[001] Some of the finest _Florists flowers_ have been reared by the
mechanics of Norwich and Manchester and by the Spitalfield's weavers.
The pitmen in the counties of Durham and Northumberland reside in long
rows of small houses, to each of which is attached a little garden,
which they cultivate with such care and success, that they frequently
bear away the prize at Floral Exhibitions.
[002] Of Rail-Road travelling the reality is quite different from the
idea that descriptions of it had left upon my mind. Unpoetical as this
sort of transit may seem to some minds, I confess I find it excite and
satisfy the imagination. The wondrous speed--the quick change of
scene--the perfect comfort--the life-like character of the power in
motion, the invisible, and mysterious, and mighty steam horse, urged,
and guided, and checked by the hand of Science--the cautionary, long,
shrill whistle--the beautiful grey vapor, the breath of the unseen animal,
floating over the fields by which we pass, sometimes hanging stationary
for a moment in the air, and then melting away like a vision--furnish
sufficiently congenial amusement for a period-minded observer.
[003] "That which peculiarly distinguishes the gardens of England," says
Repton, "is the beauty of English verdure: _the grass of the mown lawn_,
uniting with, the grass of the adjoining pastures, and presenting _that
permanent verdure_ which is the natural consequence of our soft and
humid clime, but unknown to the cold region of the North or the parching
temperature of the South. This it is impossible to enjoy in Portugal
where it would be as practicable to cover the general surface with the
snow of Lapland as with the verdure of England." It is much the same in
France. "There is everywhere in France," says Loudon, "a want _of close
green turf_, of ever-green bushes and of good adhesive gravel." Some
French admirers of English gardens do their best to imitate our lawns,
and it is said that they sometimes partially succeed with English grass
seed, rich manure, and constant irrigation. In Bengal there is a very
beautiful species of grass called Doob grass, (_Panicum Dactylon_,) but
it only flourishes on wide and exposed plains with few trees on them,
and on the sides of public roads, Shakespeare makes Falstaff say that
"the camomile the more it is trodden on the faster it grows" and, this
is the case with the Doob grass. The attempt to produce a permanent Doob
grass lawn is quite idle unless the ground is extensive and open, and
much trodden by men or sheep. A friend of mine tells me that he covered
a large lawn of the coarse Ooloo grass (_Saccharum cylindricum_) with
mats, which soon killed it, and on removing the mats, the finest Doob
grass sprang up in its place. But the Ooloo grass soon again over-grew
the Doob.
[004] I allude here chiefly to the ryots of wealthy Zemindars and to
other poor Hindu people in the service of their own countrymen. All the
subjects of the British Crown, even in India, are _politically free_,
but individually the poorer Hindus, (especially those who reside at a
distance from large towns,) are unconscious of their rights, and even
the wealthier classes have rarely indeed that proud and noble feeling of
personal independence which characterizes people of all classes and
conditions in England. The feeling with which even a Hindu of wealth and
rank approaches a man in power is very different indeed from that of the
poorest Englishman under similar circumstances. But national education
will soon communicate to the natives of India a larger measure of true
self-respect. It will not be long, I hope, before the Hindus will
understand our favorite maxim of English law, that "Every man's house is
his castle,"--a maxim so finely amplified by Lord Chatham: "_The poorest
man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the Crown. It
may be frail--its roof may shake--the wind may blow through it--the
storm may enter--but the king of England cannot enter!--all his force
dares not cross the threshold of the ruined tenement_."
[005] _Literary Recreations_.
[006] I have in some moods preferred the paintings of our own
Gainsborough even to those of Claude--and for this single reason, that
the former gives a peculiar and more touching interest to his landscapes
by the introduction of sweet groups of children. These lovely little
figures are moreover so thoroughly English, and have such an out-of-doors
air, and seem so much a part of external nature, that an Englishman
who is a lover of rural scenery and a patriot, can hardly fail
to be enchanted with the style of his celebrated countryman.--_Literary
Recreations_.
[007] Had Evelyn only composed the great work of his 'Sylva, or a
Discourse of Forest Trees,' &c. his name would have excited the
gratitude of posterity. The voice of the patriot exults in his
dedication to Charles II, prefixed to one of the later editions:--'I
need not acquaint your Majesty, how many millions of timber-trees,
besides infinite others, have been propagated and planted throughout
your vast dominions, at the instigation and by the sole direction of
this work, because your Majesty has been pleased to own it publicly for
my encouragement.' And surely while Britain retains her awful situation
among the nations of Europe, the 'Sylva' of Evelyn will endure with her
triumphant oaks. It was a retired philosopher who aroused the genius of
the nation, and who casting a prophetic eye towards the age in which we
live, has contributed to secure our sovereignty of the seas. The present
navy of Great Britain has been constructed with the oaks which the
genius of Evelyn planted.--_D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature_.
[008] _Crisped knots_ are figures curled or twisted, or having waving
lines intersecting each other. They are sometimes planted in box.
Children, even in these days, indulge their fancy in sowing mustard and
cress, &c. in 'curious knots,' or in favorite names and sentences. I
have done it myself, "I know not how oft,"--and alas, how long ago! But
I still remember with what anxiety I watered and watched the ground, and
with what rapture I at last saw the surface gradually rising and
breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born
plants, all exactly in their proper lines or stations, like a
well-drilled Lilliputian battalion.
Shakespeare makes mention of garden _knots_ in his _Richard the Second_,
where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her _knots_ disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
There is an allusion to garden _knots_ in _Holinshed's Chronicle_. In
1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended
hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and _chipping of knottis_ and
sweeping the said garden clean."
[009] Ovid, in his story of Pyramus and Thisbe, tells us that the black
Mulberry was originally white. The two lovers killed themselves under a
white Mulberry tree and the blood penetrating to the roots of the tree
mixed with the sap and gave its color to the fruit.
[010] _Revived Adonis_,--for, according to tradition he died every year
and revived again. _Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son_,--that is, of
Ulysses, whom he entertained on his return from Troy. _Or that, not
mystic_--not fabulous as the rest, but a real garden which Solomon made
for his wife, the daughter of Pharoah, king of Egypt--WARBURTON
"Divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry," observes Horace
Walpole, "the garden of Alcinous was a small orchard and vineyard with
some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, inclosed within
a quickset hedge." Lord Kames, says, still more boldly, that it was
nothing but a kitchen garden. Certainly, gardening amongst the ancient
Greeks, was a very simple business. It is only within the present
century that it has been any where elevated into a fine art.
[011] "We are unwilling to diminish or lose the credit of Paradise, or
only pass it over with [the Hebrew word for] _Eden_, though the Greek be
of a later name. In this excepted, we know not whether the ancient
gardens do equal those of late times, or those at present in Europe. Of
the gardens of Hesperides, we know nothing singular, but some golden
apples. Of Alcinous his garden, we read nothing beyond figs, apples,
olives; if we allow it to be any more than a fiction of Homer, unhappily
placed in Corfu, where the sterility of the soil makes men believe there
was no such thing at all. The gardens of Adonis were so empty that they
afforded proverbial expression, and the principal part thereof was empty
spaces, with herbs and flowers in pots. I think we little understand the
pensile gardens of Semiramis, which made one of the wonders of it
[Babylon], wherein probably the structure exceeded the plants contained
in them. The excellency thereof was probably in the trees, and if the
descension of the roots be equal to the height of trees, it was not
[absurd] of Strebaeus to think the pillars were hollow that the roots
might shoot into them."--_Sir Thomas Browne.--Bohn's Edition of Sir
Thomas Browne's Works, vol. 2, page_ 498.
[012] The house and garden before Pope died were large enough for their
owner. He was more than satisfied with them. "As Pope advanced in
years," says Roscoe, "his love of gardening, and his attention to the
various occupations to which it leads, seem to have increased also. This
predilection was not confined to the ornamental part of this delightful
pursuit, in which he has given undoubted proofs of his proficiency, but
extended to the useful as well as the agreeable, as appears from several
passages in his poems; but he has entered more particularly into this
subject in a letter to Swift (March 25, 1736); "I wish you had any
motive to see this kingdom. I could keep you: for I am rich, that is,
have more than I want, I can afford room to yourself and two servants. I
have indeed room enough; nothing but myself at home. The kind and hearty
housewife is dead! The agreeable and instructive neighbour is gone! Yet
my house is enlarged, and the gardens extend and flourish, as knowing
nothing of the guests they have lost. I have more fruit trees and
kitchen garden than you have any thought of; and, I have good melons and
apples of my own growth. I am as much a better gardener, as I am a worse
poet, than when you saw me; but gardening is near akin to philosophy,
for Tully says, _Agricultura proxima sapientiae_. For God's sake, why
should not you, (that are a step higher than a philosopher, a divine,
yet have too much grace and wit than to be a bishop) even give all you
have to the poor of Ireland (for whom you have already done every thing
else,) so quit the place, and live and die with me? And let _tales anima
concordes_ be our motto and our epitaph."
[013] The leaves of the willow, though green above, are hoar below.
Shakespeare's knowledge of the fact is alluded to by Hazlitt as one of
the numberless evidences of the poet's minute observation of external
nature.
[014] See Mr. Loudon's most interesting and valuable work entitled
_Arboretum et Fruticetum Britanicum_.
[015] All the rules of gardening are reducible to three heads: the
contrasts, the management of surprises and the concealment of the
bounds. "Pray, what is it you mean by the contrasts?" "The disposition
of the lights and shades."--"'Tis the colouring then?"--"Just
that."--"Should not variety be one of the rules?"--"Certainly, one of
the chief; but that is included mostly in the contrasts." I have
expressed them all in two verses[140] (after my manner, in very little
compass), which are in imitation of Horace's--_Omne tulit punctum.
Pope.--Spence's Anecdotes_.
[016] In laying out a garden, the chief thing to be considered is the
genius of the place. Thus at Tiskins, for example, Lord Bathurst should
have raised two or three mounts, because his situation is _all_ plain,
and nothing can please without variety. _Pope--Spence's Anecdotes_.
[017] The seat and gardens of the Lord Viscount Cobham, in
Buckinghamshire. Pope concludes the first Epistle of his Moral Essays
with a compliment to the patriotism of this nobleman.
And you, brave Cobham! to the latest breath
Shall feel your ruling passion strong in death:
Such in those moments as in all the past
"Oh, save my country, Heaven!" shall be your last.
[018] Two hundred acres and two hundred millions of francs were made
over to Le Notre by Louis XIV. to complete these geometrical gardens.
One author tells us that in 1816 the ordinary cost of putting a certain
portion of the waterworks in play was at the rate of 200 L. per hour,
and another still later authority states that when the whole were set in
motion once a year on some Royal fete, the cost of the half hour during
which the main part of the exhibition lasted was not less than 3,000 L.
This is surely a most senseless expenditure. It seems, indeed, almost
incredible. I take the statements from _Loudon's_ excellent
_Encyclopaedia of Gardening_. The name of one of the original reporters
is Neill; the name of the other is not given. The gardens formerly were
and perhaps still are full of the vilest specimens of verdant sculpture
in every variety of form. Lord Kames gives a ludicrous account of the
vomiting stone statues there;--"A lifeless statue of an animal pouring
out water may be endured" he observes, "without much disgust: but here
the lions and wolves are put in violent action; each has seized its
prey, a deer or a lamb, in act to devour; and yet, as by hocus-pocus,
the whole is converted into a different scene: the lion, forgetting his
prey, pours out water plentifully; and the deer, forgetting its danger,
performs the same work: a representation no less absurd than that in the
opera, where Alexander the Great, after mounting the wall of a town
besieged, turns his back to the enemy, and entertains his army with a
song."
[019] Broome though a writer of no great genius (if any), had yet the
honor to be associated with Pope in the translation of the Odyssey. He
translated the 2nd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 16th, 18th, and 23rd books. Henley
(Orator Henley) sneered at Pope, in the following couplet, for receiving
so much assistance:
Pope came clean off with Homer, but they say,
Broome went before, and kindly swept the way.
Fenton was another of Pope's auxiliaries. He translated the 1st, 4th,
19th and 20th books (of the Odyssey). Pope himself translated the rest.
[020] Stowe
[021] The late Humphrey Repton, one of the best landscape-gardeners
that England has produced, and who was for many years employed on
alterations and improvements in the house and grounds at Cobham, in
Kent, the seat of the Earl of Darnley, seemed to think that Stowe ought
not to monopolize applause and admiration, "Whether," he said, "we
consider its extent, its magnificence or its comfort, there are few
places that can vie with Cobham." Repton died in 1817, and his patron
and friend the Earl of Darnley put up at Cobham an inscription to his
memory.
The park at Cobham extends over an area of no less than 1,800 acres,
diversified with thick groves and finely scattered single trees and
gentle slopes and broad smooth lawns. Some of the trees are singularly
beautiful and of great age and size. A chestnut tree, named the Four
Sisters, is five and twenty feet in girth. The mansion, of which, the
central part was built by Inigo Jones, is a very noble one. George the
Fourth pronounced the music room the finest room in England. The walls
are of polished white marble with pilasters of sienna marble. The
picture gallery is enriched with valuable specimens of the genius of
Titian and Guido and Salvator Rosa and Sir Joshua Reynolds. There is
another famous estate in Kent, Knole, the seat of
Dorset, the grace of courts, the Muse's pride.
The Earl of Dorset, though but a poetaster himself, knew how to
appreciate the higher genius of others. He loved to be surrounded by the
finest spirits of his time. There is a pleasant anecdote of the company
at his table agreeing to see which amongst them could produce the best
impromptu. Dryden was appointed arbitrator. Dorset handed a slip of
paper to Dryden, and when all the attempts were collected, Dryden
decided without hesitation that Dorset's was the best. It ran thus: "_I
promise to pay Mr. John Dryden, on demand, the sum of L500. Dorset_."
[022] This is generally put into the mouth of Pope, but if we are to
believe Spence, who is the only authority for the anecdote, it was
addressed to himself.
[023] It has been said that in laying out the grounds at Hagley, Lord
Lyttelton received some valuable hints from the author of _The Seasons_,
who was for some time his Lordship's guest. The poet has commemorated
the beauties of Hagley Park in a description that is familiar to all
lovers of English poetry. I must make room for a few of the concluding
lines.
Meantime you gain the height, from whose fair brow,
The bursting prospect spreads immense around:
And snatched o'er hill, and dale, and wood, and lawn,
And verdant field, and darkening heath between,
And villages embosomed soft in trees,
And spiry towns by surging columns marked,
Of household smoke, your eye excursive roams;
Wide stretching from the hall, in whose kind haunt
The hospitable genius lingers still,
To where the broken landscape, by degrees,
Ascending, roughens into rigid hills;
O'er which the Cambrian mountains, like far clouds,
That skirt the blue horizon, dusky rise.
It certainly does not look as if there had been any want of kindly
feeling towards Shenstone on the part of Lyttelton when we find the
following inscription in Hagley Park.
To the memory of
William Shenstone, Esquire,
In whose verse
Were all the natural graces.
And in whose manners
Was all the amiable simplicity
Of pastoral poetry,
With the sweet tenderness
Of the elegiac.
There is also at Hagley a complimentary inscription on an urn to
Alexander Pope; and, on an octagonal building called _Thomson's Seat_,
there is an inscription to the author of _The Seasons_. Hagley is kept
up with great care and is still in possession of the descendants of the
founder. But a late visitor (Mr. George Dodd) expresses a doubt whether
the Leasowes, even in its comparative decay, is not a finer bit of
landscape, a more delightful place to lose one-self in, than even its
larger and better preserved neighbour.
[024] Coleridge is reported to have said--"There is in Crabbe an
absolute defect of high imagination; he gives me little pleasure. Yet no
doubt he has much power of a certain kind, and it is good to cultivate,
even at some pains, a catholic taste in literature." Walter Savage
Landor, in his "Imaginary Conversations," makes Porson say--"Crabbe
wrote with a two-penny nail and scratched rough truths and rogues' facts
on mud walls." Horace Smith represents Crabbe, as "Pope in worsted
stockings." That there is merit of some sort or other, and that of no
ordinary kind, in Crabbe's poems, is what no one will deny. They
relieved the languor of the last days of two great men, of very
different characters--Sir Walter Scott and Charles James Fox.
[025] The poet had a cottage and garden in Kew-foot-Lane at or near
Richmond. In the alcove in the garden is a small table made of the wood
of the walnut tree. There is a drawer to the table which in all
probability often received charge of the poet's effusions hot from the
brain. On a brass tablet inserted in the top of the table is this
inscription--"_This table was the property of James Thomson, and always
stood in this seat._"
[026] Shene or Sheen: the old name of Richmond, signifying in Saxon
_shining_ or _splendour_.
[027] Highgate and Hamstead.
[028] In his last sickness
[029] On looking back at page 36 I find that I have said in the foot
note that it is only within _the present century_ that gardening has
been elevated into _a fine art_. I did not mean within the 55 years of
this 19th century, but _within a hundred years_. Even this, however, was
an inadvertency. We may go a little further back. Kent and Pope lived to
see Landscape-Gardening considered a fine art. Before their time there
were many good practical gardeners, but the poetry of the art was not
then much regarded except by a very few individuals of more than
ordinary refinement.
[030] Catherine the Second grossly disgraced herself as a woman--partly
driven into misconduct herself by the behaviour of her husband--but as a
sovereign it cannot be denied that she exhibited a penetrating sagacity
and great munificence; and perhaps the lovers of literature and science
should treat her memory with a little consideration. When Diderot was in
distress and advertized his library for sale, the Empress sent him an
order on a banker at Paris for the amount demanded, namely fifteen
thousand livres, on condition that the library was to be left as a
deposit with the owner, and that he was to accept a gratuity of one
thousand livres annually for taking charge of the books, until the
Empress should require them. This was indeed a delicate and ingenious
kindness. Lord Brougham makes D'Alembert and not Diderot the subject of
this anecdote. It is a mistake. See the Correspondence of Baron de Gumm
and Diderot with the Duke of Saxe-Gotha.
Many of the Russian nobles keep up to this day the taste in gardening
introduced by Catherine the Second, and have still many gardens laid out
in the English style. They have often had in their employ both English
and Scottish gardeners. There is an anecdote of a Scotch gardener in the
Crimea in one of the public journals:--
"Our readers"--says the _Banffshire Journal_--"will recollect that when
the Allies made a brief expedition to Yalto, in the south of the Crimea,
they were somewhat surprised and gratified by the sight of some splendid
gardens around a seat of Prince Woronzow. Little did our countrymen
think that these gardens were the work of a Scotchman, and a Moray loon;
yet such was the case." The history of the personage in question is a
somewhat singular one: "Jamie Sinclair, the garden boy, had a natural
genius, and played the violin. Lady Cumming had this boy educated by the
family tutor, and sent him to London, where he was well known in
1836-7-8, for his skill in drawing and colouring. Mr. Knight, of the
Exotic Nursery, for whom he used to draw orchids and new plants, sent
him to the Crimea, to Prince Woronzow, where he practised for thirteen
years. He had laid out these beautiful gardens which the allies the
other day so much admired; had the care of 10,000 acres of vineyards
belonging to the prince; was well known to the Czar, who often consulted
him about improvements, and gave him a "medal of merit" and a diploma or
passport, by which he was free to pass from one end of the empire to the
other, and also through Austria and Prussia, I have seen these
instruments. He returned to London in 1851, and was just engaged with a
London publisher for a three years' job, when Menschikoff found the
Turks too hot for him last April twelve-month; the Russians then made up
for blows, and Mr. Sinclair was more dangerous for them in London than
Lord Aberdeen. He was the only foreigner who was ever allowed to see all
that was done in and out of Sebastopol, and over all the Crimea. The
Czar, however, took care that Sinclair could not join the allies; but
where he is and what he is about I must not tell, until the war is
over--except that he is not in Russia, and that he will never play first
fiddle again in Morayshire."
[031] Brown succeeded to the popularity of Kent. He was nicknamed,
_Capability Brown_, because when he had to examine grounds previous to
proposed alterations and improvements he talked much of their
_capabilities_. One of the works which are said to do his memory most
honor, is the Park of Nuneham, the seat of Lord Harcourt. The grounds
extend to 1,200 acres. Horace Walpole said that they contained scenes
worthy of the bold pencil of Rubens, and subjects for the tranquil
sunshine of Claude de Lorraine. The following inscription is placed over
the entrance to the gardens.
Here universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Leads on the eternal Spring.
It is said that the _gardens_ at Nuneham were laid out by Mason, the
poet.
[032] Mrs. Stowe visited the Jardin Mabille in the Champs Elysees, a
sort of French Vauxhall, where small jets of gas were so arranged as to
imitate "flowers of the softest tints and the most perfect shape."
[033] Napoleon, it is said, once conceived the plan of roofing with
glass the gardens of the Tuileries, so that they might be used as a
winter promenade.
[034] Addison in the 477th number of the _Spectator_ in alluding to
Kensington Gardens, observes; "I think there are as many kinds of
gardening as poetry; our makers of parterres and flower gardens are
epigrammatists and sonnetteers in the art; contrivers of bowers and
grottos, treillages and cascades, are romance writers. Wise and London
are our heroic poets; and if I may single out any passage of their works
to commend I shall take notice of that part in the upper garden at
Kensington, which was at first nothing but a gravel pit. It must have
been a fine genius for gardening that could have thought of forming such
an unsightly hollow unto so beautiful an area and to have hit the eye
with so uncommon and agreeable a scene as that which it is now wrought
into."
[035] Lord Bathurst, says London, informed Daines Barrington, that _he_
(Lord Bathurst) was the first who deviated from the straight line in
sheets of water by following the lines in a valley in widening a brook
at Ryskins, near Colnbrook; and Lord Strafford, thinking that it was
done from poverty or economy asked him to own fairly how little more it
would have cost him to have made it straight. In these days no possessor
of a park or garden has the water on his grounds either straight or
square if he can make it resemble the Thames as described by Wordsworth:
The river wanders at its own sweet will.
Horace Walpole in his lively and pleasant little work on Modern
Gardening almost anticipates this thought. In commending Kent's style of
landscape-gardening he observes: "_The gentle stream was taught to
serpentize at its pleasure."_
[036] This Palm-house, "the glory of the gardens," occupies an area of
362 ft. in length; the centre is an hundred ft. in width and 66 ft. in
height.
It must charm a Native of the East on a visit to our country, to behold
such carefully cultured specimens, in a great glass-case in England, of
the trees called by Linnaeus "the Princes of the vegetable kingdom," and
which grow so wildly and in such abundance in every corner of Hindustan.
In this conservatory also are the banana and plantain. The people of
England are in these days acquainted, by touch and sight, with almost
all the trees that grow in the several quarters of the world. Our
artists can now take sketches of foreign plants without crossing the
seas. An allusion to the Palm tree recals some criticisms on
Shakespeare's botanical knowledge.
"Look here," says _Rosalind_, "what I found on a palm tree." "A palm
tree in the forest of Arden," remarks Steevens, "is as much out of place
as a lioness in the subsequent scene." Collier tries to get rid of the
difficulty by suggesting that Shakespeare may have written _plane tree_.
"Both the remark and the suggestion," observes Miss Baker, "might have
been spared if those gentlemen had been aware that in the counties
bordering on the Forest of Arden, the name of an exotic tree is
transferred to an indigenous one." The _salix caprea_, or goat-willow,
is popularly known as the "palm" in Northamptonshire, no doubt from
having been used for the decoration of churches on Palm Sunday--its
graceful yellow blossoms, appearing at a time when few other trees have
put forth a leaf, having won for it that distinction. Clare so calls
it:--
"Ye leaning palms, that seem to look
Pleased o'er your image in the brook."
That Shakespeare included the willow in his forest scenery is certain,
from another passage in the same play:--
"West of this place, down in the neighbour bottom.
The _rank of osiers_ by the murmuring stream,
Left on your right hand brings you to the place."
The customs and amusements of Northamptonshire, which are frequently
noticed in these volumes, were identical with those of the neighbouring
county of Warwick, and, in like manner illustrate very clearly many
passages in the great dramatist.--_Miss Baker's "Glossary of
Northamptonshire Words." (Quoted by the London Athenaeum_.)
[037] Mrs. Hemans once took up her abode for some weeks with Wordsworth
at Rydal Mount, and was so charmed with the country around, that she was
induced to take a cottage called _Dove's Nest_, which over-looked the
lake of Windermere. But tourists and idlers so haunted her retreat and
so worried her for autographs and Album contributions, that she was
obliged to make her escape. Her little cottage and garden in the village
of Wavertree, near Liverpool, seem to have met the fate which has
befallen so many of the residences of the poets. "Mrs. Hemans's little
flower-garden" (says a late visitor) "was no more--but rank grass and
weeds sprang up luxuriously; many of the windows were broken; the
entrance gate was off its hinges: the vine in front of the house trailed
along the ground, and a board, with '_This house to let_' upon it, was
nailed on the door. I entered the deserted garden and looked into the
little parlour--once so full of taste and elegance; it was gloomy and
cheerless. The paper was spotted with damp, and spiders had built their
webs in the corner. As I mused on the uncertainty of human life, I
exclaimed with the eloquent Burke,--'What shadows we are, and what
shadows we pursue!'"
The beautiful grounds of the late Professor Wilson at Elleray, we are
told by Mr. Howitt in his interesting "_Homes and Haunts of the British
Poets_" have also been sadly changed. "Steam," he says, "as little as
time, has respected the sanctity of the poet's home, but has drawn its
roaring iron steeds opposite to its gate and has menaced to rush through
it and lay waste its charmed solitude. In plain words, I saw the stages
of a projected railway running in an ominous line across the very lawn
and before the windows of Elleray." I believe the whole place has been
purchased by a Railway Company.
[038] In Churton's _Rail Book of England_, published about three years
ago, Pope's Villa is thus noticed--"Not only was this temple of the
Muses--this abode of genius--the resort of the learned and the wittiest
of the land--levelled to the earth, but all that the earth produced to
remind posterity of its illustrious owner, and identify the dead with
the living strains he has bequeathed to us, was plucked up by the roots
and scattered to the wind." On the authority of William Hewitt I have
stated on an earlier page that some splendid Spanish chesnut trees and
some elms and cedars planted by Pope at Twickenham were still in
existence. But Churton is a later authority. Howitt's book was published
in 1847.
[039] _One would have thought &c._ See the garden of Armida, as
described by Tasso, C. xvi. 9, &c.
"In lieto aspetto il bel giardin s'aperse &c."
Here was all that variety, which constitutes the nature of beauty: hill
and dale, lawns and crystal rivers, &c.
"And, that which all faire works doth most aggrace,
"The art, which all that wrought, appeared in no place."
Which is literally from Tasso, C, xvi 9.
"E quel, che'l bello, e'l caro accresce a l'opre,
"L'arte, che tutto fa, nulla si scopre."
The next stanza is likewise translated from Tasso, C. xvi 10. And, if
the reader likes the comparing of the copy with the original, he may see
many other beauties borrowed from the Italian poet. The fountain, and
the two bathing damsels, are taken from Tasso, C. xv, st. 55, &c. which
he calls, _Il fonte del riso_. UPTON.
[040] Cowper was evidently here thinking rather of Milton than of Homer.
_Flowers of all hue_, and without thorns the rose.
_Paradise Lost_.
Pope translates the passage thus;
Beds of all various _herbs_, for ever green,
In beauteous order terminate the scene.
Homer referred to pot-herbs, not to flowers of all hues. Cowper is
generally more faithful than Pope, but he is less so in this instance.
In the above description we have Homer's highest conception of a
princely garden:--in five acres were included an orchard, a vineyard,
and some beds of pot-herbs. Not a single flower is mentioned, by the
original author, though his translator has been pleased to steal some
from the garden of Eden and place them on "the verge extreme" of the
four acres. Homer of course meant to attach to a Royal residence as
Royal a garden; but as Bacon says, "men begin to build stately sooner
than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." The
mansion of Alcinous was of brazen walls with golden columns; and the
Greeks and Romans had houses that were models of architecture when their
gardens exhibited no traces whatever of the hand of taste.
[041]
_And over him, art stryving to compayre
With nature, did an arber greene dispied_
This whole episode is taken from Tasso, C. 16, where Rinaldo is
described in dalliance with Armida. The bower of bliss is her garden
"Stimi (si misto il culto e col negletto)
"Sol naturali e gli ornamenti e i siti,
"Di natura arte par, che per diletto
"L'imitatrice sua scherzando imiti."