A gentleman, who, on a tour in 1790, visited the burial-place of Edmond
Waller, in the church-yard of Beaconsfield, describes the poet’s
splendid tomb as enclosed, or cradled, with spiked iron palisadoes,
inserted into a great old ash tree, under which his head reposes. “This
umbrageous tree overshadows the whole mausoleum. As the pagan deities
had each their favourite tree--Jupiter, the oak; Apollo, the laurel;
Venus, the myrtle; Minerva, the olive; &c.--so poets and literary men
have imitated them herein; and all lovers of solitude are, like the Lady
Grace of Sir John Vanbrugh, fond of a cool retreat from the noon-day’s
sultry heat _under a great tree_.”[381]
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A modern author, whose works are expressive of beauty and feeling, and
from whom an elegant extract on “Gardens” in a former page has been
derived, adverts to the important use which the poets have made of trees
by way of illustration. He says--
Homer frequently embellishes his subjects with references to them; and
no passage in the Iliad is more beautiful, than the one where, in
imitation of Musæus, he compares the falling of leaves and shrubs to the
fall and renovation of great and ancient families.--Illustrations of
this sort are frequent in the sacred writings.--“I am exalted like a
cedar in Libanus,” says the author of Ecclesiastes, “and as a cypress
tree upon the mountain of Hermon. I was exalted like a palm tree in
Engeddi, and as a rose plant in Jericho; as a fair olive in a pleasant
field, and grew up as a plane tree by the water; as a turpentine tree I
stretched out my branches, and my branches are the branches of honour
and grace; as a vine brought I forth pleasant savour, and my flowers are
the fruits of honour and victory.”--In the Psalms, in a fine vein of
allegory, the vine tree is made to represent the people of Israel: “Thou
hast brought a vine out of Egypt; thou hast cut out the heathen, and
planted it. Thou didst cause it to take deep root, and it filled the
land. The hills were covered with its shadow, and the boughs thereof
were like the goodly cedars.”
In Ossian, how beautiful is the following passage of Malvina’s
lamentation for Oscar:--“I was a lovely tree in thy presence, Oscar,
with all my branches round me; but thy death came like a blast from the
desert, and laid my green head low; the spring returned with its
showers, but no green leaf of mine arose.” Again, where old and weary,
blind and almost destitute of friends, he compares himself to a tree
that is withered and decayed:--“But Ossian is a tree that is withered;
its branches are blasted and bare; no green leaf covers its
boughs:--from its trunk no young shoot is seen to spring; the breeze
whistles in its grey moss; the blast shakes its head of age; the storm
will soon overturn it, and strew all its dry branches with thee, Oh
Dermid, and with all the rest of the mighty dead, in the green winding
vale of Cona.”
That traveller esteemed himself happy, who first carried into Palestine
the rose of Jericho from the plains of Arabia; and many of the Roman
nobility were gratified, in a high degree, with having transplanted
exotic plants and trees into the orchards of Italy. Pompey introduced
the ebony on the day of his triumph over Mithridates; Vespasian
transplanted the balm of Syria, and Lucullus the Pontian cherry. Auger
de Busbeck brought the lilac from Constantinople; Hercules introduced
the orange into Spain; Verton the mulberry into England:--and so great
is the love of nations for particular trees, that a traveller never
fails to celebrate those by which his native province is distinguished.
Thus, the native of Hampshire prides himself upon his oaks; the
Burgundian boasts of his vines, and the Herefordshire farmer of his
apples. Normandy is proud of her pears; Provence of her olives; and
Dauphiné of her mulberries; while the Maltese are in love with their
own orange trees. Norway and Sweden celebrate their pines; Syria her
palms; and since they have few other trees of which they can boast,
Lincoln celebrates her alders, and Cambridge her willows! The Paphians
were proud of their myrtles, the Lesbians of their vines; Rhodes loudly
proclaimed the superior charms of her rose trees; Idumea of her balsams;
Media of her citrons, and India of her ebony. The Druses boast of their
mulberries; Gaza of her dates and pomegranates; Switzerland of her lime
trees; Bairout of her figs and bananas; Damascus of her plums;
Inchonnaugan of its birch, and Inchnolaig of its yews. The inhabitants
of Jamaica never cease to praise the beauty of their manchenillas; while
those of Tobasco are as vain of their cocoas.--The natives of Madeira,
whose spring and autumn reign together, take pride in their cedars and
citrons; those of Antigua of their tamarinds, while they esteem their
mammee sappota to be equal to any oak in Europe, and their mangos to be
superior to any tree in America. Equally partial are the inhabitants of
the Plains of Tahta to their peculiar species of fan palm; and those of
Kous to their odoriferous orchards. The Hispaniolans, with the highest
degree of pride, challenge any one of the trees of Europe or Asia to
equal the height of their cabbage trees--towering to an altitude of two
hundred and seventy feet:--Even the people of the Bay of Honduras have
imagination sufficient to conceive their logwood to be superior to any
trees in the world; while the Huron savages inquire of Europeans,
whether they have any thing to compare with their immense cedar
trees.[382]
[381] Mr. T. Gosling, in the Gent. Mag. Sept. 1790.
[382] The Philosophy of Nature.
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