seen lately growing in his lord-
ship's garden. The glimpses which we shall
presently gain of the much earlier garden of
Lord Lincoln in that locality, and of the
royal grounds at Westminster, with the
cherries and peaches which they yielded,
taken with the fact that Holborn was the

Shakespeare on the Strawberry. 139

residence in 1597 of Gerarde, author of the
Herbal, encourage a presumption that the
strawberry had in the Elizabethan period
attained some degree of development.

There is this in regard to its early history
to be noted, that, while Shakespeare, in a
play published in 1597, makes a bishop
grow strawberries which live in the memory
of a king, his contemporary Bacon, in the
essay lately cited, only names a fruit which
flourished in shady places. Both writers
were describing alike what they had person-
ally seen and eaten. But, on the whole, there
is very slight likelihood that in the Elizabethan
time the strawberry was very much advanced
beyond the plant which still grows luxuriantly
in certain soils and aspects, and the long-
shaped fruit of which yields an edible seed-
vessel of small size but agreeable flavour.
In the West of England it occurs at the
present day of a larger size than usual, and
the elongated form of the vessel, which con-
stitutes the fruit, is very noticeable.

The pottle in which strawberries used to
be sold within living recollection, and which

1 40 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

helps to attest the small size of the fruit in
former times, goes back to the fifteenth or
even the fourteenth century ; it is as old as
the days of Lydgate. But the term was
also applied to a vessel for holding liquids.
Wolsey and the Prior of Dunmow are both
commemorated as regaling themselves on
strawberries and crearn. In 1549 a pottle
of strawberries is said to have cost ten-
pence, which is rather to be attributed to
some accidental circumstance than to any
improvement in the culture, for Henry VIII.
ordered 3*. %d. to be given to some peasants
who brought him what can only have been
the wild berries.

From a Metrical Vocabulary of the
fourteenth century we may add the ban-nut
or walnut, the warden-pear, the poplar, the
wild vine, the juniper, the ivy, and the
bay-tree.

The warden-pear was formerly much used
for cooking purposes, as well as for baking ;
and our ancestors in the time of Shakespeare
had warden-pies. One Quinby, of New
College, Oxford, they say, having been

The Warden-Pear. 141

imprisoned by his warden for favouring the
Reformation, was asked by his friends what
he would eat, and he replied, A Warden-pie :

' ' But I would have it made only of two wardens,"
he added, ' ' our Warden of Oxford and our Warden
of Winchester. For such a Warden-pie might do me
and many another Christian good ; but give me no
wardens of the tree, for they could not be any
comfort to me."

The warden-pie was composed of meat as
well as pears. In the Winter's Tale, the
clown is made to say : " I must have saffron
to colour the warden-pies." From a passage
in Beaumont and Fletcher's Cupid's Revenge
(1615), we may conclude that the pear itself
was usually eaten roasted : —

" I would have him roasted, like a warden,
In brown paper."

The French call this pear/0z>£ de garde.

XII

FRUIT-TREES (continued} — THE PEACH, THE
QUINCE, THE MEDLAR, THE PINE-APPLE,
AND THE POMEGRANATE — INTRODUC-
TION OF THE BLACK MULBERRY —
RHUBARB — LEMONS — THE TOOL-HOUSE
ESPALIERS AND PRUNING — FOREST
TREES — ANCIENT SURVIVALS — HOOKE'S
" MlCROGRAPHIA " AND MOSSES.

|HE peach, which is far hardier even
than some sorts of pears and plums,
seems to have been successfully
grown. Mr. Wright notices an official record
of slips planted in the royal garden at
Westminster in 1276 ; and we have evidence
equally formal of the presence of the pear
of St. Regie and many others in the Earl of
Lincoln's garden in Holborn twenty years

The Peach and the Quince. 143

later. Both these gardens were also well
provided with cherry trees, and the latter
was assiduously cultivated from the twelfth
century downward. Gower, the poet, who
died an old man in 1408, refers to cherry
feasts, as well as cherry fairs, in his Confessio
Amantis.

In the Dictionary of Garlandia (thirteenth
century) occurs persica, which Mr. Wright in-
terprets persica=Mala persica=- peaches ; but
I should not like to be sure of this without
some corroboration. The garden in which
these persica grew was not in England, but
at Paris.

The French Gardener (1658) gives thirty-
eight varieties of this noble fruit. Perhaps
there are as many still in use. The large
October Peach only arrives at perfection
with us, as regards flavour and sweetness, in
late seasons — at least in the open air.

The quince, which is no longer used to any
large extent in cookery, and seems to have
grown out of favour, was among our Saxon
forefathers a rather conspicuous factor in its
particular province. One almost regrets its

144 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

deposition from its antique rank among its
peers, for it is a noble ingredient in an apple
tart in the proportion of one to twelve, and
as a conserve it is quite sui generis.

Recipes for pickling quinces are very usual
in early collections. The fruit thrives best
in the immediate neighbourhood of running
water, and it requires a boat to gather it
from the branches of the trees overhanging
the Wandle in Surrey.

It is singular that the flesh of the quince in
texture and odour resembles the pine, whose
partiality for water it partakes, while it leaves
behind on the palate a flavour similar to an
onion.

"Quinces," says Breton, in his Fatttastic&s (1626),

under September, "should not be kept with other
fruit, for the scent is offensive both to the other fruit,
and to them that keep it, or come amongst it ; there-
fore lay them by themselves in sweet straw, where
they may have Ayr enough ; they must be packt with
Medlars, and gathered with Medlars."

A reference to the present writer's Mono-
graph on Cookery in this series, where he
furnishes a Selection of Recipes, will at once

The Medlar and the Pine- Apple. 145

shew how far more extensive than in these
days was the utilisation of the quince, not
only for preserving purposes, but for the
manufacture of wine.

The medlar occurs under January 2nd,
1498-9, in the Privy Purse Expenses of Henry
VII., where 3^. 4^. is given to Sir Charles
Somerset to reimburse him for some medlars
and warden pears, which he had received for
the king at Westminster.

This old-fashioned fruit, which seems to
have been in great vogue with former genera-
tions, had a popular name, which supplies
the pith of one or two stories in the Jest-
Books, but which is scarcely reproducible.

The picture, formerly at Strawberry Hill,
which represents Rose, the royal gardener,
presenting to Charles II. a pine-apple
or ananas, is the earliest testimony to the
native cultivation of that plant, in which the
English growers still maintain a pre-eminence.
Attention to it was doubtless drawn by
specimens imported from America, where, as
in any other climate which is at once warm
and moist, it flourishes without care, but

TO

146 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

never approaches the excellence of the
cultivated sorts.

In swampy tropical districts the pine
flourishes and grows wild. But even in the
genial climate of the south of Italy and
France it does not come to any perfection,
owing to the too great prevalence of dry
weather.

We learn from Maloniana that Mr. de
Vyme, who was present during the earth-
quake at Lisbon in 1755, first introduced it
into Portugal. It was long, however, before
it was much grown there.

In India they have, besides other varieties,
a sort much smaller than the West Indian one.

In regard to the pomegranate, Evelyn's
letter of 1668 to Lord Sandwich contains the
subjoined paragraph : —

"Your Excellency has rightly conjectured of the
pomegranate. I have always kept it exposed, and the
severest of our winters does it no prejudice. They
will flower plentifully, but bear no fruit with us, either
kept in cases and the repository, or set in the open
air ; at least very trifling, with the greatest industry
of stoves and other artifices."

The Black Mtdberry. 147

Among the valuable importations from
North America, at the end of the sixteenth
and opening of the next century, was the
Common or Black Mulberry tree, a fruit-bearer
of slow growth in a strange climate, but
precious on account of its fruit and foliage.
We do not hear much of the former, however,
which constitutes its chief attraction in our
eyes; nor do I, I confess, subscribe to the
conjecture (for it is apparently no more)
that the pyne of the ancient Nominalia
is identical herewith ; but about 1607 an
energetic endeavour was made to propagate
the tree throughout England for the sake
of breeding the silkworm, and establishing a
native manufacture of the produce. James I.,
however, requested lieutenants of shires to
co-operate in this enterprise. Instructions
for the planters were printed ; and Olivier de
la Serre, a Frenchman residing in London,
and Nicholas Goffe prepared between them
a substantial volume on the subject, with an
address to the reader, dated from Bacon
House, May 2oth, 1607, almost as if the
owner was one of the prime movers in the

148 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

business — a not unlikely thing, as the king
evidently had its success so much at heart.
It was rather an unfortunate scheme, for the
black variety grows very slowly, and its leaves
are not so favourable for the purpose as those
of other kinds ; yet at the same time it
was not a matter of option, since no other
sort would have lived in England.

Besides the request addressed to the lieu-
tenants of counties, a strenuous effort was
made in the metropolis itself, or rather in
what was at that time a suburb, — namely, in
the immediate vicinity of St. James's Palace
and adjacent to the present Buckingham
Palace, where some ground was appropriated
to a mulberry plantation, with the necessary
houses and appliances for the rearing of the
silkworms and the manufacture of the fabric.

But the experiment failed ; royal commands
will not always prevail ; and the only advan-
tage which the country derived from it was
that very few districts within a moderate
distance of London were unprovided with
specimens of the Virginian Forester. In
the immediate neighbourhood of the metro-

The Black Mulberry, 149

polis there are several, especially about
Chelsea and Fulham. One in Cheyne Walk,
Chelsea, has the honour of having been
planted by Queen Elizabeth claimed on its
behalf; and so have one or two others,
sooth to say.

It is scarcely likely, indeed, that any of
the original trees planted at the commence-
ment of the seventeenth century are now in
existence ; but that may be what the writer
of an excellent paper on the subject in the
revised edition of Chambers's Encyclopedia
(1874) means, when he refers to living
specimens which had weathered three
centuries.

Even in the city of London itself they
had the mulberry. Until the ground was
devoted to the formation of wharves, the
garden of Vintners' Hall, in Upper Thames
Street, ran down to the river, and contained
some of these trees, under which the mem-
bers and their friends sat and smoked.
The mulberry is reared from seedlings or
from truncheons.

The Gentleman's Magazine for February

150 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

1797 notices the death of Mr. S. Brigs,
the last surviving member of a Society of
Herbarists at Norwich, who, among other
services to horticulture,

" Were the first to cultivate and propagate the
rhubarb plant in this country ; which they effected so
successfully, as to rival in colour, flavour, and medi-
cinal virtue, the roots of the Russia and Turkey
kind."

But the fact is that rhubarb, as a drug,
had been known more than two centuries
prior to the decease of Mr. Brigs. For in
Gosson's Plays Confuted in Five Actions
(1580), it is said that the physicians con-
sidered this medicine hot, yet it cooled the
hottest fevers. Nor is the writer in the
magazine happier, I think, in his statement
that the home-grown root equalled that im-
ported from China, and popularly known
as Turkey rhubarb. It has not even yet
reached that point of perfection. Evelyn
saw it growing in the Physic Garden at
Oxford in 1654.

The application of the plant to the pur-
poses of the table does not seem to go farther

Rhubarb. 151

back than 1820, when Mr. Myatt, of Dept-
ford, undertook the utilisation of the stalks
as a fruit.

In all these very early sources of informa-
tion we fail to meet with certain esculents,
which have grown too familiar to ourselves
to attract much attention, — sea-kale, the
tomato, the vegetable marrow. These have
been of comparatively recent introduction.

Preserved lemons were sold by the con-
fectioners in James I.'s time. Perhaps they
were so imported from the Continent.
Brathwaite, who wrote in or before 1617 his
Rules and Orders for the Government of the
House of an Earl, in adverting to the growth
of luxury and extravagance, says that the
old plain fashion of bringing the dishes to
the table pleased no longer, but they must
come —

" Garnished about with sugar and preserved plums,
the meat covered over with orangeade, preserved
lemons, and with divers other preserved and conserved
stuff fetched from the confectionaries."

Citrons are mentioned, however, as I have

152 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

shown above, in Breton's Fantasticks (1626),
as being usually set in April — probably under
glass.

Mr. Wright has explained the frequent
occurrence of the pine and the reason for
its cultivation among the Anglo-Saxons by
the employment of its kernels in the same
way as we now use olives.

The favourite flavouring and colouring
ingredient in ancient cookery was saffron.
In the home counties, Saffron-Walden in
Essex was the leading nursery-ground, and
in token and recognition the arms of the
town bear three saffron plants. But in the
country the nobility had their own saffron
beds in a separate enclosure or yard under
lock and key, pans for drying it, and tubs
for preparing it for culinary purposes. For
a long period it was far too dear to come
within reach of the middle class; in the
reign of Henry VI. a pound must have been
worth nearly a sovereign of money of the
time ; and it at first occurs sparingly even
in recipes for dishes of the most expensive
character.

The Tool-house. i 5 3

One or two of the plates to the French Gar-
dener (1675) exhibit the systems of walled
enclosures and parterres, which still survive
in many places, and the walls are trellised
for fruit-trees or vines. But the art of nail-
ing up the branches with shreds appears to
have found its way among the horticulturists
in the succeeding century.

The bygone gardener had at first a very
narrow assortment of tools. The vocabula-
ries mention, so far as I can see, only an
axe, a grafting-knife, a spade, and a pruning-
hook.

But later onward — in the Tudor time — he
was much better provided, or at all events
our information as to his implements grows
ampler. We hear of a barrow, a mattock, a
spade, a shovel, a short and a long rake, and
two kinds of fork, one called in the vocabu-
laries a/2/raz, the other a merga.

But the conduct of horticultural opera-
tions, however imperfect according to modern
ideas, involved the employment of many
other appliances, which at once suggest
themselves to the mind, and of which

154 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

we possess no actual record at first, because
they did not fall within the scheme of the
makers of the Nominah and the Glossary,
and had become too established and familiar
to attract special attention, when the earliest
writers on the garden appeared.

It is only in a casual way that our acquaint-
ance with the contents of the Anglo-Saxon
or later English tool-house comes to us. Such
men as Evelyn and Worlidge did not dream
that we should like to have been informed, not
merely of the seasons and modes of planting
and pruning, and of the trees and plants
which our ancestors cherished and handed
down to us, but likewise that we should
care to have had it in our power to contrast
with the present facilities for managing a
garden those which prior generations en-
joyed.

A pruning-hook is seen in the hand of one
of the figures in the plate illustrating April
in Stevenson's Twelve Moneths (1626-61).
In the same engraving a woman holds a
primitive watering-pot Stevenson, under
June, judiciously remarks : —

Espaliers and Pruning. 155

" Take heed of cutting Trees, Hedges,ror Herbs with
a knife, but rather gather them with your Finger."

But the truth is that the graphic portion of
the volume is merely a series of foreign
prints, Dutch or German, utilised to lend
an additional attraction to the English publi-
cation, though it is at the same time likely
enough that our own implements and those
of Germany and Holland were almost identi-
cal ; and in fact, not merely the illustrations,
but the text of Stevenson, are largely borrowed
from Breton's Fantastics (1626).

From a fifteenth-century MS. of Bartholo-
meus De Proprietatibus Rerum, it is inferable
that some system was known and employed
of training fruit-trees in the espalier mode
now so familiar ; it was a word derived from
the old French espauk.

A very fair general notion of the policy
and taste of our ancestors, a couple of cen-
turies since, in laying out their grounds
and gardens, according to their respective
means, is derivable from such works as Les
Delices de la Grande Bretagne, and from the
illustrations to some of the treatises on

156 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

gardening. Incidentally we come across
helpful light of this sort in books not speci-
ally dedicated to horticulture, as in two or
three of the plates to Kennett's Parochial
Antiquities (1695), where there are views, very
serviceable for the immediate purpose, of
Borstall manor house, of Mr. John Coker's
residence, of Robert South's Manse at
Islip, and of Sir John Walter's seat at
Saresden, all in Oxfordshire. In these repre-
sentations the details are furnished with a
fidelity and minuteness for which one ought
to be grateful, as it puts us in possession of
the manner in which the men of the end
of the seventeenth century arranged their
borders and walks, of the aspect of their
demesnes and frontages, and of the course
which they pursued in walling or paling the
space round their houses. All these interest-
ing points are more lucidly worked out in the
engravings to Kennett than in others, where
little more than a ground-plan is visible, as
in fat Jar din de Wilton by Isaac de Caus,
for instance.

I do not find in our own early literature

Forest Trees. 157

any data for forming an opinion as to the
method of pruning pursued in former times
here; and it is fairly questionable whether
our ancestors bestowed much attention on
the matter, as it remains one of which com-
paratively few gardeners possess a competent
knowledge.

In the time of George III. William
Forsyth enjoyed a good share of royal
patronage and favour, and was appointed
to the charge of the gardens at Kensington.
He seems to have been an intelligent man,
and to have devoted attention to the very
important subject of pruning fruit-trees. He
also made an attempt to provide a remedy
for that serious evil, the canker, for the cure
of which he invented some composition, but
which is, however, still among the problems
to be solved in arboriculture. Some trees,
such as the Ribstone pippin, seem to be
peculiarly prone to this malady.

He published his book on gardening in
1802, under the title of A Treatise on the
Management and Culture of Fruit- Trees ;
there is an edition as late as 1824, with a

158 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

portrait of the author ; and it has been
translated into French.

The willow is mentioned in the fourteenth
century treatise of Walter de Biblesworth ;
but it is not the willow of our meadows and
gardens, which was not introduced till a
much later period. It is, in fact, the common
withy.

Among the additions to our stock of forest-
trees in Worlidge's time (1677) was the
Horse-Chestnut.

" The tree," he narrates, "is very lately made
English, being brought in its seed or Nuts from Con-
stantinople ; it prospers very well here in good light
mold ; its buds all the winter, and until it springs, are
covered with a shining, glutinous matter or gum, and
about the beginning of May it usually makes its whole
year's shoot in eight or ten days."

The sweet or true chestnut is of older
naturalisation here, and with the ash has
been long used, specially grown in coppices,
for hop-poles. The visitor to Cowdray Park,
near Midhurst, in Sussex, should note the
fine avenue of Spanish chestnuts. But this
variety is very common in all parts of England.
It is only one of many edible sorts.

Forest Trees. 159

The subject of Forest-trees brings us to a
thought of those venerable contemporaries of
so many generations, some of the ancient
tenants of our parks and chases, which have
seen race supplant race, dynasty succeed to
dynasty ; veterans which form a link almost
between the Anglo-Saxons and ourselves. If
the Talking Oak of Tennyson had been of this
group, what might it not have told us of our
national story beyond the possibilities of pen
and ink ! I refer with much pleasure to the
paper by Mr. Brailsford " On Some Ancient
Trees," in the tenth volume of the Antiquary.

Mr. Joseph Lucas, in his valuable Studies
in Nidderdale, remarks : —

" Nidderdale and its moors have formerly been
covered by an extensive forest. Many trees lie buried
in the peat upon the moors. In the thousands of
sections made by little water-courses the birch appears
almost everywhere predominant. Hazel, ' sealh
[sallow],' thorn, oaks, etc., also occur; but the birch
must have formed a thick and almost universal forest
by itself, such as may be seen on the west coast of
Norway at the present day. "

This graceful tree is extraordinarily hardy.
Among the Alps it flourishes in rocky ground

1 60 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter atiire.

with scarcely any apparent soil to nourish
and support its roots.

Mr. Lucas adds a table of the various
trees of which remains are traceable in the
peat.

The nature of mosses was beginning to
be better understood in Charles II.'s day,
and the invention of the microscope
enabled the student to arrive at a more
accurate knowledge of the plant and its
mode of reproduction. It is interesting to
find that the uses of science were in this case
so promptly applied to practical purposes.
Hooke had published his Micrographia in
1667, and therein foreshadowed the
telephone.

CHAPTER XIII.

FLORA — THE TULIP, THE ROSE, THE
JESSAMINE — ABERCROMBY'S WORKS.

Alfric's tenth-century vocabulary,
under the Names of Trees, we
have various kinds of oak, two
sorts of hazel, the nut, the beech, the laurel,
the apple (probably a crab), the pear, the
medlar, the pine, the yew, the plum, the fig, the
palm, the fir, the elm, the broom, the maple,
the poplar, the heath, and many others. The
list is extremely curious, and from the absence
of any attempt at classification we may be
entitled to form some idea of the want of any
settled principles for laying out shrubberies,
plantations, and gardens. It is much the same
in the passage where Johannes de Garlandia
is communicating to us what grew in his own
grounds ; he adds, by the way, the vines, the

ii

1 62 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

chestnut, and others. The plum mentioned
above was apparently not the sloe, as the
latter also occurs lower down in the catalogue ;
the palm was, of course, the common plant
which is popularly so christened, and does
duty for the real kind ; and the pear, like the
plum, must have been at this time very im-
perfectly cultivated here. It may be added
that in the two eleventh-century vocabularies
there are other plants and herbs, such as
mint, white clover, fern, foxglove, two or
three sorts of thistle, and mugwort, and
among trees box and ash. But as regards
many of the names the compiler seems not
unfrequently to have had confused and
erroneous notions of the Saxon equivalents
for the Latin denominations. The virtues of
mint were understood very early ; it is said
that in the time of Edward I. it was in vogue
as a condiment, much in the same way that
it is now, under the name of aigre-douce.

The anonymous vocabulary of the succeed-
ing century adds sothern-wood, the rose,
the peony, linseed, gorse, the nettle, the
knee-holly, and many others, sufficient to

Flora. 163

shew that our Saxon ancestors were abund-
antly supplied in, or not much later than, the
age of Alfred with the means of forming
gardens and ornamental enclosures, and with
material for the distillery and the surgery.

We may also judge that at this distant
time our moors and commons were already
clothed with that exquisite and brilliant
gorse which is yet so luxuriant among us,
but, singularly enough, unknown in climates
similar to our own. What accident or
agency brought it hither? What prevented
it from making other northerly regions
sharers with ourselves in its unique nature
and beauty ?

The story of the great Swedish naturalist,
when he visited England and beheld the
bush for the first time, is too familiar for
repetition.

Even in the list of trees which we find in
the fourteenth century treatise of Walter de
Biblesworth the various kinds are mingled
together without any effort to discriminate;
the apple, pear, cherry, ash, broom, plum,
and hawthorn occur in consecutive order;

1 64 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

and as they are connected, so probably they
grew in the gardens of our forefathers.

Among the flora of the fifteenth century
occur the lily, the water-lily (of two varieties),
the cowslip, the poppy, the pimpernel, the
violet, the primrose, the wild thyme of Shake-
speare, the columbine, and many more —
some disguised by obscure and obsolete desig-
nations.

In Worlidge's work the tulip engrosses a
section. He places it at the head of the
Bulbs, and says that there was then (1677)
so great a variety that they were not to be
enumerated.

"Nor is it," he continues, "all the words I can
invent can convince you of the beauty of these
Glories of Nature, but must refer you to the choice
your self or friend for you can make out of that
Magazine of varieties that are collected for the
ingenious Florist."

This is historically interesting ; and it seems
to denote that our supply was imported from
Holland, and that our own dealers were
only agents. Worlidge does not allude to
any extraordinary enthusiasm for the bulbs,

The Tulip, Rose, and Jessamine. 165

nor does he particularise the rare black sort.
Brilliancy of hue, on the contrary, he
commends, and suggests when the flower
discovers a tendency toward a sadder colour,
that it should be taken up just before the
flowering season and laid in the sun.

He describes the Persian and Indian
jessamines, the Spanish broom, by which he
means the cultivated yellow variety, and the
double flowering peach and cherry ; and
among bedding or bordering and other plants,
the lily, the hyacinth, the anemone, the lily
of the valley, auriculas, primroses, cowslips.
The Indian Jucca (or Yucca) he also men-
tions ; and his pages clearly demonstrate the
rapid development which maritime discovery
and horticultural enterprise had imparted to
the British Flora and Sylva in the second
moiety of the seventeenth century.

The example and encouragement of men
like Evelyn in his day, and Worlidge in his,
contributed to the formation of a public
taste, which in the succeeding generations
received further expansion and refinement
at the hands of the friends and contem-

1 66 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

poraries of Pope ; and, later again, of those
who directed these matters for George III.
and his surrounders.

Worlidge considered that the rose should
be placed between the tulip and the gilly-
flower, and he preferred the yellow Provence
rose. How the latter was obtained he thus
explains : —

" It hath been obtained by budding a single yellow
rose to the stock of a flourishing Frankfort rose, near
the ground ; when that single yellow is well grown in
that branch, inoculate your double yellow rose ; then
cut off all suckers and shoots from the first and second,
leaving only your last, which must be pruned very near,
leaving but few buds. ..."

He furnishes us with a long catalogue of
roses then grown, and adds the Gelder-rose,
which he not improbably supposes to be a
corruption of Elder-rose, from the resem-
blance of the foliage to that of the so-
named tree.

The Provence rose seems to have been
sufficiently familiar in Shakespeare's time to
have been worn as an article of ornament,
for in Hamlet, iv., 2, the Prince of Denmark

Abercrombie1 s Works. 167

speaks of a man likely to get admission into
a cry of players as wearing two Provencal
roses in his slashed shoes.

Abercrombie's work, Every Man his oivn
Gardener (1766), had a very lengthened run,
and was no doubt deserving of the popularity
which it so long enjoyed. Although it did
not appear till the latter half of the eighteenth
century, it represented the experience of a
man who must have recollected Pope and
the traditions of 1688. I have before me
an edition printed in 1827, in which it is said
to be " by Thomas Mawe, Gardener to His
Grace the Duke of Leeds, and John Aber-
crombie, sixty years a Practical Gardener,"
and now to be " Enlarged and Improved
by R. Forsyth." This I take to be the son
of the Forsyth who was so much patronised
by George III.

In 1784 Abercrombie followed up Every
Man his own Gardener by an even more>
important work: — The Propagation and
Botanical Arrangement of Plants and Trees,
Useful and Ornamental, Proper for Cultiva-
tion in every Department of Gardening ; Nur-

1 68 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

series^ Plantations, a?id Agriculture. . . .
2 vols, small octavo. The title, which is
a sort of Table of Contents, is followed by
a Preface, dated from 319, Oxford Street,
London, in which the author claims credit
for his work as " a truly original performance,
upon a plan never before attempted." The
First portion is devoted to directions for
propagation, pruning, etc., on a more copious
scale than former works; the Second con-
tains the botanical classification and nomen-
clature. We see what rapid progress had
been made, when these volumes appeared,
in the acclimatisation of exotics and enrich-
ment of our gardens with the hardier varieties
of Asiatic and American plants and shrubs.

XIV.

MARKET GARDENS IN THE SUBURBS OF
LONDON — TESTIMONY OF AN ITALIAN
VISITOR IN 1614 — NURSERIES AND
GROUNDS AT OLD BROMPTON, FULHAM,
BATTERSEA, AND DEPTFORD.

|N Italian, named Giacomo Castel-
vetri, who was in London in 1614,
wrote a species of Herbal, still
in MS. in the British Museum among
the bocks of Sir Joseph Banks, in which
he introduces us to a knowledge, which
we should not otherwise have possessed, of
the condition of market gardening near
London in the reign of James I. He
does not tell us much; but what informa-
tion he supplies is especially valuable.
The asparagus, he says, was very small
and very dear in London, its culture not

170 Gleanings in Old Garden Liter attire.

being well understood; he expresses his
surprise that it was not cultivated to a
greater extent, since an acre of asparagus
would, in a short time, yield more profit
than ten acres sown with corn. Artichokes
in England, he observes, lasted the greatest
part of the year, much longer than in Italy.
Cucumbers were then eaten when they were
big and yellow, in England ; in Italy they
ate them when small and green. The
English had two plentiful crops of straw-
berries, the first in the middle of June,
the second in October.

As regards asparagus, the English did not
neglect the suggestion that it might be
advantageously grown in the vicinity of a
profitable market. A fair quantity is still
cultivated at Mortlake. Since Bacon's time,
the strain of the strawberry had no doubt
improved; but I hardly understand what
Castelvetri intends by a second crop in
October. The first is now seldom ready in
the open air before July, except in very
sheltered localities ; but October sorts are
unknown.

Nurseries and Grounds at Brompton. 171

Lysons, writing in 1795, says that the
nursery at Brompton Park, established by
Messrs. London and Wise, gardeners to
William III. and Queen Anne, dated from
about the latter end of the seventeenth
century. And Evelyn records in his Diary
his visit to it with his friend Mr. Waller
(not the poet) in 1694. He was there
again in 1701. " 2nd of September. — I went
to Kensington, and saw the lawn, planta-
tions, and gardens, the work of Mr. Wise,
who was there to receive me." The grounds
lay between Brompton and Kensington ;
from Evelyn mentioning only Wise, it
is presumable that he had lost his part-
ner, Mr. London. The stock of plants
here in 1700 is represented by a contem-
porary as so large that they would have
been worth ^40,000 at a penny a-piece.
This place belonged, when Lysons wrote,
to Messrs. Gray and Wear, and the Grays
were still there in 1840. The present
writer recollects their grounds, as well as
several others.

George London seems to have quitted the

172 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

metropolis whose name he bore, and to
have settled in Nottinghamshire, where he
had something to do with the gardens of
Count Tallard, in the vicinity of Nottingham.
He gave to the world, as a sort of farewell
memorial of a long and useful professional
career, The Retired Gard'ner, with the
Manner of Planting and Cultivating all Sorts
of Flowers for beautifying Country Seats
(1706, 2 vols., small octavo). The book was
accompanied by a description and plan of
Count Tallard's gardens, and by a series of
plates and woodcuts.

Possibly London was related to William
London, of Newcastle, a bookseller, who
settled in the metropolis, and published two
well-known catalogues, which some of the
old bibliographers imagined to have been
the work of Bishop Juxon, because that
prelate signed himself William London,

I have spoken of London and Wise with
appreciative respect, because in relation to
the prevailing taste they held an honourable
position, and according to their training, and
the fashion in such matters which they found

London and Wise. 173

current, did their part. But, as we shall see,
not merely did those florists belong to a bad
school, but they must be said to have
contributed by their influence and advice
to exaggerate the errors and barbarisms
of it.

In common with the leading members of
every profession^ this great firm had much
in its hands for good or the contrary, and
that it had not the genius to detect the
falsity of the principles, in which it had been
brought up, we ought not to be astonished
or offended, inasmuch as those principles
came to them with the weighty sanction of
the most distinguished men of the century.
In a condemnation of London and Wise
we involve a condemnation of Evelyn.

The passion for seeking in the statuary's
yard decorations for the garden had found
its way, like so many other equivocal
blessings, from a country where the line
between the sculptor and the stonemason
was more denned, and where the climate
made marble work interspersed with foliage
more easily endured.

174 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

But it was to the Hollanders that London
and his partner were indebted for that
preposterous plan of deforming Nature by
making her statuesque, and reducing her
irregular and luxuriant lines to a dead and
prosaic level through the medium of the
shears. Gods, animals, and other objects were
no longer carved out of stone ; but the trees,
shrubs, and hedges were made to do double
service as a body of verdure and a sculpture-
gallery. The free growth of the box, the
yew, and the holly was sacrificed to the
mania for the quaint and grotesque in art,
and from the occasional survivals of this
bastard style one gets some imperfect con-
ception of what it must have been, when
it was in its full glory.

As far back as 1715, the founder of
Lee's Nursery at Kensington came up to
London, and acquired extensive grounds
adjacent to the Holland House estate; it
was a flourishing concern during the whole
of the last century and the first half of this ;
the firm grudged no labour or expense in
obtaining the rarest plants, trees, and

Curtis s Botanical Garden. 175

flowers from every part of the world ; but
the greater portion of the nursery is now
covered by buildings.

Curtis's Botanical Garden, which had
been in Lambeth Marsh, was removed to
the north side of the Fulham Road, near
the Queen's Elm, about 1789. The proprie-
tors published an annual catalogue, and
there was a botanical library ; subscribers of
a guinea a year were entitled to admission
to the gardens for self and friend, and
a payment of two guineas gave an un-
limited right of entry and a certain quantity
of seeds, roots, etc. The space occupied by
this business remained open within my recol-
lection, and under other management was
devoted to similar objects, though not on
the same ambitious scale.

Besides the nurseries instituted by London
and Wise, and by Curtis or his successors,
there were others kept in the first half of
this century by Rigby, Siggers, Conway, and
Kirke in the same neighbourhood. There
was another on part of the site of the South
Kensington Museum and Brompton Oratory,

176 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

between Pollard's School and Ingestry
House. Kirke's ground was contiguous
to that of Hale or Cromwell House, and
Kirke used to point out an ancient gateway
communicating with the latter, through
which he was fond of telling visitors
that Cromwell used to pass on his way
to London, the site of the nursery in
his time being, according to tradition,
used as an exercise ground for his body-
guard. Those whose associations connect
them with other outlying portions of the
metropolis, when it was still a city encom-
passed by villages, as mine do me with Old
Brompton, will readily call to mind similar
spots in the north, south, and east of
London, now no more. But I may mention
Middlemist's Cape Nursery at Shepherd's
Bush, where many novelties from the North
African flora were exhibited, the proprietor
having resided there during many years ; and
the Arboretum at Paddington, to which it is
said that the earliest consignment was made, at
the end of the last century, of the American
vegetable marrow, — at least, of our variety of

Nurseries at Battersea, Fulham, etc. 177

it, for there are many which our climate
does not suit. Other sorts have since been
introduced, including a bush marrow and a
small prickly kind, which used to be grown
at Sion House, Isleworth ; but the finer and
more delicate species, like some descriptions
of American fruit, more especially that which
grows in the subtropical parts, are scarcely
known.

At the end of the last century no fewer
than one hundred and forty acres of land
at Bethnal Green were held by market
gardeners.

Battersea, as well as Fulham and Old
Brompton, was a favourite resort of the
calling. Lysons, writing in 1792, when the
aspect of this and other suburban neighbour-
hoods had been scarcely altered, says : —

" About three hundred acres of land in the parish
of Battersea are occupied by the market gardeners, of
whom there are about twenty who rent from five to
six to near sixty acres each. . . . The soil of the
ground occupied by the gardeners is sandy, and re-
quires a great deal of rain. The vegetables which
they raise are, in general, very fine ; their cabbages
and asparagus, particularly, have acquired celebrity.

12

178 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

Fuller, who wrote in the year 1660, speaking of the
gardens in Surrey, says, ' Gardening was first brought
into England for profit about seventy years ago, before
which we fetched most of our cherries from Holland,
apples from France, and had hardly a mess of rath
(early) ripe peas but from Holland, which were
dainties for ladies, they came so far, and cost so dear.
Since gardening hath crept out of Holland to Sand-
wich, Kent, and thence to Surrey, where, though they
have given £6 an acre and upwards, they have made
their rent, lived comfortably, and set many people on
work. Oh, the incredible profit by digging of ground !
for though it be confessed, that the plough beats the
spade out of distance for speed (almost as much as the
press beats the pen), yet what the spade wants in
the quantity of ground it manureth, it recompenseth
with the plenty of the food it yieldeth, that which is
set multiplying abundant-fold more than that which
is sown. 'Tis incredible how many poor people in
London live thereon, so that, in some fashion, the
gardens feed more people than the field.' "

This extract is very pertinent at the
present moment, when we are agitating the
expediency of reconverting into pasture the
unprofitable plough-land. A chronological
catalogue of political grievances might prove
curious; but it is at any rate remarkable
that complaint was formerly made, when

Market Gardens. 179

arable was applied to grazing purposes. The
subject is one which has always possessed
great interest ; but it is now invested with
a new and special importance, and I am
tempted to transcribe from Lysons some
farther remarks on the state of market gar-
dens near the metropolis in old times, and
at the period when he wrote (1792). After
stating that the culture of vegetables for sale
commenced about 1590, he proceeds : —

"In some bills of fare for dinners in 1373, I find
several charges for parsley, sorrel, and strong herbs,
and one charge of I2d. for two dishes of buttered
peason on the 1st of July, which, supposing the value
of money to have been then four times greater, would
now at that season purchase about eight pecks." [He
then repeats what Fuller says above about early peas.]
"What they cost in his time he [Fuller] does not
inform us ; the usual price now, at their first coming,
is from about five shillings to half a guinea a pottle,
afterwards from ten to fifteen shillings the half-

" Gardens for the raising of vegetables for sale
were first cultivated about Sandwich, in Kent. The
example was soon followed near the metropolis, whose
markets are the chief vent for this produce. In pro-
portion as this great town has increased in population
and opulence, the demand for every species of garden

1 80 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

luxury has increased also ; and from time to time
fields have in consequence been converted into
garden-ground, till a considerable proportion of the
land within a few miles of London became occupied
for that purpose. The culture of garden-ground is
principally confined to those parishes which lie within
a moderate distance of the river, on account of the
convenience of water carriage for manure, which
since the prodigious increase of carriages, as well
of hackney and stage coaches, as of those kept by
private families, is procured in great abundance from
the London stables.

" By a general calculation, founded upon inquiries
made in each parish, it appears that there are about
five thousand acres within twelve miles of the
metropolis constantly cultivated for the supply of
the London markets with garden vegetables, exclusive
of about eight hundred acres cropped with fruit of
various kinds, and about 1,700 acres cultivated for
potatoes. Besides which there are perhaps 1,200
acres cropped with various garden vegetables for the
food of cattle, principally cows. This culture is
carried on most extensively in the parishes of
Camberwell and Deptford St. Paul's, by persons who
are called farming gardeners. Their method is to
manure their land to the highest pitch of cultivation
for garden crops, both for the market and for cattle,
after a succession of which they refresh it by sowing
it with corn.

" In the parish of Fulham the cultivation of gardens

Nurseries at Ftilham, Deptford^ etc. 1 8 1

for the market is carried on to a greater extent than
in any other in the kingdom. The quantity occupied
by market-gardeners only is about eight hundred
acres, to which may be added nearly two hundred
more, cultivated for the market by farming gardeners.

"The cultivation of asparagus is carried on to the
greatest extent in the parishes of Deptford St. Paul's,
Chiswick, Battersea, and Mortlake, there being about
1 80 acres of it in the four parishes, of which about
seventy are in Mortlake, which may be said to pro-
duce a greater quantity of that vegetable than any
parish in England.

" Deptford is famous also for the culture of onions
for seed, of which there are on an average about
twenty acres. About ten acres are cultivated for this
purpose in the parishes of Mortlake and Barnes. . . .

" The average rent of garden -ground, in most of
the parishes near London, is now £4. per acre. "

XV.

SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE — WALPOLE AND THE
GARDENERS OF THE EIGHTEENTH CEN-
TURY.*

(BOUT midway between Bacon and
the horticultural amateurs or pro-
fessors of the Georgian period,
there is Sir William Temple, whose fine
gardens at Sheen, already noticed in a
cursory way, occupied a leading rank among
the private grounds in the vicinity of London,
and derived an enhanced interest from the

* Essay on Modern Gardening, by Mr. Horace
Walpole [1770] ; Essai sur PArt des Jardins
Modernes, par M. Horace Walpole. Traduit en
Francis par M. Le Due de Nivernois, en
MDCCLXXXIV. Imprime a Strawberry Hill, par
T. Kirgate, MDCCLXXXV ; 4to, pp. 94, and a leaf
with the first title. With the English and French
texts on opposite sides.

Sir William Temple. 183

personal prestige of their owner, whom
we remember at present through them and
his associations with William III. and
Swift.

It is fortunate for us that Temple, besides
being a politician and a practical horticul-
turist, possessed literary tastes, and thought
proper to insert among his essays one which
he entitles " Upon the Gardens of Epicurus ;
or, Of Gardening in the year 1685."

The heading of the paper is rather apt to
mislead us till we look through the pages
which are occupied with it, and find that it
commences with an account of the Gardens
of the Ancients, and then proceeds to the
end with one of the state of gardening and
fruit-culture, especially at Sheen, as it stood
at the close of the reign of Charles II.

I cannot say that the former or introduc-
tory portion has anything approaching to the
attractive influence which I feel in perus-
ing, at a distance of two centuries, the
opinions and experiences of so distinguished
a personage on a topic so enduringly
fascinating and important. I have not room

1 84 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

for much in the way of extract, but let me
copy out a paragraph or so, where he begins
to speak of his own country and his own
seat : —

" But after so much Ramble into Ancient Times,
and Remote Places, to return Home and consider
the present Way and Humour of our Gardening in
England, which seem to have grown into such Vogue,
and to have been so mightily improved in Three or
Four and Twenty Years of His Majesty's reign, that
perhaps few Countries are before us ; either in the
Elegance of our Gardens, or in the number of our
Plants ; and I believe none equals us in the Variety
of Fruits, which may be justly called good ; and from
the earliest Cherry and Strawberry, to the last Apples
and Pears, may furnish every Day of the circling
Year. For the Taste and Perfection of what we
esteem the best, I may truly say, that the French,
who have eaten my Peaches and Grapes at Shene, in
no very 111 year, have generally concluded, that the
best are as good as any they have eaten in France,
on this side Fountainbkau ; and the first as good
as any they have eat in Gascony ; I mean those
which came from the Stone, and are properly called
Peaches, not those which are hard, and are termed
Pavies ; . . . . Italians have agreed, my White Figs
to be as good as any of that sort in Italy, which is
the earlier kind of White Fig there ; for in the latter
[later] kind, and the Blue, we cannot come near the

Sir William Temple. 185

warm Climates, no more than in the Front ignac or
Muscat Grape.

"My Orange-Trees are as large as any I saw when
I was young in France, except those of Fountainbleau,
or what I have seen since in the Low Countries ....
When I was at Coseivelt with that Bishop of Munster,
that made so much Noise in his time, I observed no
other Trees but Cherries in a great Garden he had
made. He told me the Reason was, because he found
no other Fruit would ripen well in that Climate, or
upon that Soil ; and therefore instead of being curious
in others, he had only been so in the Sorts of that,
whereof he had so many, as never to be without them
from May to the end of September"

He goes on to discuss the size and shape
of gardens, the best descriptions of grapes,
plums, and other fruit, the careful appropria-
tion of walls, and the choice of soil. He
seems to have contributed personally to
extend the resources of English gardens and
greenhouses. He particularly informs us that
he imported from various parts of France
four new sorts of grape : the Arboyse, the
Burgundy, the Black Muscat, and the
Grizzelin Frontignac. Of the three kinds
of fig, he preferred the white, of which there
were two varieties. The Tawny, he tells

1 86 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

us, " is very small, bears ill, and I think
but a Bawble."

Of the gardens of his contemporaries he
has not anything to say, except (and the
exception is worth a good deal) that of the
Countess of Bedford at Moor Park, in
Hertfordshire, on which he dilates, from early
and affectionate recollection, with evident
zest.

"The perfectest Figure of a Garden I ever saw,
either at Home or Abroad, was that of Moor-Park
in Hertfordshire, when I knew it about Thirty Years
ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford,
esteemed among the greatest Wits of her time, and
celebrated by Doctor Donne."

A minute picture of Moor Park follows ;
and Temple takes occasion to remark that,
as regards gardens in general, the form to be
preferred is, in his opinion, an oblong on a
slope.

Separated from the great philosopher of the
age of Elizabeth and James I. by an interval
of about a century and a half, HORACE
WALPOLE, better known to the generality of

Horace Walpole. 187

readers as a writer of Memoirs and Letters,
presents himself to our notice as an authority
on the present subject, but as an authority
not less different in value from Bacon than
the characters and intellects of the two men
differed. In fact, when we look at the
lapse of time between them, it dwindles into
secondary consequence before the immense
disparity and contrast between Elizabeth's
"young Lord Keeper" and the master of
Strawberry Hill. Both were men of genius ;
but their gifts were of a totally different order.
Bacon could not have written Walpole's
Letters, nor could Walpole have given us
the Novum Organum. Nay, he could not
have produced the Sylva Sylvarum.

Walpole's Essay on Modern Gardening was
finished in 1770, but was not printed till
1785, when it came from the Strawberry Hill
press with a French translation by the Due
de Nivernois. We have only to turn over
the pages of this production to arrive at
•the conclusion that the author, if we had
happened to possess no independent or
collateral knowledge of him, was a member

1 88 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

of the fashionable world and a gentleman of
fortune. He tells us, after a brief proem
about the garden of Eden, the Homeric
legend of Alcinous, and the mural records
of Herculaneum, all about his rich and dis-
tinguished relatives and friends, and tells us
as delightfully as he does elsewhere in his
inimitable correspondence.

But Bacon was also nobly born, and had
also high and powerful connections. He
was Lord Chancellor of England under
James I., and his father had kept the seals
under Elizabeth. If Walpole had Straw-
berry Hill and Arlington Street, his prede-
cessor had Gorhambury and Bacon House.
The author of Sylva Sylvarum at least
equalled the Earl of Orford in social influence
and surroundings, and when one recollects
that Bacon divided with Shakespeare the
literary glory of the Elizabethan era, and
that no such two had before, or have since,
appeared in England or in the world, it is a
piece of supererogation to say that in intellec-
tual force Bacon and Walpole were not for
an instant comparable.

Horace Walpole. 189

These pages have to do with a very frac-
tional portion of the labours of either. But
one has only to turn from the Section where
I afforded some select specimens of the
Sylva Sylvarum, to the present, where I deal
with Walpole, to see at a glance how
differently the earlier and later writer set
about their work. The whole thought of
Bacon was of his subject and of the best
mode of rendering his experiments ser-
viceable and his meaning clear. In the
book of which I am now going to give a
short account, there seems throughout to
be an anxiety to crowd into his canvas (as
it were) glimpses of the country seats of all
the great ladies and gentlemen who had
the good fortune to be known by him.
It almost sounds in our ears like a
concession, where he places a person of
quality like Sir William Temple below
Milton ; but it is hard to resist a smile
where he tells us that —

" the description of Eden [by Milton] is a warmer
or more just picture of the present style than Claud
Lorrain could have painted from Hagley or Stour-

Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

head. The first lines . . . exhibit Stourhead on a
more magnificent scale."

Of course, it is obvious enough that the
poet, in depicting Eden, borrowed his notion
of it from the gardens of England in his
own age ; but I merely adduced this com-
parison as a trait which pervades the Straw-
berry Hill essay. Walpole never wrote many
lines without letting everybody know that
he was a man of birth and fashion, and,
to boot, of genius.

Walpole's essay is, nevertheless, very read-
able, very intelligent, and very instructive.
By way of variety, no one can be displeased
to have a better notion of it than there is,
I somehow fancy, at present. With the in-
troductory sketch we can dispense. Its
chief value and interest centre in the re-
marks which the writer has left upon the
gardens and gardening of his own day. In
the opinions and ideas which prevailed in
Bacon's time on horticulture, the manage-
ment of flowers, and the arrangement of
ornamental grounds, the intervening years
had wrought momentous changes. The

Horace Walpole. 191

Dutch and Italian influences had operated,
and, on the whole, no doubt, benefici-
ally, on English taste, and had enlarged
the resources as well as the views of our
countrymen.

Walpole very properly condemns, as Pope
had already ridiculed in verse, the insipid
geometrical style of laying out grounds,
which prevailed, till a reform in such matters
was accomplished by Bridgman, Kent, Capa-
bility Brown, and others, in the second half
of the last century.

" The compass and square," says the Essay, " were
of more use in plantation than the nursery-man.
The measured walk, the quincunx, and the etoile
imposed their unsatisfying sceneries on our royal and
noble gardens. Trees were headed, and their sides
pared away ; many French groves seem green chests
set upon poles. Seats of marble, arbours, and
summer houses terminated every vista, and symmetry,
even where the space was too large to permit its being
remarked at one view, was an essential that, as Pope
observed —

' . . . Each alley has a brother,
And half the garden just reflects the other.'

Knots of flowers were more defensibly subjected to

192 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

the same regularity. 'Leisure, 'as Milton expressed
it,—

* ... In trim gardens took his pleasure. '

In the garden of Marshal de Biron at Paris, con-
sisting of fourteen acres, every walk is buttoned on
each side by lines of flower-pots, which succeed in
their seasons. When I saw it, there were nine
thousand pots of Asters, or La Reine Marguerite.'1''

Walpole pays a high tribute to the picture
which Milton draws in the Paradise Lost of
the Garden of Eden ; but, as I have stated,
he detects in it a resemblance to the gardens
at Hagley and Stourhead, and even suspects
that the blind bard had in his recollection
the beauties of Theobalds and Nonsuch.
Although, however, Walpole does justice to
Milton, he was not sorry, I believe, to pass
from him to Sir William Temple. It was a
more congenial atmosphere. Temple was
only, it is true, " an excellent man ; " but he
was a man nearer to Walpole's time, and
nearer also to Walpole's heart. He quotes
with enthusiasm his account of the garden
at Moor Park, in Hertfordshire, designed
under the eye of the Countess of Bedford,

Horace Walpole. 193

who befriended Donne and some of his
literary contemporaries.

It seems to the present writer that much
of the improvement in the style of our
gardens is to be found, in essence or sug-
gestion, in the observations of Bacon, not
in the Sylva, but in his essay on the subject,
contained in the volume of 1597. Of course,
even when a few sensible men tried to super-
sede the stiff, tasteless manner introduced
from the Low Countries, there was far from
being a general rally round them ; and Wal-
pole himself remarks that many foreigners
had seen our gardens, and still preferred their
own artificial ingenuity. He instances Le
Nautre, the contriver of the groves and
grottoes at Versailles, who came over to us,
and planted St. James's and Greenwich parks
— " no great monuments of his invention."

Temple, after speaking of the regular and
irregular forms of gardens, pronounces in
favour of the former, on the ground of the
difficulty and risk attendant on success.

•( I should hardly advise any of these attempts," he
says, as cited by Walpole, "in the figure of gardens;

13

194 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

among us ; they are adventures of too hard atchieve-
ment for any common hands ; and, though there may
be more honour if they succeed well, yet there is
more dishonour if they fail, and it is twenty to one
they will ; whereas in regular figures it is hard to make
any great and remarkable faults."

" Fortunately," proceeds Walpole, " Kent and a
few others were not quite so timid, or we might still
be going up and down stairs in the open air."

Referring to Temple's description of Moor
Park, Herts, in Lady Bedford's time, he goes
on to say : —

" But as no succeeding generation in an opulent and
luxurious country contents itself with the perfection
established by its ancestors, more perfect perfection
was still sought ; and improvements had gone on, till
London and Wise had stocked our gardens with giants,
animals, monsters, coats of arms, and mottoes, in yew,
box, and holly. Absurdities could go no farther, and
the tide turned. Bridgman, the next fashionable
designer of gardens, was far more chaste ; and whether
from good sense, or that the nation had been struck
and reformed by the admirable paper in the Guardian,
No. 173, he banished verdant sculpture, and did not
even revert to the square precision of the foregoing
age. He enlarged his plans, disdained to make every
division tally to its opposite, and though he adhered
much to strait walks with high clipped hedges, they

Horace Walpole. 195

were only his great lines : the rest he diversified by
wilderness and with loose groves of oak, though still
within surrounding hedges."

Here we have almost exactly what Bacon
advises in 1597. On revieht toujours a ses
premieres amours !

Let us hear something more of Bridgman
from Walpole : —

"I have observed in the garden at Gubbins, in
Hertfordshire, many detached thoughts, that strongly
indicate the dawn of modern taste. As his reforma-
tion gained footing, he ventured farther, and in the
royal garden at Richmond dared to introduce culti-
vated fields, and even morsels of a forest appearance,
by the sides of those endless and tiresome walks, that
stretched out of one into another without intermission.
But this was not till other innovators had broke loose
too from rigid symmetry.

" But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that
has followed, was [I believe the first thought was
Bridgman's] the destruction of walls for boundaries,
and the invention of fosses — an attempt then deemed
so astonishing that the common people called them
Ha ! Ha ! to express their surprise at finding a sudden
and unperceived check to their walks."

Walpole's etymology, or explanation, is

196 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

doubtful enough, and part of the improved
scheme, for which he claims credit on behalf
of Bridgman, had been shadowed out, and
even more, by Bacon.

"One of the first gardens planted in this simple,
though still formal, style, was my father's, at Hough-
ton," Walpole informs us. "It was laid out by Mr.
Eyre, an imitator of Bridgman."

The latter artist was followed by Kent, a
famous name in the annals of horticulture.
Walpole characterises him as

"painter enough to taste the charms of landscape,
bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate,
and born with a genius to strike out a great system
from the twilight of imperfect essays. " " He leaped
the fence," says our author, " and saw that all nature
was a garden."

From Walpole's account of Kent's peculiar
bent of mind and cast of feeling, the con-
clusion comes to us that he, partly, doubtless,
owing to the lessons and suggestions which
he derived from Bridgman, was the real father
of the modern school of gardening, breaking
so much more completely away from the old

Horace Walpole. 197

prejudices, and approaching so much nearer
to ourselves than his predecessors.

" The pencil of his imagination," writes his con-
temporary of him, "bestowed all the arts of land-
scape on the scenes he handled. The great principles
on which he worked were perspective, and light and
shade. Groups of trees broke too uniform, or too
extensive a lawn, evergreens and woods were opposed
to the glare of the champain ; and where the view was
less fortunate, or so exposed as to be beheld at once,
he blotted out some parts by thick shades, to divide it
into variety, or to make the richest scene more en-
chanting by reserving it to a farther advance of the
spectator's steps. . . .

" But of all the beauties he added to the face of this
beautiful country, none surpassed his management of
water. . . . The gentle stream was taught to serpentine
seemingly at its leisure ; and where discontinued by
different levels, its course appeared to be concealed
by thickets, properly interspersed, and glittered again
at a distance, where it might be supposed naturally
to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preserved
their waving irregularity. A few trees scattered
here and there on its edges sprinkled the tame bank
that accompanied its meanders ; and when it disap-
peared among the hills, shades descending from the
heights leaned towards its progress, and framed the
distant point of light under which it was lost, as it
turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon."

198 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

He thus portrays the artistic mode of deal-
ing with ground too thickly wooded for
ornamental or picturesque purposes : —

"Where the united plumage of an ancient wood
extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood
venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremost
ranks, and left but so many detached and scattered
trees as softened the approach of gloom, and blended
a chequered light with the thus lengthened shadows
of the remaining columns."

But Walpole, a little farther on, admits
that Kent, on the one hand, had assistance,
and, on the other, had faults.

"Mr. Pope undoubtedly contributed to fonn his
taste. The design of the Prince of Wales' garden at
Carlton House was evidently borrowed from the poet's
at Twickenham. There was a little of affected
modesty in the latter, when he said of all his works
he was most proud of his garden. ... I do not know
whether the disposition of the garden at Rousham,
laid out for General Dormer, and, in my opinion, the
most engaging of all Kent's works, was not planned
on the model of Mr. Pope's, at least in the opening
and retiring shades of Venus's vale."

He goes on to mention that he considered

Horace Walpole. 199

the weak side of Kent's character his want
of majesty, and his extravagant and undis-
cerning imitation of nature ; but at the same
time he says, " That Kent's ideas were but
rarely great was in some measure owing to
the novelty of his art ; " and of course he
was followed by other men, who introduced
improvements on his plans as he had done
on those of Bridgman, excellent as both were
reckoned to be in their time and in relation
to those who had gone before them. Re-
ferring to the advance of later men on his
inventions and ideas, Walpole explains how
that progress was partly due to causes beyond
the control of Kent :—

" Succeeding artists have added new master-strokes
to these touches perhaps. The introduction of foreign
trees and plants, which we owe principally to Archi-
bald, Duke of Argyle, contributed essentially to the
richness of colouring so peculiar to our modern land-
scape. The mixture of various greens, the contrast
of forms between our forest-trees and the northern and
West-Indian firs and pines, are improvements more
recent than Kent, or but little known to him. The
weeping-willow and every florid shrub, each trace of
delicate or bold leaf, are new tints in the composition

2OO Gleanings* in Old Garden Literature.

of our gardens. The last century was certainly
acquainted with many of those rare plants we now
admire. The Weymouth pine has long been natura-
lised here; the patriarch plant still (1770) exists at
Longleat. The light and graceful acacia was known
as early ; witness those ancient stems in the court of
Bedford House, in Bloomsbury Square ; and in the
Bishop of London's garden at Fulham are many
exotics of very ancient date."

Walpole was of opinion that Kent improved
as he proceeded ; and he thought one of
his latest works his best.

"Kent's last designs," he says, "were in a higher
style, as his ideas opened on success. The north
terras at Claremont was much superior to the rest of
the garden."

Like other masters, Kent acquired a
mannerism and a touch, which made his
work easily recognisable by such as studied
the subject.

"A return of some particular thought was common
to him with other painters, and made his hand known.
A small lake, edged by a winding bank with scattered
trees, that led to a seat at the head of a pond, was
common to Claremont, Esher, and others of his

Horace Walpole. 201

designs. At Esher, 'where Kent and Nature vied
for Pelham's love,' the prospects more than aided the
painter's genius."

" Sir Henry Englefield, " he presently adds, " was
one of the first improvers on the new style, and
selected with singular taste that chief beauty of
all gardens, prospect and fortunate points of
view."

It may scarcely be requisite to explain that
I have been the more copious in my extracts
from Walpole' s Essay, because he stands as
nearly as possible midway between the old
school of gardening and the new; and he
was contemporary with Bridgman and Kent,
two of the most eminent landscape gardeners
of the eighteenth century ; and nearly so with
Pope, who, by Walpole's acknowledgment,
did much to promote the development of a
better taste and feeling, not exactly in horti-
culture, but in the arrangement of grounds.
What Walpole says of Sir Henry Englefield
may have been due to that gentleman's
personal discernment and insight ; but it was
probably rather the outcome of his employ-
ment of some one who saw the possibility
of carrying Kent's improvements still farther ;

2O2 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

and among such there was no man more
conspicuous than Brown, or, as he was usually
called, Capability Brown. This is what
Walpole has to say about the latter : —

" It was fortunate for this country and Mr. Kent
that he was succeeded by a very able master ; and did
living artists come within my plan, I should be glad to
do justice to Mr. Brown ; but he may be a genius by
being reserved for some abler pen."

The original English was completed in
1770; but Brown had been dead some
years when it appeared with the French
version, for the first time, in 1785.

I hope that I have seemed to justify my long
detention of the reader with the Strawberry-
Hill volume. It was its worth and virtue as
a link between two ages, which tempted me
to accord to it a separate chapter, rather than
any intrinsic merit, which I had been able to
discern in its pages. For in its treatment it
is flimsy enough, and in point of style it is
disagreeably affected and artificial.

XVI.

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF GARDENING LITERATURE
(1603 — 1800), AND OF HERBALS AND
BEE CULTURE — WILLIAM AND SAMUEL
CURTIS — JAMES AND GEORGE SOWERBY

THE LlNDLEYS AND LOUDONS —

CRYPTOGAMIC FLORA OF SCOTLAND —
SIR WILLIAM JACKSON HOOKER.

JHILE, in this and the companion
treatise on Cookery, it scarcely
enters into my plan to describe
the later literature, or take cognisance of
all the modern improvements in these two
favourite sciences, having rather set my-
self the task of tracing the early history of
both arts, it may be useful to append a
succinct catalogue of those publications on
horticulture and the subjects immediately
allied to it, which (as a rule) I have not
treated in the text.

2O4 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

There was not the same uninterrupted
succession of books on this theme as on the
less dispensable one of eating and drinking,
dining and supping. I have, of course, in-
serted accounts of Worlidge and many others
in the narrative; but down to the time of
Pope and Pope's Bathurst there does not
seem to have been very much published
on the subject.

1. Profitable Instructions for the Manuring^ Sowing,

and Planting of Kitchen Gardens. By Richard
Gardiner, of Shrewsbury. 4to. 1603.

2. The Fruiterer's Secrets. 4to. 1604.

3. Instructions for the Increasing and Planting of

Mulberry Trees. 410. 1609.

4. The English Htisbandman. . . . Together with the

Art of Planting, Grafting, and Gardening. By
Gervase Markham. 4to. 1613.

5. Country Contentments, or The Husbandman's

Recreations. By the same. 4to. 1623.

6. A New Orchard and Garden. By W. Lawson.

4to. 1623.

7. A Garden of all sorts of pleasant Floivers, which

our English air will permit to be nursed up. By
John Parkinson, Apothecary of London. Folio.
London, 1629. 1656.

Bibliography of Garden Literature. 205

8. Rhodon and Iris. A Pastoral presented at the

Florists' Feast at Norwich, May 3rd, 1631.
By Ralph Knevett. 4to. 1631.

9. Mercurius Botanicus, sive Plantarum gratia sus-

cepti Itineris, Anno MDCXXXIV., Descriptio,
cum earum Nominibus Latinis et Anglicis, etc.
Londini : 1634-41. 8vo. Two parts. By
Thomas Johnson, M.D. , of Selby, and dedicated
under the name of Socius Itinerans to Dr. Theo-
dore May erne, Dr. Lister, etc.

[The copy before me has MSS. notes and
matter added in a coeval hand, possibly the
author's. It was sold at Sotheby's, August
29th, 1877, No. 252. To part the first is at-
tached a small folded plan of Bath, of which
an account is comprised in the volume.*]

10. A Theatre of 'Plants. By John Parkinson. Folio.

London. 1640.

11. The Countrymaris Recreation, or the Art of 'Plant-
ing^ Grafting, and Gardening, in three Bookes.
. . . Whereunto is added, The Expert Gardener.
By Gervase Markham. London : 1640. 4to.

[ The Expert Gardener purports to be derived
from French and Dutch sources.]

* Besides his published works, Johnson wrote an
account of a botanical tour in Kent, with some com-
panions, in the summer of 1629, and of the flora of
Hampstead in the following August. The MS. of
these two narratives, consisting of nineteen leaves in

2o6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

12. The Garden of Eden. By Sir Hugh Platt. In two
parts, I2mo. 1653-60.

13. The Art of Simpling. By W. Coles. I2mo.
1656.

14. Adam in Eden, or Nature's Paradise. By the

same. Folio. 1657.

15. Adam out of Eden ; or. An Abstract of certain
excellent Experiments touching the Advancement
of Husbandry. By Ad. Speed. 8vo. London,
1659.

1 6. Flora, Ceres, Pomona. By John Rea. Folio.

1665, 1676, 1702.

17. Poems on Divers Occasions. [By Jeremiah
Wells.] London: 1667. 8vo. On eight leaves
at the end, marked ^[, is printed The Garden, by
A. C., that is, Abraham Cowley.

18. The Complete Vineyard. By W. Hughes. 8vo.
1670.

19. Plantarum Umbelliferarum Distributio Nova,
Per Tabulas Cognationis et Ajfinitatis ex Libris
Natures Observata et delecta. . . . Per Robertum
Morison. Oxonii. 1672. Folio.

[The author was a Professor of Botany.]

20. Rapin, Cf Gardens. In four books. Translated
by John Evelyn. 8vo. 1673.

[There are later editions, and it is included
in Evelyn's Miscellaneous Works.]

octavo, was bound up with a copy of the Mercurius,
sold in 1883.

Bibliography of Garden Literature. 207

21. The Planter's Manual. By C. Cotton. 8vo. 1675.

22. The English Gardener ; or, A Sure Guide to
Voting Planters and Gardeners, how to Order the
Kitchen- Garden, Orchards, and Pleasure Garden,
by Leonard Meager. 4to. 1678. With plates.

23. Plain and Full Instructions to raise all sorts of

Fruit-trees that prosper in England. By T.
Langford. 8vo. 1681.

24. The Florist's Vade Mecum. By Samuel Gilbert,
of Be wdley, Worcestershire. I2ino. 1682.

25. Aphorisms upon a new Way of improving Cyder,

or making Cyder-Royal ; to which are added
certain expedients concerning the Raising and
Planting of Apple-trees, Gooseberry-trees. ... By
Richard Haines. Folio. 1684.

26. The Gentleman's Recreation. In two parts. By
Richard Blowe. Folio. 1686 — 1710.

[The section on Agriculture and Husbandry
contains a good deal of information on garden-
ing and fruit-trees.]

27. The Book of Knowledge. By Samuel Strangeboys.

I2mo.

[To the later editions was attached a fourth
part, containing the Complete Gardener^

28. The Compleat Gard'ner ; or, Directions for Culti-
vating and Right-ordering of Fruit- Gardens and
Kitchen- Gardens. In six Books. By M. de la
Quintinye, Chief Director of all the gardens of
the French King. To which is added His Treatise
of Orange-Trees, with the raising of Melons,

208 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

omitted in the French edition. Made English
by John Evelyn, Esquire. Folio. London. 1693.
Plates.

[In 1699 an abridgment of this work by
George London and Henry Wise appeared in
8vo, "made of more use, with very con-
siderable improvements."]

29. Curiosities of Nature and Art in Husbandry and
Gardening, containing new experiments in the
improvement of Land, Trees, Fruits, etc. 8vo.
1707. Plates.

30. The Fruit-Gardener's Calendar. By John
Lawrence. 8 vo. 1717.

31. A Philosophical Treatise of Husbandry and

Gardening. By G. A. Agricola. Translated
from the German by Richard Bradley, F.R.S.
4to. 1721. With cuts.

32. The Gardeners Calendar. By Philip Miller.
8vo. 1724. 2vols.

33. The Gardener's and Florist's Dictionary. By the
same. 8vo. 1724.

[A standard work in the last century. It
was reprinted in 1731, folio, and often subse-
quently. It is a mere compilation. Miller
published other books of a professional nature.]

34. The Gardener's Universal Calendar. By Benedict
Whitmill. 8vo. 1726.

35. The Gentleman and Gardener's Calendar. By
Richard Bradley, Professor of Botany, and
F.R.S. 8vo. 1728.

Bibliography of Garden Literature. 209

36. The Gentleman Gardener Instructed. By the
Rev. David Stevenson. 8vo. 1746.

37. The Complect Florist. 8vo. London. 1747.
With 100 plates.

38. A Description of the Gardens of Lord Cobham at
Stffwe. 8vo. 1751. With n plates.

39. The Scots Gardener s Director. By John Justice.
8vo. 1755.

40. The Gardener's New Calendar. By John Hill,
M.D. 8vo. 1758.

41. The Botanist's and Gardener's Dictionary and
Calendar. By James Wheeler, Nurseryman at
Gloucester. 8vo. 1763.

42. Every Man his own Gardener. By Thomas
Mawe (John Abercrombie). 8vo. 1766.

[Abercrombie published other works in his
own name.]

43. The Practical Gardener and Gentleman's Directory
for every month in the year. By James Garton.
8vo. 1769.

44. The Modern Gardener, or Universal Calendar.
From the MSS. of Mr. Hin. By James Header.
8vo. 1771. Borrowed from Mawe.

45. The Garden Companion. By the Rev. John
Trusler. 8vo. 1771. Abridged from Hill.

46. The Gardener's and Planter's Calendar. By
Richard Weston. 8vo. 1771.

47. The Gardeners Pocket Calendar, By the same.
8vo. 1773.

14

2 io Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

48. The Gentleman and Lady's Gardener. By Mr.
Eadmeades [a seedsman near London Bridge].
8vo. 1774.

49. The English Gardener s Neiv and Complete
Calendar. 8vo. 1778.

50. The Gardener's Calendar. By John Ellis [gar-
dener to the Bishop of Lincoln.] Svo. 1778.

51. On the Progress of Gardening. In a Letter from
the Hon. Daines Barrington to the Rev. Mr.
Norris, Secretary. Read June I3th, 1782.
Archceologia, vii. 113, et seqq.

[This is a general survey, not confined to
English gardening.]

52. Gibson's Account of the Gardens in and round
London in 1691. Read before the Society of
Antiquaries in 1794, Archaologia, vol. xii.

[This forms an Appendix to the present
work.]

53. A Treatise on the Culture of the Pine- Apple, and

the Management of the Hot- House. By William
Speechly. Svo. York. 1795. Plates.

54. The Botanist's Calendar and Pocket English
Flora. I2mo. 1797-

55. Introduction to the Knowledge and Practice of

Gardening. By the Rev. Charles Marshall.
With a Calenda'r. Third Edition. I2mo. 1800.

56. A Descriptive Account of White Knights, near

Reading, a seat of the Duke of Marlborough, by

Old English Herbals. 2 1 1

Mr. and Mrs. Hofiand. Folio, privately printed,
N.D. [about 1820.]

[This volume contains an introductory ac-
count of gardening by Mrs. Hofland.]
57. Gleanings on Gardens, chiefly respecting those of
the Ancient Style in England. By S. Felton.
8vo. London. 1829. Pp. 72 + viii.

This list brings down the literature of
gardening to the commencement of the
new school of horticulture.

But I shall add the particulars of the
principal writers or books on HERBS and
BEE-CULTURE on a similar principle : —

OLD ENGLISH HERBALS.

1. The Great Herbal. Folio. 1516, 1526, 1529,

J539> J56i. From the French.

2. The Little Herbal. 4to. 1525, 1526. From

the Latin.

3. A Book of the Properties of Herbs, which is called

an Herbal. By Walter Gary. 8vo. R. Redman
(about 1540).

[All the editions are undated.]

4. Macer's Herbal, practised by Dr. Linacre. I2mo.

[about 1540]. Two editions.

5. A Little Herbal of the Properties of Herbes. By

Anthony Ascham. 8vo. 1550.

6. Turner's Herbal. Folio. 1551. Part II., folio,

1562. Part III., folio, 1568. With cuts.

212 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

7. A New Herbal, or History of Plants. By Rem-

bert Dodoens. Translated by Henry Lyte.
Folio. 1578. With cuts.

8. An Herbal for the Bible. By Levinus Leminius.

Translated by Thomas Newton. 8vo. 1581.

9. The Herbal, or General History of Plants. By

John Gerard, of London, Master in Chirurgery.
Folio. 1597. Edited by Thomas Johnson, the
Botanist. Folio. 1633, 1636.

10. Ram's Little Dodeon. By W. Ram. 4to. 1606.

BEES.

1. The Profitable Art of Gardening. By Thomas

Hill. Third edition. Svo. 1568. With a Treatise
"Of the Miraculous Government of the Bees"
annexed.

2. A Treatise Concerning the Right Use and

Ordering of Bees. By Edmund Southern. 4to.

1593-

3. The Ordering of Bees. By John Levett. 4to.

1634.

4. A Discourse or History of Bees. By Richard

Remnant. 4to. 1637.

5. The Reformed Commonwealth of Bees. By S.

Hartlib. 4to. 1655.

[In this book is a copper-plate cut of a hive
so constructed as to remove the honey without
injuring or disturbing the inmates.]

6. Vinetum Britannicum. By .John Worlidge.

William and Samuel Curtis. 2 I 3

Second Edition. To which is added, " A
Discourse teaching the best way of improving
Bees." 8vo. 1678.

7. A Further Discovery of Bees. By M. Rusden.

8vo. 1679. Plates.

8. The True Amazon ; or, The Monarchy of Bees.

By Jos. Warder. 8vo. 1713.

9. The English Apiary ; or, The Complete Bee-

Master. By John Gedde. 8vo. 1721.

10. The Antient Bee- Master's Farewell. By John
Keys. Svo. 1796.

n. A Treatise on Bees. By the same. I2mo. 1814.

Of the modern school the foremost name
is that of CURTIS, of whose nursery at Old
Brompton we have already heard. Between
1777 and 1799 William Curtis produced
his celebrated and still esteemed work, the
Flora Londinensis, or Plates and Descriptions
of such Plants as grou> wild in the Environs
of London. 2 vols., folio. This great work
was edited, with additions and corrections,
by Graves and Hooker, in 1821.

In 1787 Curtis commenced his Botanical
Magazine, which he carried down to 1826,
and which was continued by his son Samuel
and Sir W. J. Hooker to 1858. The author

214 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

published a Companion to the Magazine in
1788; it was a periodical which exercised
a powerful influence on the advancement of
botany and the diffusion of an interest in
the subject

The younger Curtis, besides editing his
father's Flora, brought out in 1822 a mono-
graph on the Camellia.

Next to Curtis and his son comes
SOWERBY, a family which during more than
half a century (1790-1850) occupied a
prominent and honourable position in this
department as well as in those of conchology
and mineralogy. The English Botany of
James Sowerby appeared between 1790 and
1820 in numbers forming six-and-thirty
octavo volumes ; and it is still a favourite
and useful set of books. A supplement was
afterward added.

This is perhaps James Sowerby the Elder's
best known work, and that on which his
reputation chiefly depends. But both his
son and himself and George Brettingham
Sowerby continued to enrich our literature
with erudite compilations on nearly every

The Sowerbys and Lindleys. 215

branch of this fascinating art, and on subjects
cognate to it, down to a date within living
memory, — a link between the old and modern
schools, but with a clear leaning to a more
enlightened and intelligible system of classifi-
cation, and with a knowledge of the Genera
amplified by the latest discoveries at that
period.

The late Mr. Henry Bohn, in his re-
cension of the Bibliographer s Manual, has
afforded practical evidence of the strong
personal interest which he felt in horticul-
ture and botany by the carefully-prepared
lists of the labours of the three Sowerbys,
and of one or two other authors, whom I
have presently to mention. Mr. Bohn
himself printed for private circulation a
descriptive catalogue of his own extensive
collection of Roses.

George and John Lindley presented a
third example of a family which, during
successive generations, did its part in spread-
ing a correct knowledge of all the branches
of tree, plant, and vegetable culture, and in
improving the management of the orchard

2 1 6 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

and kitchen garden. But the latter originally
made his name as a writer, not only on
the British but on the exotic flora, by
the publication, in 1821, of his Collectanea
Botanica and other works. The exertions
of John Lindley were most indefatigable,
and covered the whole ground. There was
no section of botany .and horticulture which
he did not treat with ability and public ad-
vantage. In 1829 he delivered his introduc-
tory lecture before the University of London.
His printed contributions to the branch of
letters of which he had made a special
study, extended over a quarter of a century,
and occupy nearly two columns of the small
type of the Bibliographers Manual.

At the same time, in Scotland, Robert Kaye
Greville offered a splendid contribution to
botanical learning in his Scottish Cryptogamic
Flora, which came out in six large volumes
between 1822 and 1828, and which seems
entitled to the distinction of being considered
the earliest specific work on that subject in
our literature. Mr. Greville is also known as
the author of the Flora Edinensis (8vo, 1824)

London,

and of a monograph on British Algae (Svo,
1830).

In 1829 MR. LOUDON commenced the
publication of his Magazine of Natural
History >, and Journal of Zoology, Botany, etc.,
which formed a very valuable series, and
ran to 1840, making thirteen octavo volumes.
Mr. Loudon had the assistance of several of
the most distinguished specialists of the day
— Audubon, Bell, Vigors, Forbes, Waterton,
and others ; and it was to the pages of this
periodical that Ruskin, then a youth, con-
tributed in 1834-6 his earliest efforts in print.
In his Instructions in the Use of Rudimentary
Series he says : —

"Mr. Loudon was the first literary patron who sent
words of mine to be actually set in print, in his
Magazine of Natural History, when I was sixteen."

In 1831 Robert Sweet completed his Hot-
house and Greenhouse Manual, which I appre-
hend to have been the parent production on
that specific and vital part of the subject, and
which a reference to Lowndes will shew to

2 1 8 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

have been only one of a series of labours
in the field ; and London's Hortus Britannicus
followed in 1832.

The group of distinguished men, to whom
we are permanently indebted for placing our
country in respect to this province of science
in as high a rank as a relatively ungenial
climate will ever permit, was reinforced at this
time by Joseph Paxton, principal gardener
to the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth.
Paxton's name is still favourably recollected
in connection with his professional labours,
especially the Exhibition of 1851 and the
Crystal Palace, as well as with his literary
achievements, of which the chief are the
Horticultural Register, commencing in 1831,
and carried down to 1836. and the Magazine
of Botany and Register of Flowering Plants,
which he edited from 1834 to 1849. He
published a monograph on the Dahlia in
1838, and other books, including the Flower
Garden (1850-3), 3 vols., royal 8vo, in
which he was assisted by Dr. James
Lindley.

In 1838 appeared London's Suburban

London. 2ig>

Gardener and his most important work, the
Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum,* the
latter in eight octavo volumes. It was, per-
haps, next to the Magazine just noticed, and
the Encyclopedia of the same author, the most
capable and successful attempt to diffuse a
general knowledge of all the new species and
varieties of forest and fruit trees, plants, and
shrubs, imported from foreign countries both
by professional growers and by private enter-
prise. The magazine had doubtless proved of
the greatest utility to the author in the way of
preparation and learning.

Loudon pays an appropriate tribute to the
warm and steady encouragement afforded by
the Northumberland family to this interesting
cause, and he mentions, as his main object
in undertaking the labour, on the one hand,
the slow progress made by this country in
availing itself of new discoveries, and, on
the other, the tendency of existing kinds to
disappear from neglect.

* Published in 1822, reprinted in 1824, rewritten
in 1831, and republished, edited by Mrs. London,,
in 1850.

22O Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

Loudon was not an antiquary, nor did he,
I believe, profess to be one ; and he com-
mitted many errors in regard to the original
introduction of trees, herbs, and flowers into
Britain. But his books, and his wife's too,
mark a distinct epoch in the literary as well
as the technical history of arboriculture and
gardening, just as the publication of Miller's
Dictionary, and the exertions of several
of Miller's contemporaries, — Abercrombie,
Weston, Forsyth, and others, — had done in
the eighteenth century.

Besides the valuable labours of Mr.
Loudon in flower and tree culture, his wife,
who informs us that she owed all her ac-
quaintance with the subject to his instruc-
tions and encouragement, wrote those very
useful and still favourite manuals, Gardening
for Ladies and The Ladies' Companion to the
Flower Garden. Both were frequently re-
printed. I have the sixth edition of the
former (1843), and the seventh of the latter
(1858). It seems to have been about 1830
that this accomplished lady first entered on
her experiences.

Mr. and Mrs. London, etc. 221

The Flower i Fruit, and Kitchen Garden, by
James Main, A.L.S., came out in three parts
in 1840-1, 1 2 mo, with a few pages of Intro-
ductory Remarks. There is a great deal of
information in this handy little book, which
is still as applicable as when it was written ;
and it possesses the advantage of being suc-
cinct and intelligible. It bears the same sort
of relation to the larger productions of the
Sowerbys, Lindleys, and Loudons that Miss
Acton's cookery-book bears to those of Ude,
Soyer, and Francatelli.

But before I quit the Loudons and my
present subject, I shall extract from Gar-
dening for Ladies, sixth edition (1843), a
portion of the introduction, because this and
the companion book formed nearly the
earliest endeavour to bring the treatment of
flowers within the comprehension of the
possessors of small private gardens : —

"When I married Mr. Loudon," his wife frankly
and gracefully says, " it is scarcely possible to imagine
any person more completely ignorant than I was of
everything relating to plants and gardening ; and, as
may be easily conceived, I found every one about me

222 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

so well acquainted with the subject, that I was soon
ashamed of my ignorance. My husband, of course,
was quite as anxious to teach me as I was to learn,
and it is the result of his instructions that I now (after
more than twelve years' experience of their efficacy)
wish to make public for the benefit of others.

' ' I do this, because I think that books intended for
professional gardeners are seldom suitable to the wants
of amateurs. ... As the rapid sale of the previous
editions of this work affords the surest proof that it
has met the wants of those for whose use it was
designed, it may be asked why I have made so many
alterations and additions. My answer is, that I have
done so in order that my book may keep pace with
the improving spirit of the times. For this reason I
have written the chapter on manures, in order to give
my readers an idea of the new theories of Liebig on
that subject ; and I have also given them a sketch of
M. De Chevreul's new doctrine of colours, as applied
to flower gardens."

It is gratifying to meet with genuine
workers. In her other publication, The
Ladies* Companion to the Flower Garden,
seventh edition (1858), Mrs. Loudon was
more directly indebted to her husband, who
wrote several of the articles which it com-
prises, and read and revised the whole in the
first and second impressions. The Appendix

Mr. and Mrs. London, etc. 223

was suggested by Lord Murray, to whom
Mrs. Loudon owns her weighty obligations.

But the preface to the Ladies" Companion
has a concluding paragraph, which I fervently
wish that publishers and authors would alike
take to heart : —

" Notwithstanding the large sale of the work (which
has exceeded twenty-five thousand copies), it has now
been stereotyped ; but every new edition has been
carefully revised, and descriptions of new plants and
of new discoveries in floriculture have been added, so
as to bring the whole down completely to the present
day."

Perhaps it was the refusal to perpetuate
errors and imperfect information which made
it necessary for the writer to seek a new
publisher, for the Ladies1 Companion has not
the name of Mr. Murray at the foot of
the title-page.

Mr. Bohn, in his edition of the Biblio-
grapher's Manual of Lowndes, furnishes an
elaborate list of the publications, from 1813
to 1854, of the late Sir William Jackson
Hooker, who, in his way, as the Loudons
in theirs, so largely contributed to the

224 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

development and progress of the science
which he above all others loved and under-
stood.

Besides the well-known works of Lindley,
it is proper to mention the large folio volume
of Nature- Printed Ferns, issued under the
care of Henry Bradbury, and re-produced
some years later in four octavo volumes
uniform with the Algce published by the
same process.

APPENDIX.

A SHORT ACCOUNT OF SEVERAL GARDENS
NEAR LONDON, WITH REMARKS ON
SOME PARTICULARS WHEREIN THEY
EXCEL OR ARE DEFICIENT, UPON A
VIEW OF THEM IN DECEMBER, 169!.*

HAMPTON COURT Garden is a
large plat, environed with an iron
palisade round about next the
park, laid all in walks, grass
plats, and borders. Next to the house, some
flat and broad beds are set with narrow rows
of dwarf box, in figures like lace-patterns. In
one of the lesser gardens is a large green
house divided into several rooms, and all of
them with stoves under them, and fire to keep

* Communicated to the Society of Antiquaries by
the Reverend Dr. Hamilton, Vice-President, from an
original manuscript in his possession. Read July 3rd,
J794- [This is the narrative by Gibson, to which I
have referred more than once in the text.]

226 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

a continual heat. In these there are no orange
or lemon trees, or myrtles, or any greens, but
such tender foreign ones that need continual
warmth.

2. Kensington Gardens are not great nor
abounding with fine plants. The orange,
lemon, myrtles, and what other trees they had
there in summer, were all removed to Mr. Lon-
don's and Mr. Wise's greenhouse at Brompton
Park, a little mile from them. But the walks
and grass laid very fine, and they were digging
up a flat of four or five acres to enlarge their
garden.

3. The Queen Dowager's Garden, at Ham-
mersmith, has a good greenhouse, with a high
erected front to the South, whence the roof
falls backward. The house is well stored with
greens of common kinds ; but the Queen not
being for curious plants or flowers, they want
of the most curious sorts of greens, and in the
garden there is little of value but wall trees ;
though the gardener there, Monsieur Hermon
Van Guine, is a man of great skill and in-
dustry, having raised great numbers of orange
and lemon trees by inoculation, with myrtles,
Roman bayes, and other greens of pretty
shapes, which he has to dispose of.

4. Beddington Garden, at present in the

Appendix. 227

hands of the duke of Norfolk, but belonging
to the family of Carew, has in it the best
orangery in England. The orange and lemon
trees there grow in the ground, and have done
so near one hundred years, as the gardener,
an aged man, said he believed. There are a
great number of them, the house wherein they
are being above two hundred feet long ; they
are most of them thirteen feet high, and very
full of fruit, the gardener not having taken off
so many flowers this last summer as usually
others do. He said, he gathered off them at
least ten thousand oranges this last year. The
heir of the family being but about five years of
age, the trustees take care of the orangery,
and this year they built a new house over
them. There are some myrtles growing among
them, but they look not well for want of trim-
ming. The rest of the garden is all out of
order, the orangery being the gardener's chief
care ; but it is capable of being made one of
the best gardens in England, the soil being
very agreeable, and a clear silver stream
running through it.

5 . Chelsea Physick Garden has great variety
of plants, both in and out of greenhouses.
Their perennial green hedges and rows of
different coloured herbs are very pretty, and

228 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

so are their banks set with shades of herbs in
the Irish stitch -way, but many plants of the
garden were not in so good order as might be
expected, and as would have been answerable
to other things in it. After I had been there,
I heard that Mr. Watts, the keeper of it, was
blamed for his neglect, and that he would be
removed.

6. My Lord Ranelagh's Garden being but
lately made, the plants are but small, but the
plats, borders, and walks, are curiously kept,
and elegantly designed, having the advantage
of opening into Chelsea college walks. The
kitchen garden there lies very fine, with walks
and seats, one of which, being large and
covered, was then under the hands of a curious
painter. The house there is very fine within,
all the rooms being wainscoted with Norway
oak, and all the chimneys adorned with carv-
ing, as in the council-chamber in Chelsea
college.

7. Arlington Garden, being now in the
hands of my lord of Devonshire, is a fair plat,
with good walks, both airy and shady. There
are six of the greatest earthen pots that are
any where else, being at least two feet over
within the edge ; but they stand abroad, and
have nothing in them but the tree holy-oke, an

Appendix. 229

indifferent plant, which grows well enough in
the ground. Their greenhouse is very well,
and their greenyard excels ; but their greens
were not so bright and clean as farther off in
the country, as if they suffered something from
the smutty air of the town.

8. My Lord FauconbergKs Garden, at
Sutton Court, has several pleasant walks and
apartments in it; but the upper garden next
the house is too irregular, and the bowling
green too little to be commended. The green-
house is very well made, but ill set. It is
divided into three rooms, and very well fur-
nished with good greens ; but it is so placed,
that the sun shines not on the plants in winter,
where they most need its beams, the dwelling-
house standing betwixt the sun and it. The
maze or wilderness there is very pretty, being
set all with greens, with a cypress arbour in
the middle, supported with a well-wrought
timber frame ; of late it grows thin at the
bottom, by their letting the fir trees grow
without their reach undipped. The enclosure
wired-in for white pheasants and partridges
is a fine apartment, especially in summer,
when the boxes of Italian bayes are set out,
and the timber walk with vines on the side
is very fine when the blew pots are on the

230 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

pedestals on the top of it, and so is the fish-
pond with the greens at the head of it.

9. Sir William Temple, being lately gone
to live at his house in Farneham, his garden
and greenhouse at West Sheene, where he has
lived of late years, are not so well kept as they
have been, many of his orange trees, and other
greens, being given to Sir John Temple, his
brother, at East Sheene, and other gentlemen;
but his greens that are remaining (being as
good a stock as most greenhouses have) are
very fresh and thriving, the room they stand in
suiting well with them and being well con-
trived, if it be no defect in it that the floor is
a foot at least within the ground, as is also the
floor of the dwelling-house. He had attempted
to have orange trees to grow in the ground (as
at Beddington), and for that purpose had
enclosed a square of ten feet wide, with a low
brick wall, and sheltered them with wood, but
they would not do. His orange trees in
summer stand not in any particular square or
enclosure, under some shelter, as most others
do, but are disposed on pedestals of Portland
stone, at equal distance, on a board over
against a South wall, where is his best fruit,
and fairest walk.

10. Sir Henry CapelVs garden at Kew has

Appendix. 231

as curious greens, and is as well kept as any
about London. His two lentiscus trees (for
which he paid forty pounds to Vesprit) are
said to be the best in England, not only of
their kind, but of greens. He has four white
striped hollies, about four feet above their
cases, kept round and regular, which cost
him five pounds a tree this last year, and six
laurustinuses he has, with large round equal
heads, which are very flowery and make a fine
show. ;His orange trees and other choicer
greens stand out in summer in two walks about
fourteen feet wide, enclosed with a timber
frame about seven feet high, and set with
silver firs hedge-wise, which are as high as the
frame, and this to secure them from wind and
tempest, and sometimes from the scorching
sun. His terrace walk, bare in the middle,
and grass on either side, with a hedge of
rue on one side next a low wall, and a row of
dwarf trees on the other, shews very fine,
and so do from thence his yew hedges with
trees of the same at equal distance, kept in
pretty shapes with tonsure. His flowers and
fruits are of the best, for the advantage
of which two parallel walls, about fourteen
feet high, were now raised and almost finished.
If the ground were not a little irregular, it

232 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

would excel in other points, as well as in
furniture.

11. Sir Stephen Fox's garden at Chiswick
being but of five years' standing, is brought to
great perfection for the time. It excells for a
fair gravel walk betwixt two yew hedges, with
rounds and spires of the same, all under
smooth tonsure. At the far end of this garden
are two myrtle hedges that cross the garden ;
they are about three feet high, and covered in
winter with painted board cases. The other
gardens are full of flowers and salleting, and
the walls well clad. The greenhouse is well
built, well set, and well furnished.

12. Sir Thomas Cooke 's garden at Hackney
is very large, and not so fine at present, be-
cause of his intending to be at three thousand
pounds' charge with it this next summer, as his
gardener said. There are two greenhouses in
it, but the greens are not extraordinary, for
one of the roofs being made a receptacle for
water, overcharged with weight, fell down last
year upon the greens, and made a great de-
struction among the trees and pots. In one
part of it is a warren, containing about two
acres, very full of coneys, though there was
but a couple put in a few years since. There
is a pond or a mote round about them, and on

Appendix. 233

the outside of that a brick wall four feet high,
both which I think will not keep them within
their compass. There is a large fish-pond
lying on the South to a brick wall, which is finely
clad with philaria. Water brought from far
in pipes furnishes his several ponds as they
want it.

13. Sir Josiah Child's plantations of walnut
and other trees at Wansted are much more
worth seeing than his gardens, which are but
indifferent. Besides the great number of fruit
trees he has planted in his enclosures with
great regularity, he has vast number of elms,
ashes, limes, &c., planted in rows on Epping
forest. Before his outgate, which is above
twelve score [yards] distance from his house,
are two large fish-ponds on the forest, in the way
from his house, with trees on either side lying
betwixt them ; in the middle of either pond is an
island betwixt twenty and thirty yards over, and
in the middle of each a house, the one like the
other. They are said to be well stocked with
fish, and so they had need to be if they cost
him five thousand pounds, as it is said they
did ; as also that his plantations cost twice as
much.

14. Sir Robert Clayton has great plantations
at Marden in Surrey, in a soil not very benign

234 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

to plants, but with great charge he forces
Nature to obey him. His gardens are big
enough, but strangely irregular, his chief walk
not being level, but rising in the middle and
falling much more at one end than the other ;
neither is the wall carried by a line either on
the top or sides, but runs like an ordinary park
wall, built as the ground goes. He built a
good greenhouse, but set it so that the hills in
winter keep the sun from it, so that they place
their greens in a house on higher ground not
built for that purpose. His dwelling-house
stands very low, surrounded with great hills ;
and yet they have no water but what is forced
from a deep well into a waterhouse, whence
they are furnished by pipes at pleasure.

15. The Archbishop of Canterbury's garden
at Lambeth has little in it but walks, the late
archbishop not delighting in one, but they
are now making them better; and they have
already made a greenhouse, one of the finest
and costliest about the town. It is of three
rooms, the middle having a stove under it ; the
foresides of the rooms are almost all glass, the
roof covered with lead, the whole part (to
adorn the building) rising gravel-wise higher
than the rest ; but it is placed so near Lam-
beth church, that the sun shines most on it in

Appendix. 235

winter after eleven o'clock ; a fault owned by
the gardener, but not thought on by the con-
trivers. Most of the greens are oranges and
lemons, which have very large ripe fruit on
them.

1 6. Dr. Uvedale viEnfield is a great lover
of plants, and having an extraordinary art in
managing them, is become master of the
greatest and choicest collection of exotic
greens that is perhaps any where in this land.
His greens take up six or seven houses or room-
steads. His orange trees and largest myrtles
fill up his biggest house, and another house
is filled with myrtles of a less size, and these
more nice and curious plants, that need closer
keeping, are in warmer rooms, and some of
them stoved when he thinks fit. His flowers
are choice, his stock numerous, and his culture
of them very methodical and curious ; but, to
speak of the garden in the whole, it does not
lie fine to please the eye, his delight and care
lying more in the ordering particular plants,
than in the pleasing view and form of his
garden.

17. Dr. Tillotsori 's garden near Endfield is
a pleasureable place for walks, and some good
walls there are too ; but the tall aspin trees,
and the many ponds in the heart of it, are not

236 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

so agreeable. He has two houses for greens,
but had few in them, all the best being removed
to Lambeth. The house is moated about.

1 8. Mr. Evelyn has a pleasant villa at Defit-
ford, a fine garden for walks and hedges

(especially his holly one, which he writes of in
his Sylva), and a pretty little greenhouse, with
an indifferent stock in it. In his garden he
has four large round philareas, smooth clipped,
raised on a single stalk from the ground, a
fashion now much used. Part of his garden is
very woody and shady for walking ; but his
garden, not being walled, has little of the best
fruits.

19. Mr. Waifs house and garden made
near Endfield are new; but the garden for
the time is very fine, and large and regularly
laid out, with a fair fish-pond in the middle.
He built a greenhouse this summer with three
rooms (somewhat like the archbishop of
Canterbury's), the middle with a stove under
it, and a sky-light above, and both of them of
glass on the foreside, with shutters within, and
the roof finely covered with Irish slate. But
this fine house is under the same great fault
with three before (Numbers 8, 14, 15) : they
built it in summer, and thought not of winter ;
the dwelling house on the South side interpos-

Appendix. 237

ing betwixt the sun and it now when its beams
should refresh plants.

20. Brompton Park garden, belonging to
Mr. London and Mr. Wise, has a large long
greenhouse, the front all glass and board, the
North side brick. Here the King's greens,
which were in summer at Kensington, are
placed, but they take but little room in com-
parison of their own. Their garden is chiefly
a nursery for all sorts of plants, of which they
are very full.

21. Mr. Raynton's garden at Endfield is
observable for nothing but his greenhouse,
which he has had for many years. His
orange, lemon, and myrtle trees, are as full
and furnished as any in cases. He has a
myrtle cut in shape of a chaire, that is at least
six feet high from the case, but the lower part
is thin of leaves. The rest of the garden is
very ordinary, and on the outside of his garden
he has a warren, which makes the ground
about his seat lye rudely, and sometimes the
coneys work under the wall] into the garden.

22. Mr. Richardson at East Bar net: has
a pretty garden, with fine walks and good
flowers ; but the garden not being walled
about they have less summer fruit, yet are,
therefore, the more industrious in managing

238 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

the peach and apricot dwarf standards, which,
they say, supply them plentifully with very
good fruit. There is a very good fish-pond in
the middle of it, from which a broad gravel
walk leads to the highway, where a fair pair
of broad gates, with a narrower on either side,
open at the top to look through small bars,
well wrought and well painted, are a great
ornament to the garden. They have orange
and lemon trees ; but the wife and son being
the managers of the garden (the husband
being gouty and not minding it), they cannot
prevail for a house for them other than a barn

23. Captain Foster's garden at Lambeth
has many curiosities in it. His greenhouse
is full of fresh and flourishing plants, and
before it is the finest striped holly hedge that
perhaps is in England. He has many myrtles,
not the greatest, but of the most fanciful
shapes that are any where else. He has a
framed walk of timber covered with vines,
which, with others, running on most of his
walls without prejudice to his lower trees,
yield him a deal of wine. Of flowers he has
good choice, and his Virginia and other birds
in a great variety, with his glass hive, add
much to the pleasure of his garden.

Appendix. 239

24. Monsieur Anthony Vesfirit has a little
garden of very choice things. His greenhouse
has no very great number of plants, but what
he has are of the best sort, and very well
ordered. His oranges and lemons (fruit and
tree) are extraordinary fair, and for lentiscus's
and Roman bayes he has choice above others.

25. Ricketts, atHoxton, has a large ground,
and abundantly stocked with all manner of
flowers, fruit-trees, and other garden plants,
with lime trees, which are now much planted ;
and, for a sale garden, he has a very good
greenhouse, and well filled with fresh greens,
besides which he has another room very full
of greens in pots. He has a greater stock of
Assyrian thyme than any body else ; for,
besides many pots of it, he has beds abroad,
with plenty of roots, which they cover with mats
and straw in winter. He sells his things with
the dearest, and, not taking due care to have
his plants prove well, he is supposed to have
lost much of his custom.

26. Pearson has not near so large a ground
as Ricketts (on whom he almost joins), and
therefore he has not so many trees, but of
flowers he has great choice, and of anemonies
he avers he has the best about London, and
sells them only to gentlemen. He has no

240 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature.

greenhouse, yet has abundance of myrtles and
striped philareas, with oranges and other
greens, which he keeps safe enough under
sheds, sunk a foot within ground, and covered
with straw. He has abundance of cypresses,
which, at three feet high, he sells for four
pence apiece to those that take any number.
He is moderate in his prices, and accounted
very honest in his dealing, which gets him
much chapmanry.

27. Darby^ at Ho x ton, has but a little
garden, but is master of several curious greens
that other sale-gardeners want, and which he
saves from cold and winter weather in green-
houses of his own making. His Fritalaria
Crassa (a green) had a flower on it of the
breadth of a half crown, like an embroidered
star, of several colours ; I saw not the like any
where, no, not at Dr. Uvedale's, though he
has the same plant. He raises many striped
hollies by inoculation, though Captain Foster
grafts them as we do apple trees. He is very
curious in propagating greens, but is dear
with them. He has a folio paper book in
which he has pasted the leaves and flowers
of almost all manner of plants, which make
a pretty show, and are more instructive than
any cuts in herbals.

Appendix. 241

28. Clements, at Mile-end, has no bigger a
garden than Darby, but has more greens, yet
not of such curious sorts. He keeps them in
a greenhouse made with a light charge. He
has vines in many places about old trees, which
they wind about. He made wine this year of
his white Muscadine, and white Frontinac,
better I thought than any French white wine.
He keeps a shop of seeds and plants in pots
next the street.

16

INDEX.

Abercrombie (John), 167, 168.
Africa, 133.
Alcinous, 1 88.
Ale (alia), 136.
Alexander, a romance, 76.
Alleyn (Edward), 120.
America, 122, 123, 147, 168, 238.
Anglo-Saxon culture of the vine, 131.
Anne (Queen), 171.

Antiquities of gardening, literary, 1 1 et seqq.
Apothecaries' Company, 50.
Apothecaries, ignorance of early, 47, 48.
Apple-garth, 56.
— tart, 144.

wine = cyder, 56.

Apples, 86.

sellers of, 116.

Aprons, blue, 9.
Arable and pasture, 178.
Arboretum at Paddington, 176.

244 Index.

Arbours, 72 — 5.

Arboyse grape, the, 185.

Argyll (Archibald, Duke of), 199.

Arlington Garden, 228.

Arrack, 133.

Artichokes, 36, 118.

Ash-yard for hop-poles, 55.

Asparagus, 36, 123, 124, 169, 170, 177.

wild, 1 23,. 1 24.

Astrology, II, 12.
Athens, 5.
Auricula, 9.
Austen (Ralph), 29, 30.
Australia, South, 94.

Babylon, 5.

Bacon (Francis), 3, 25—9, 45, 60, 83, 90—114, 137.

139, 147, 148, 182, 186 — 9.
Barnes, Surrey, 23, 181.
Barnet, East, 237.
Barrels, plants transported in, 40.
Battersea, 177, 178, 181.
Beaumont and Fletcher, 141.
Beddington, 67, 68, 226, 227, 230.
Bedford (John Russell, Duke of), 69—71.
Bedford (Lucy, Countess of), 186, 192—4^
Bedford House, Bloomsbury, 200.
Bee-culture, 53, 130.
Beer, 36, 135—7.
Bees, list of works on, 212, 213.

Index. 245

Bekker's Charides and Callus, 6.

Berries (gooseberries, etc.), 123.

Berry tribe prosperous northward, 43.

Bethnal Green, 177.

Bible, 3.

Bibliography of Gardening Literature. 203 - n.

Billingsgate, 133.

Birch, 159.

Blackwell (Mr. and Mrs.), 51.

Bohn (H. G.), 215, 223.

Bradbury (Henry), 224.

Bradshaw (Jeffrey), of Bradford, 128.

Brailsford (Mr.), his paper on Ancient Trees, 159.

Bramshill, 49.

Brathwaite (Richard), 30.

Breton (Nicholas), 86 — 8 et passim.

Brewing, 135—7-

Bridgman, Kent, and Capability Brown, 191, 194 —

202.

Brigs (Mr. S.)> 150.

Bristol, 123.

Britons, 4, 5.

Brompton Park, 171, 237.

Brompton, Old, 19, 132, 175—7-

Broom, Spanish, 165.

Brown ( Capability}, 191.

Browne (William), A.M., 50.

Browne's Shepherd's Pipe, 49.

Buckingham Palace, 148.

Bulbs, importation of, 44, 45.

246 Index.

Bunyan (John), 8.

Burgundy grape, 185.

Burleigh, Lord Exeter's seat, 24, 127, 128.

Busino, Orazio, 24, 127, 128.

Cabbages, 177.

Caesar, 5.

Campden House, Kensington, 132.

Capell (Sir Henry), 230, 231.

Caper tree, 132.

Carews, 67, 68, 227.

Carrot, 112, 113.

Catalogues of gardens, early, 68.

Camberwell, 180.

Cameron (Commander), 133.

Canker, the, 157.

Castelvetri (Giacomo), 169.

Caus (Isaac de), 16, 156.

Cedars at Chelsea, 50.

Celsa (mulberries ?), 59.

Charles I., 35.

Charles II., 129.

Chatsworth, 218.

Chelsea, 24, 50, 84, 149.

Physic Garden at, 24, 50, 51, 227, 228.

Cherries, 64, 137, 143, 185.
Cherry, double flowering, 165.
Cherry-fairs, 143.
Chestnut, horse, 158.

Index. 247

Chestnut, sweet, 158.
Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, 149.
Child (Sir Josiah), 233.
Chiswick, 181, 229, 232.
Citrons, i$i, 152.
Claremont, 200.
Clay used in grafting, 83.
Clements of Mile-End, 241.
Coaches, hackney and stage. 180.
Cobham, gardens at, 16.
Coleridge (S. T.), I.

Colour changed by grafting and other processes. 83,
109.

of fruit, 137.

Columella, 14.

Coney-garth, 55.

Conservatories, 51, 83, 84.

Cooke (Sir Thomas), 232.

Cookery, 8.

Cottage-gardens, 81, 82.

Cowdray Park, Midhurst, 158.

Cromwell House, Old Brompton, 176.

Cromwell (Oliver), 3, 176.

Cryptogamic flora of Scotland, 216.

Crystal Palace, 218.

Culloden sword-blades, 19.

Curiosities or subtleties, 82, 88, 89, 108— 10.

Curtis (Samuel and William), 213, 214.

Curtis's Botanical Garden at Brompton, 175.

Cyder, 56, 130, 133, 134.

248 Index.

Deptford, 181.
Dethicke (Henry), 15.
Devonshire (Duke of), 218.
Diamond (Dr.), 17.
Distillation, 132 — 7.
Dixon (Hepworth), 18.
Dodoens (Rembert), 47.
Donne (Dr.), 186.
Dormer (General), 198.
Dulwich College, 120.
Dunmow, Prior of, 140.
Durham (Joseph), 18.
Dutch asparagus, 123.

gardens in England, 44.

school, 19—21, 44, 45, 173, 174.

Eagle, 60.

Eden, garden of, 3, 188, 189.

Edward I., 58.

Elder, embroidered, 89.

Eleanor of Castile, 58.

Elizabeth (Queen), 45, 47.

Ely House, 138.

Enclosures and parterres, 153.

Enfield, 234, 236, 237.

Englefield (Sir Henry), 201.

Esher, 200.

Espaliers, 155.

Essex, 131, 152.

Essex House, 129.

Index. 249

Evelyn (John), 2, 7— 9, 24? 25, 30-3, 37— 40, 50,
51, 60, 67, 68, 82, 116, 117, 124, 129, 130, 146,
165, 171, 236.

Fauconbergh's (Lord) garden at Sutton Court, 229

Felton (Samuel), 16, 17.

Figs, 184.

Finkel, 133.

Fontainebleau, 184.

Foote (Samuel), 35, 36.

Forbes (James), 69—71.

Forest-trees, 159.

Forster (John), ofHanlop, 122.

Forsyth (W.), 157.

Foster (Captain), 238, 240.

Fox (Sir Stephen), 232.

French Gardener, The, 30 — 37.

grapes, 185.

horticulture, 19, 59.

wines, 129.

Fritalaria Crassa, 240.
Frontignac grapes, 185.
Fruits, 57, 116, 161.

lists of, in 1658.

in Scotland, 43.

Fruit-trees, 127 et seqq.
Fulham, 19, 149, 177, 180, 200.
Fuller (Thomas), 177, 178.

Garden, 55.

250 Index.

Garden houses, 75.

life, 72—7-

the ancient English, 5«

Gardeners, eminent, 65.

farming, 180.

Gardens near London in 1691, 6c --8, 225 — 41.

public and royal, 60 et seqq.

Gardiner (Richard, of Shrewsbury), 111—14.

Garth, 55.

Gascony, 184.

Genoa, 121.

George III., 157.

Gelder-rose, 166.

Gerard (John), 68, 118, 120, 139.

Gibson's Account of the Gardens near London in

1691, 66 — 8, 225 — 41.
Gillyflower, 2, 56, 79.
Glamorganshire, 88.
Glasse (Mrs.), 8, 9.
Gloucester (Duke of), 138.
Goffe (Nicholas), 147.
Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield, 58.
Gorse, 163.
Gower (John), 143.
Grafting, 12, 19, 82, 83, 102, 103.
Grafts, 61.
Grapes, 24, 127, 128, 132, 184.

branch of, 132.

Gray and Wear, nurserymen, 171.
Gray's Inn, no.

Index.

Greek horticulture, 6.
Greenhouses, 51, 83, 84.
Greenwich, 61.
Gresham (Sir Thomas), 58.
Greville (P. K.), 210—17.
Grizzelin Frontignac grape, the, 185.
Grottoes, 76.
Gubbins, Herts, 195.

ffa, Ha hedge, 195.

Hackney, 49, 232.

Ilagecius or Hajck (T.), 36, 135—7.

Hagley, 189. 192.

Hammersmith, Queen Dowager's garden at, 226.

Hampton Court, 14, 131, 225, 226.

Harris (Walter), 44.

Harrison's Description of England, 22.

Hawkins (Sir John), 17.

Hazlitt (William), Si, 82.

Heat, artificial, 26, 35, 83—5, 236.

Heating apparatus, 83 — 5.

Henrietta Maria, 62.

Henry VI. 152.

VII., 61, I37,I45» 155-

VIII., 61, 140.

Henshaw (Thomas), 30.
Herbals, 46— 8, 51, 52.

list of, 211, 212.

Herbarists at Norwich, Society of, 150.

251

252 Index.

Herbert (Philip), Earl of Pembroke and Montgomery,

1 6.
Herbs, kitchen, 15. 115.

medicinal, 52.

price of, 61.

Herculaneum, 188.

Herefordshire, orchards of, 135.

Hertfordshire, 186, 192 — 5,

Hesiod, 6.

Hill (Thomas), 13—5, 130.

Hindberry, or wild raspberry, 137.

Holborn, 68, 120, 138, 143.

Holland, 44, 123, 124, 178.

Holly, variegated, 88.

Honey, 53.

Hooke's Micrographia, 160.

Hookers, the, 65, 71, 223.

Hop-poles, 22, 23.

Hop-yards, 22, 23.

Hops, 22, 23.

Hortus siccuSy 240.

Hot-beds, 83.

Hoxton, 239, 240.

Hughes (W.), 129, 130.

Hyacinth, the, 45.

Ilford, Essex, 131.

India, 146.

Ingestry House, Old Brompton, 176.

Ingleby (Dr.), 131.

Index. 253

Ireland, 121, 122.
Italian figs, 184.

Jam, 37.

James I., 147.

Jardin, 55,

Jargonelles, 2.

Jeaffreson, Cordy, 1 8.

Jessamine, 165.

Johannes de Garlandia, 59, 60, 68, 161.

John the Gardener, n.

Johnson (Dr.), 8, 60.

Johnson, Thomas, the botanist, 205.

Jucca or Yucca, 165.

Jugglers in London, 106 — 8.

Kennett's Parochial Antiquities, 49, 1 56.
Kensington, 19, 174, 175.

Gardens, 226, 237.

Kent, 179.

Kent the gardener, 191, 194 — 202.

Kew, 230, 231.

Gardens, 65.

Kirke's Nursery, 132, 175, 176.
Kitchen-garden, the, 54 et seqq.

Lamb (Charles), I, 2, 42.
Lambert (General), 2, 3.
Lambeth, 238.

254 Index.

Lambeth Palace garden, 234.
La Serre (Olivier de), 147.
Lee (John), nurseryman, 174.
Leek, 55, 56.
Lemon, 26.

juice used for scurvy, 125.

Lemons, preserved, 151.

Le Nautre, 193.

Leprosy, 125.

Lincoln (Earl of), 138, 143.

Lincolnshire, 124.

Lindley (George and John), 215, 216.

Lindley (Dr. James), 128.

Lisle (Lord), 131.

L'Obel (Matthieu de), 49.

London (George), 171.

London (William), 172.

London and Wise, nurserymen, 171 — 3, 194, 208, 237.

London, Bishop of, his garden at Fulham, 200.

environs, of, celebrated for vegetables, 24, 119,

169.

street-life of, in Bacon;s time, 106— 8.

window-gardening in early, 79, 80.

Longleat, 200.

Loudon (J. C), 217—24.

(Mrs.), 7, 220—3.

Low Countries, 185, 193.
Lucas (Joseph), 55, 159.
Lysons, 177—81.
Lyte (Henry), 47.

Index. 255

Macer's Herbal, 46.
Main (James), 221.
Manure, Bacon's experiments with, 91 — 5.

various kinds of, 91 — 5.

Marden, Surrey, 233.

Market-gardens, 169 et seqq.

Mascall (Leonard), 19 — 21.

Matthews (Mrs.), I.

Mazes, 14.

Mead or metheglin, 133.

Medlar, 145.

Melons, 34 — 6.

Middlemist's Cape Nursery, 176.

Midhurst, Sussex, 158.

Mile End, 241.

Miller's Dictionary, 220.

Milton (John), 189, 192.

Mint or aigre-douce, 162.

Mitcham, 52.

Montpelier Tea-gardens at Wai worth, 81—2.

Moor Park, 186, 192—4.

More (Sir Thomas), IOO.

Mortlake, 181.

Mosses, 1 60.

Mowing, 85.

Mulberry, 59, 147.

Mulberry Garden, 148.

Munster (Bishop of), his cherry orchard, 185.

Murray (Lord), 223.

Muscadine, 241.

256 Index.

Muscat, black. 185.

or Frontignac grapes, 184.

Mustard, 59.
Myrtle, 26, 227.

Names of flowers, etc., Saxon and Norman, 56.

Nature-printed Ferns and Sea-weeds, 224.

Nash's Mansions of the Olden Time, 49.

Neckam (Alexander), 56—8, 79.

Newbery's Dives Pragmaticus, 34.

Nidderdale, 159.

Nivernois (Due de), 187.

Nonsuch, 192.

Norway, 133.

Norwich, 150.

Nottingham, 172.

Nurserymen at Old Brompton, 175, 176.

Occupations, gardening, 85—8.
Onion, 115, 116, 144.

seller, 116.

Spanish, 116.

Orange, 26, 57, 58, 230, 231.
Orange trees at Sheen, 185, 230.

at Kew, 231.

Orangery at Beddington, 67, 68, 227, 230.
Orchard, 54.
Oxford, 50.
Oxfordshire, 156.

Index. 257

Paddington, 176.
Paris, 32, 59, 60.

Passe (Crespin de) the elder and younger, 45.
Pasture converted into plough-land, 178.
Paxton (Sir Joseph), 218.
Peach, 94, 116, 138, 142, 143, 184.
flowering, 165.

— October, 142.
Pears, 2, 31—3, 142, 143.

— Warden, 140, 141.

Pearson, a nurseryman at Iloxton, 239.
Peas, 117, 1 1 8, 178, 179.

buttered, 1 79.

Parkinson (John), 1 18.

Parks, public, 63.

Peppermint, 52.

Pepys (S.), 40.

Percy family, encouragement of gardening by, 219.

Perry, 135.

Persica (peach ?), 143.

Petrus de Crescentiie, 7.

Phoenix, 60.

Physic gardens, 24, 48—52.

Pine apple, 144, 145.

Pines, kernels of, used instead of olives, 152.

Platt (Sir Hugh), 49.

Pollard's school at Old Brompton, 1 76.

Pombe, 133.

Pome de orange, 58.

Pomegranate, 146.

17

258 Index.

Pope (A.), 68, 198.

Porkington MS., 12.
Potato, the, 121 — 3, 133.

liquor distilled from, 133.

Pottle of strawberries, 62, 63, 139, 140.
Prejudices and errors of gardeners, 104, 105.
Promptuarlum Parunlorum, 9.
Pruning, 43.

Quinby, 140, 141.
Quince, 121, 143—5.

Raleigh (Sir Walter), 120, 128.
Randolph (Thomas), 62.
Ranelagh's (Lord) garden, 228.
Raspberry, 137, 138.
Raynton (Mr.), 237.
Reformation, 141.
Rei Rusticce Scriptores, 6, 7.
Reid (John), 42, 43.
Removal of trees, 49.
Rhubarb, 150, 151.
Ribston pippin, 157.
Rice, distillations from, 133.
Richardson (Mr.), 237.
Ricketts of Hoxton. 239.
Rose (John), 129, 130.
Roses, 161, 166, 167.
Rousham, 198.

Index. 259

Saffron, 152.

Saffron- Walden, 152.

St. James's Palace, 129, 148.

St. Regie, pear of, 142.

St. Vincent, Abbey of, 19.

Sandwich (Earl of), letter of Evelyn to, 116, 117,

124, 146.

Sandwich, Kent, 179.
Scotish cryptogamic flora, 216, 217.

— horticulture, 42, 43.
Scurvy, 125.

Seeds and plants brought from America and the West

Indies, 24.

Seedsmen, fraudulent, in 1603, 113.
Shakespeare (W.), 138—41, 166, 188.
Sheen, royal garden at, 61.

— Sir W. Temple's garden at, 64, 131, 182—6.
Shepherd's Bush, 176.

Shropshire, ill — 13.
Silk, manufacture of, 147.
Silkworm, cultivation of the, 147.
Simpson's at Billingsgate, 133.
Sion House, 177.
Sir Cleges, a romance, 77.
Sloane (Sir Hans), 50.
Somerset, Duchess of, 129.

House garden, 62, 63.

the Protector, 63.

Southwell (Sir Robert), 122.
Sowerbys, the, 214, 215.

260 Index.

Spanish influence, 58.

potato, 123.

Squire of Low Degree, 72.

Stanley (James, Earl of Derby), 50.

Stephens (Philip), 50.

Stourhead, 190, 192.

Stoves, 51, 83, 84.

Strand Inn, 63.

Strawberries, 29, 6l, 62, 137 — 40, 170, 184, 185.

Street life of London, early, 106 — 8.

Sugar, 53.

Summer-houses, 75> 7^-

Surrey, 17—19, 23, 8r, 82, 144, 177, 178, 181, 233.

Sutton Court, Chiswick, 229.

Sweet (Robert), 217.

Swift (Jonathan), 65, 183.

Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon's extracts from, 91 — in.

Tallard (Count), 172.
Tea-gardens at Wai worth, 81, 82.
Telephone, the, 160.
Temple (Sir John), 230.

(Sir William), 2. 6, 64, 131, 182—6. 189. 192—4,

230.

Tennyson's Talking Oak, 159.
Thames Street, Upper, 149.
Thatch or matting used for protecting plants, 83.
Theobalds, 192.
Thornes (Edward), in. 112.
Thyme, Assyrian. 239.

Index. 261

Tillotson (Archbishop), 235.
Tobacco, 49.

Tools, gardening, 153, 154.
Training of trees, 153, 155.
Trees, ancient, 159.

— lists of, 140 et passim,
Tulips, 2, 161, 164.
Turf, ancient, 18.
Turner (William), 46—8, 53.
Twickenham, 198.
House, 17 — 19.

Uvedale (Dr.), 235, 240.

Valentines, Ilford, 131.

Variegation of foliage, 88, 89.

Varro, 6, 14.

Vauxhall, 133.

Vegetable marrow, 176, 177.

Vegetables, 22. 34, 54 et se/jq., 177 — Si.

high prices of, in 1619, 119, 120.

salted, 124.

sanitary value of, 125.

Venice, 49 note.

Vernier (Dr.), 122.

Versailles, 193.

Verulam Buildings, no, III.

Vesprit (M.), 239.

Vin ordinaire, 128.

Vine, the, 127 ct •>•<•</<•/.

262 Index.

Vines, 129—32.
Vintners' Hall, 149.
Virgil, 6.

Virginia, 122, 123, 148.
birds of, 238.

Wales, 56, 88, 122.
Walnut-trees at Wanstead, 233.
Walpole (Horace), 2, 182, 186—202.
Walter de Biblesworth, 86, 163.
Wai worth, 81, 82.
Wandle river, 144.
Wanstead, 233.
Warden pear, 140, 141.

pie, 140, 141.

Water lily, 164.

Water pipes, 234.

Water pot, 154.

Watts (Mr.), 51, 236.

West Indian trees, 199.

West of England, 139.

Westminster, royal garden at, 138, 143.

Weston (Richard), 25.

Weymouth pine, the, 200.

Wheatley(H. B.), 63.

White (Gilbert), 125.

William III., 65, 171, 183.

Willow, 158.

Wilton Garden, 16, 156.

WTimbledon, 2.

Index.

263

Window-gardening, 78 — 80.
Windsor pears, 2.
Wine, 127, 128, 131, 132.
Wines, French, 129.

home-made, 127, 128, 176, 241.

— prices of in 1524 and 1584, 128, 129.

• sweet, 129.

Wise (Henry), 171.
Withy, 158.

Woburn Abbey, 69 — 71.
Woodall (John), 125, 126.
Woolner (Richard, R.A.), 18.

Worlidge (John), 40—2, 80, 81, 83, 88, 89, 122,
123, 130, 133—5, I58> 164, 165.

Yard = garth, 55.
Yorkshire, 124, 128.

Zouch (Lord), 48, 49.

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