Dear is the forest frowning o'er his head.And dearthe velvet greenswardto his tread.
Or he may exclaim in the words of poor Keats--now slumbering under a foreign turf--
Happy is England! I could be contentTo see no other verdure than her own.
It is a pleasing proof of the fine moral influence of natural scenery that the most ceremonious strangers can hardly be long seated together in the open air on the "velvet greensward" without casting off for a while the cold formalities of artificial life, and becoming as frank and social as ingenuous school-boys. Nature breathes peace and geniality into almost every human heart.
"John Thelwall," says Coleridge, "had something very good about him. We were sitting in a beautiful recess in the Quantocks when I said to him 'Citizen John, this is a fine place to talk treason in!' 'Nay, Citizen Samuel,' replied he, 'it is rather a place to make us forget that there is any necessity for treason!'"
Leigh Hunt, who always looks on nature with the eye of a true painter and the imagination of a true poet, has represented with delightful force and vividness some of those accidents of light and shade that diversify an English meadow.
RAIN AND SUNSHINE IN MAY.
"Can any thing be more lovely, than the meadows between the rains of May, when the sun smites them on the sudden like a painter, and they laugh up at him, as if he had lighted a loving cheek!
I speak of a season when the returning threats of cold and the resisting warmth of summer time, make robust mirth in the air; when the winds imitate on a sudden the vehemence of winter; and silver-white clouds are abrupt in their coming down and shadows on the grass chase one another, panting, over the fields, like a pursuit of spirits. With undulating necks they pant forward, like hounds or the leopard.
See! the cloud is after the light, gliding over the country like the shadow of a god; and now the meadows are lit up here and there with sunshine, as if the soul of Titian were standing in heaven, and playing his fancies on them. Green are the trees in shadow; but the trees in the sun how twenty-fold greentheyare--rich and variegated with gold!"
One of the many exquisite out-of-doors enjoyments for the observers of nature, is the sight of an English harvest. How cheering it is to behold the sickles flashing in the sun, as the reapers with well sinewed arm, and with a sweeping movement, mow down the close-arrayed ranks of the harvest field! What are "the rapture of the strife" and all the "pomp, pride and circumstance of glorious war," that bring death to some and agony and grief to others, compared with the green and golden trophies of the honest Husbandman whose bloodless blade makes no wife a widow, no child an orphan,--whose office is not to spread horror and desolation through shrieking cities, but to multiply and distribute the riches of nature over a smiling land.
But let us quit the open fields for a time, and turn again to the flowery retreats of
Retired LeisureThat in trim gardens takes his pleasure.
In all ages, in all countries, in all creeds, a garden is represented as the scene not only of earthly but of celestial enjoyment. The ancients had their Elysian Fields and the garden of the Hesperides, the Christian has his Garden of Eden, the Mahommedan his Paradise of groves and flowers and crystal fountains and black eyed Houries.
"God Almighty," says Lord Bacon, "first planted a garden; and indeed it is the purest of all pleasures: it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man." Bacon, though a utilitarian philosopher, was such a lover of flowers that he was never satisfied unless he saw them in almost every room of his house, and when he came to discourse of them in his Essays, his thoughts involuntarily moved harmonious numbers. How naturally the following prose sentence in Bacon's Essay on Gardens almost resolves itself into verse.
"For the heath which was the first part of our plot, I wish it to be framed as much as may be to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none in it, but some thickets made only of sweet briar and honeysuckle, and some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries and primroses; for these are sweet, and prosper in the shade."
"For the heath which was the third part of our plot--I wish it to be framedAs much as may be to a natural wildness.Trees I'd have none in't, but some thickets madeOnly of sweet-briar and honey-suckle,And some wild vine amongst; and the ground setWith violets, strawberries, and primroses;For these are sweet and prosper in the shade."
It has been observed that the love of gardens is the only passion which increases with age. It is generally the most indulged in the two extremes of life. In middle age men are often too much involved in the affairs of the busy world fully to appreciate the tranquil pleasures in the gift of Flora. Flowers are the toys of the young and a source of the sweetest and serenest enjoyments for the old. But there is no season of life for which they are unfitted and of which they cannot increase the charm.
"Give me," says the poet Rogers, "a garden well kept, however small, two or three spreading trees and a mind at ease, and I defy the world." The poet adds that he would not have his garden, too much extended. He seems to think it possible to have too much of a good thing. "Three acres of flowers and a regiment of gardeners," he says, "bring no more pleasure than a sufficiency." "A hundred thousand roses," he adds, "which we look aten masse, do not identify themselves in the same manner as even a very small border; and hence, if the cottager's mind is properly attuned, the little cottage-garden may give him more real delight than belongs to the owner of a thousand acres." In a smaller garden "we become acquainted, as it were," says the same poet, "and even form friendships with, individual flowers." It is delightful to observe how nature thus adjusts the inequalities of fortune and puts the poor man, in point of innocent happiness, on a level with the rich. The man of the most moderate means may cultivate many elegant tastes, and may have flowers in his little garden that the greatest sovereign in the world might enthusiastically admire. Flowers are never vulgar. A rose from a peasant's patch of ground is as fresh and elegant and fragrant as if it had been nurtured in a Royal parterre, and it would not be out of place in the richest porcelain vase of the most aristocratical drawing-room in Europe. The poor man's flower is a present for a princess, and of all gifts it is the one least liable to be rejected even by the haughty. It might he worn on the fair brow or bosom of Queen Victoria with a nobler grace than the costliest or most elaborate production of the goldsmith or the milliner.
The majority of mankind, in the most active spheres of life, have moments in which they sigh for rural retirement, and seldom dream of such a retreat without making a garden the leading charm of it. Sir Henry Wotton says that Lord Bacon's garden was one of the best that he had seen either at home or abroad. Evelyn, the author of "Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees," dwells with fond admiration, and a pleasing egotism, on the charms of his own beautiful and highly cultivated estate at Wooton in the county of Surrey. He tells us that the house is large and ancient and is "sweetly environed with delicious streams and venerable woods." "I will say nothing," he continues, "of the air, because the pre-eminence is universally given to Surrey, the soil being dry and sandy; but I should speak much of the gardens, fountains and groves that adorn it, were they not generally known to be amongst the most natural, and (till this later and universal luxury of the whole nation, since abounding in such expenses) the most magnificent that England afforded, and which indeed gave one of the first examples to that elegancy, since so much in vogue and followed, for the managing of their waters and other elegancies of that nature." Before he came into the possession of his paternal estate he resided atSay's Court, near Deptford, an estate which he possessed by purchase, and where he had a superb holly hedge four hundred feet long, nine feet high and five feet broad. Of this hedge, he was particularly proud, and he exultantly asks, "Is there under heaven a more glorious and refreshing object of the kind?" When the Czar of Muscovy visited England in 1698 to instruct himself in the art of ship-building, he had the use of Evelyn's house and garden, atSay's Court, and while there did so much damage to the latter that the owner loudly and bitterly complained. At last the Government gave Evelyn £150 as an indemnification. Czar Peter's favorite amusement was to ride in a wheel barrow through what its owner had once called the "impregnable hedge of holly." Evelyn was passionately fond of gardening. "The life and felicity of an excellent gardener," he observes, "is preferable to all other diversions." His faith in the art of Landscape-gardening was unwavering. It couldremove mountains. Here is an extract from his Diary.
"Gave his brother some directions about his garden" (at WootonSurrey), "which, he was desirous to put into some form, forwhich he was to remove a mountain overgrown with large trees andthickets and a moat within ten yards of the house."
No sooner said than done. His brother dug down the mountain and "flinging it into a rapid stream (which carried away the sand) filled up the moat and levelled that noble area where now the garden and fountain is."
Though Evelyn dearly loved a garden, his chief delight was not in flowers but in forest trees, and he was more anxious to improve the growth of plants indigenous to the soil than to introduce exotics.[007]
Sir William Temple was so attached to his garden, that he left directions in his will that his heart should be buried there. It was enclosed in a silver box and placed under a sun-dial.
Dr. Thomson Reid, the eminent Scottish metaphysician, used to be found working in his garden in his eighty-seventh year.
The name of Chatham is in the long list of eminent men who have enjoyed a garden. We are told that "he loved the country: took peculiar pleasure in gardening; and had an extremely happy taste in laying out grounds." What a delightful thing it must have been for that great statesman, thus to relieve his mind from the weight of public care in the midst of quiet bowers planted and trained by his own hand!
Burton, in hisAnatomy of Melancholy, notices the attractions of a garden as amongst the finest remedies for depression of the mind. I must give the following extracts from his quaint but interesting pages.
"To see the pleasant fields, the crystal fountains,And take the gentle air amongst the mountains.
"To walk amongst orchards, gardens, bowers, mounts, and arbours, artificial wildernesses, green thickets, arches, groves, lawns, rivulets, fountains, and such like pleasant places, (like that Antiochian Daphne,) brooks, pools, fishponds, between wood and water, in a fair meadow, by a river side,ubi variae avium cantationes, florum colores, pratorum frutices, &c. to disport in some pleasant plain, or park, run up a steep hill sometimes, or sit in a shady seat, must needs be a delectable recreation.Hortus principis et domus ad delectationem facta, cum sylvâ, monte et piscinâ, vulgò la montagna: the prince's garden at Ferrara, Schottus highly magnifies, with the groves, mountains, ponds, for a delectable prospect; he was much affected with it; a Persian paradise, or pleasant park, could not be more delectable in his sight. St. Bernard, in the description of his monastery, is almost ravished with the pleasures of it. "A sick man (saith he) sits upon a green bank, and when the dog-star parcheth the plains, and dries up rivers, he lies in a shady bower,"Fronde sub arborea ferventia temperat astra, "and feeds his eyes with variety of objects, herbs, trees, to comfort his misery; he receives many delightsome smells, and fills his ears with that sweet and various harmony of birds;good God, (saith he),what a company of pleasures hast thou made for man!"
"The country hath his recreations, the city his several gymnics and exercises, May games, feasts, wakes, and merry meetings to solace themselves; the very being in the country; that life itself is a sufficient recreation to some men, to enjoy such pleasures, as those old patriarchs did. Dioclesian, the emperor, was so much affected with it, that he gave over his sceptre, and turned gardener. Constantine wrote twenty books of husbandry. Lysander, when ambassadors came to see him, bragged of nothing more than of his orchard,hi sunt ordines mei. What shall I say of Cincinnatus, Cato, Tully, and many such? how they have been pleased with it, to prune, plant, inoculate and graft, to show so many several kinds of pears, apples, plums, peaches, &c."
The Romans of all ranks made use of flowers as ornaments and emblems, but they were not generally so fond of directing or assisting the gardener, or taking the spade or hoe into their own hands, as are the British peasantry, gentry and nobility of the present day. They were not amateur Florists. They prized highly their fruit trees and pastures and cool grottoes and umbrageous groves; but they expended comparatively little time, skill or taste upon the flower-garden. Even their love of nature, though thoroughly genuine as far as it went, did not imply that minute and exact knowledge of her charms which characterizes some of our best British poets. They had no Thompson or Cowper. Their country seats were richer in architectural than floral beauty. Tully's Tuscan Villa, so fondly and minutely described by the proprietor himself, would appear to little advantage in the eyes of a true worshipper of Flora, if compared with Pope's retreat at Twickenham. The ancients had a taste for therural, not for thegardenesque, nor perhaps even for thepicturesque. The English have a taste for all three. Hence they have good landscape-gardeners and first-rate landscape-painters. The old Romans had neither. But though, some of our Spitalfields weavers have shown a deeper love, and perhaps even a finer taste, for flowers, than were exhibited by the citizens of Rome, abundant evidence is furnished to us by the poets in all ages and in all countries that nature, in some form or another has ever charmed the eye and the heart of man. The following version of a famous passage in Virgil, especially the lines in Italics, may give the English reader some idea of a Roman's dream of
RURAL HAPPINESS.
Ah! happy Swains! if they their bliss but knew,Whom, far from boisterous war, Earth's bosom trueWith easy food supplies. If they beholdNo lofty dome its gorgeous gates unfoldAnd pour at morn from all its chambers wideOf flattering visitants the mighty tide;Nor gaze on beauteous columns richly wrought,Or tissued robes, or busts from Corinth brought;Nor their white wool with Tyrian poison soil,Nor taint with Cassia's bark their native oil;Yet peace is theirs; a life true bliss that yields;And various wealth; leisure mid ample fields,Grottoes, and living lakes, and vallies green,And lowing herds; and 'neath a sylvan screen,Delicious slumbers. There the lawn and caveWith beasts of chase abound.The young ne'er craveA prouder lot; their patient toil is cheered;Their Gods are worshipped and their sires revered;And there when Justice passed from earth awayShe left the latest traces of her sway.
D.L.R.
Lord Bacon was perhaps the first Englishman who endeavored to reform the old system of English gardening, and to show that it was contrary to good taste and an insult to nature. "As for making knots or figures," he says, "with divers colored earths, that may lie under the windows of the house on that side on which the garden stands, they be but toys: you may see as good sights many times in tarts." Bacon here alludes, I suppose, to the old Dutch fashion of dividing flowerbeds into many compartments, and instead of filling them with flowers, covering one with red brick dust, another with charcoal, a third with yellow sand, a fourth with chalk, a fifth with broken China, and others with green glass, or with spars and ores. But Milton, in his exquisite description of the garden of Eden, does not allude to the same absurd fashion when he speaks of "curious knots,"
Which not nice art,In beds andcurious knots, but nature boonPoured forth profuse on hill and dale and plain.
By thesecurious knotsthe poet seems to allude, not to figures of "divers colored earth," but to the artificial and complicated arrangements and divisions of flowers and flower-beds.
Though Bacon went not quite so freely to nature as our latest landscape- gardeners have done, he made thefirst stepin the right direction and deserves therefore the compliment which Mason has paid him in his poem ofThe English Garden.
On thy realmPhilosophy his sovereign lustre spread;Yet did he deign to light with casual glanceThe wilds of Taste, Yes, sagest Verulam,'Twas thine to banish from the royal grovesEach childish vanity of crisped knot[008]And sculptured foliage; to the lawn restoreIts ample space, and bid it feast the sightWith verdure pure, unbroken, unabridged;For verdure soothes the eye, as roseate sweetsThe smell, or music's melting strains the ear.
Yes--"verdure soothes the eye:"--and the mind too. Bacon himself observes, that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn." Mason slightly qualifies his commendation of "the sage" by admitting that he had not quite completed his emancipation from the bad taste of his day.
Witness his high arched hedgeIn pillored state by carpentry upborn,With colored mirrors decked and prisoned birds.But, when our step has paced the proud parterre,And reached the heath, then Nature glads our eyeSporting in all her lovely carelessness,There smiles in varied tufts the velvet rose,There flaunts the gadding woodbine, swells the groundIn gentle hillocks, and around its sidesThrough blossomed shades the secret pathway steals.
The English Garden.
In one of the notes toThe English Gardenit is stated that "Bacon was the prophet, Milton the herald of modern Gardening; and Addison, Pope, and Kent the champions of true taste." Kent was by profession both a Painter and a Landscape-Gardener. Addison who had a pretty little retreat at Bilton, near Rugby, evinces in most of his occasional allusions to gardens a correct judgment. He complains that even inhistime our British gardeners, instead of humouring nature, loved to deviate from it as much as possible. The system of verdant sculpture had not gone out of fashion. Our trees still rose in cones, globes, and pyramids. The work of the scissors was on every plant and bush. It was Pope, however, who did most to bring the topiary style into contempt and to encourage a more natural taste, by his humorous paper in theGuardianand his poetical Epistle to the Earl of Burlington. Gray, the poet, observes in one of his letters, that "our skill in gardening, or rather laying out grounds, is the only taste we can call our own; the only proof of original talent in matters of pleasure. This is no small honor to us;" he continues, "since neither France nor Italy, has ever had the least notion of it." "Whatever may have been reported, whether truly or falsely" (says a contributor toThe World) "of the Chinese gardens, it is certain that we are the first of the Europeans who have founded this taste; and we have been so fortunate in the genius of those who have had the direction of some of the finest spots of ground, that we may now boast a success equal to that profusion of expense which has been destined to promote the rapid progress of this happy enthusiasm. Our gardens are already the astonishment of foreigners, and, in proportion as they accustom themselves to consider and understand them will become their admiration." The periodical from which this is taken was published exactly a century ago, and the writer's prophecy has been long verified. Foreigners send to us for gardeners to help them to lay out their grounds in the English fashion. And we are told by the writer of an interesting article on gardens, in theQuarterly Review, that "the lawns at Paris, to say nothing of Naples, are regularly irrigated to keep up even the semblance of English verdure; and at the gardens of Versailles, and Caserta, near Naples, the walks have been supplied from the Kensington gravel-pits." "It is not probably known," adds the same writer, "that among our exportations every year is a large quantity of evergreens for the markets of France and Germany, and that there are some nurserymen almost wholly engaged in this branch of trade."
Pomfret, a poet of small powers, if a poet at all, has yet contrived to produce a popular composition in verse--The Choice--because he has touched with great good fortune on some of the sweetest domestic hopes and enjoyments of his countrymen.
If Heaven the grateful liberty would giveThat I might choose my method how to live;And all those hours propitious Fate should lendIn blissful ease and satisfaction spend;Near some fair town I'd have a private seatBuilt uniform; not little; nor too great:Better if on a rising ground it stood,On this side fields, on that a neighbouring wood.
The Choice.
Pomfret perhaps illustrates the general taste when he places his garden "near some fair town." Our present laureate, though a truly inspired poet, and a genuine lover of Nature even in her remotest retreats, has the garden of his preference, "not quite beyond the busy world."
Not wholly in the busy world, nor quiteBeyond it, blooms the garden that I love,News from the humming city comes to itIn sound of funeral or of marriage bells;And sitting muffled in dark leaves you hearThe windy clanging of the minster clock;Although between it and the garden liesA league of grass.
Even "sounds inharmonious in themselves and harsh" are often pleasing when mellowed by the space of air through which they pass.
'Tis distance lends enchantment to thesound.
Shelley, in one of his sweetest poems, speaking of a scene in the neighbourhood of Naples, beautifully says:--
Like many a voice of one delight,The winds, the birds, the ocean floods,The city's voice itself is soft, like solitude's.
No doubt the feeling that we arenearthe crowd but notinit, may deepen the sense of our own happy rural seclusion and doubly endear that pensive leisure in which we can "think down hours to moments," and in
This our life, exempt from public haunt,Find tongues in trees, books in the running brooks,Sermons in stones, and good in every thing.
Shakespeare.
Besides, to speak truly, few men, however studious or philosophical, desire a total isolation from the world. It is pleasant to be able to take a sort of side glance at humanity, even when we are most in love with nature, and to feel that we can join our fellow creatures again when the social feeling returns upon us. Man was not made to live alone. Cowper, though he clearly loved retirement and a garden, did not desire to have the pleasure entirely to himself. "Grant me," he says, "a friend in my retreat."
To whom to whisper solitude is sweet.
Cowper lived and died a bachelor. In the case of a married man and a father, garden delights are doubled by the presence of the family and friends, if wife and children happen to be what they should be, and the friends are genuine and genial.
All true poets delight in gardens. The truest that ever lived spent his latter days at New Place in Stratford-upon-Avon. He had a spacious and beautiful garden. Charles Knight tells us that "the Avon washed its banks; and within its enclosures it had its sunny terraces and green lawns, its pleached alleys and honeysuckle bowers," In this garden Shakespeare planted with his own hands his celebrated Mulberry tree. It was a noble specimen of the black Mulberry introduced into England in 1548[009]. In 1605, James I. issued a Royal edict recommending the cultivation of silkworms and offering packets of mulberry seeds to those amongst his subjects who were willing to sow them. Shakespeare's tree was planted in 1609. Mr. Loudon, observes that the black Mulberry has been known from the earliest records of antiquity and that it is twice mentioned in the Bible: namely, in the second Book of Samuel and in the Psalms. When New Place was in the possession of Sir Hough Clopton, who was proud of its interesting association with the history of our great poet, not only were Garrick and Macklin most hospitably entertained under the Mulberry tree, but all strangers on a proper application were admitted to a sight of it. But when Sir Hough Clopton was succeeded by the Reverend Francis Gastrell, that gentleman, to save himself the trouble of showing the tree to visitors, had "the gothic barbarity" to cut down and root up that interesting--indeedsacredmemorial--of the Pride of the British Isles. The people of Stratford were so enraged at this sacrilege that they broke Mr. Gastrell's windows. That prosaic personage at last found the place too hot for him, and took his departure from a town whose inhabitants "doated on his very absence;" but before he went he completed the fall sum of his sins against good taste and good feeling by pulling to the ground the house in which Shakespeare had lived and died. This was done, it is said, out of sheer spite to the towns-people, with some of whom Mr. Gastrell had had a dispute about the rate at which the house was taxed. His change of residence was no great relief to him, for the whole British public felt sorely aggrieved, and wherever he went he was peppered with all sorts of squibs and satires. He "slid into verse," and "hitched in a rhyme."
Sacred to ridicule his whole life long,And the sad burden of a merry song.
Thomas Sharp, a watchmaker, got possession of the fragments of Shakespeare's Mulberry tree, and worked them into all sorts of elegant ornaments and toys, and disposed of them at great prices. The corporation of Stratford presented Garrick with the freedom of the town in a box made of the wood of this famous tree, and the compliment seems to have suggested to him his public festival or pageant in honor of the poet. This Jubilee, which was got up with great zeal, and at great expense and trouble, was attended by vast throngs of the admirers of Shakespeare from all parts of the kingdom. It was repeated on the stage and became so popular as a theatrical exhibition that it was represented night after night for more than half a season to crowded audiences.
Upon the subject of gardens, let us hear what has been said by the self- styled "melancholy Cowley." When in the smoky city pent, amidst the busy hum of men, he sighed unceasingly for some green retreat. As he paced the crowded thorough-fares of London, he thought of the velvet turf and the pure air of the country. His imagination carried him into secluded groves or to the bank of a murmuring river, or into some trim and quiet garden. "I never," he says, "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 a large garden, with very moderate conveniences joined to them, and there dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture of them and the study of nature," The late Miss Mitford, whose writings breathe so freshly of the nature that she loved so dearly, realized for herself a similar desire. It is said that she had the cottage of a peasant with the garden of a Duchess. Cowley is not contented with expressing in plain prose his appreciation of garden enjoyments. He repeatedly alludes to them in verse.
Thus, thus (and this deserved great Virgil's praise)The old Corycian yeoman passed his days;Thus his wise life Abdolonymus spent;Th' ambassadors, which the great emperor sentTo offer him a crown, with wonder foundThe reverend gardener, hoeing of his ground;Unwillingly and slow and discontentFrom his loved cottage to a throne he went;And oft he stopped, on his triumphant way:And oft looked back: and oft was heard to sayNot without sighs, Alas! I there forsakeA happier kingdom than I go to take.
Lib. IV. Plantarum.
Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement.
Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walkIn the Salonian garden's noble shadeWhich by his own imperial hands was made,I see him smile, methinks, as he does talkWith the ambassadors, who come in vainTo entice him to a throne again."If I, my friends," said he, "should to you showAll the delights which in these gardens grow,'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,Than 'tis that you should carry me away:And trust me not, my friends, if every dayI walk not here with more delight,Than ever, after the most happy sightIn triumph to the Capitol I rode,To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god,"
The Garden.
Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes.
Where does the wisdom and the power divineIn a more bright and sweet reflection shine?Where do we finer strokes and colors seeOf the Creator's real poetry.Than when we with attention lookUpon the third day's volume of the book?If we could open and intend our eyeWe all, like Moses, might espy,E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity.
In Leigh Hunt's charming book entitledThe Town, I find the following notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to them:--
"It is not surprizing thatgarden-housesas they were called; should have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observehow fond the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to have made a point of having one. The only London residence of Chapman which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames, (for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden; and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear. They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent."
Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author ofParadise Lostand the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS. Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show" says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house (the cradle ofParadise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"
No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us. His Paradise is a
Spot more delicious than those gardens feignedOr of revived Adonis or renownedAlcinous, host of old Laertes' sonOr that, not mystic, where the sapient KingHeld dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010]
The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the hundredth time on a noble picture. The mind and the eye are never satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever."
PARADISE.[011]
So on he fares, and to the border comesOf Eden, where delicious Paradise,Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,As with a rural mound, the champaign headOf a steep wilderness, whose hairy sidesWith thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,Access denied: and overhead up grewInsuperable height of loftiest shade,Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascendShade above shade, a woody theatreOf stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops,The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung:Which to our general sire gave prospect largeInto his nether empire neighbouring round;And higher than that wall a circling rowOf goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue,Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd;On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams,Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow.When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'dThat landscape: and of pure now purer airMeets his approach, and to the heart inspiresVernal delight and joy, able to driveAll sadness but despair: now gentle gales,Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispenseNative perfumes and whisper whence they stoleThose balmy spoils. As when to them who sailBeyond the Cape of Hope, and now are pastMozambic, off at sea north-east winds blowSabean odours from the spicy shoreOf Araby the Blest; with such delayWell pleased they slack their course, and many a leagueCheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
Southward through Eden went a river large,Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hillPass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrownThat mountain as his garden mould, high raisedUpon the rapid current, which through veinsOf porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rillWater'd the garden; thence united fellDown the steep glade, and met the nether flood,Which from his darksome passage now appears;And now, divided into four main streams,Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realmAnd country, whereof here needs no account;But rather to tell how, if art could tell,How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,With mazy error under pendent shades,Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fedFlowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice artIn beds and curious knots, but nature boonPour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,Both where the morning sun first warmly smoteThe open field, and where the unpierced shadeImbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this placeA happy rural seat of various view;Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm;Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind,Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,If true, here only, and of delicious taste:Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocksGrazing the tender herb, were interposed;Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lapOf some irriguous valley spread her store,Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:Another side, umbrageous grots and cavesOf cool recess, o'er which the mantling vineLays forth her purple grape, and gently creepsLuxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fallDown the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'dHer crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,Breathing the smell of field and grove attune,The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,Led on the eternal Spring.
Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and the cultivation of flowers. I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats of these poets are not now what they were. The lovely nest of the little Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands. And when Mr. Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he "found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin."
Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his garden. It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is said to have given a charming variety. He enumerates amongst the friends who assisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of Peterborough "whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines."
Know, all the distant din that world can keep,Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.There my retreat the best companions graceChiefs out of war and statesmen out of place.There St. John mingles with my friendly bowlThe feast of reason and the flow of soul;And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian linesNow forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines;Or tames the genius of the stubborn plainAlmost as quickly as he conquered Spain.
Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope's tasteful Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his "laurel circus or to terminate his points." His famous grotto, which he is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience. His property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his highly ornamented passage under the road to preserve privacy and to connect the two portions of his estate.
The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively description of his subterranean embellishments. But his verse will live longer than his prose. He has immortalized this grotto, so radiant with spars and ores and shells, in the following poetical inscription:--
Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent waveShines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave,Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil,And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill,Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow,And latent metals innocently glow,Approach! Great Nature studiously behold,And eye the mine without a wish for goldApproach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot,Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought,Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole,And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul;Let such, such only, tread this sacred floorWho dare to love their country, and be poor.
Horace Walpole, speaking of the poet's garden, tells us that "the passing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, and the solemnity at the cypresses that led up to his mother's tomb, were managed with exquisite judgment."
Cliveden's proud alcove,The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love,
alluded to by Pope in his sketch of the character of Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, though laid out by Kent, was probably improved by the poet's suggestions. Walpole seems to think that the beautiful grounds at Rousham, laid out for General Dormer, were planned on the model of the garden at Twickenham, at least the opening and retiring "shades of Venus's Vale." And these grounds at Rousham were pronounced "the most engaging of all Kent's works." It is said that the design of the garden at Carlton House, was borrowed from that of Pope.
Wordsworth was correct in his observation that "Landscape gardening is a liberal art akin to the arts of poetry and painting." Walpole describes it as "an art that realizes painting and improves nature." "Mahomet," he adds, "imagined an Elysium, but Kent created many."
Pope's mansion was not a very spacious one, but it was large enough for a private gentleman of inexpensive habits. After the poet's death it was purchased by Sir William Stanhope who enlarged both the house and garden.[012]A bust of Pope, in white marble, has been placed over an arched way with the following inscription from the pen of Lord Nugent:
The humble roof, the garden's scanty line,Ill suit the genius of the bard divine;But fancy now displays a fairer scopeAnd Stanhope's plans unfold the soul of Pope.
I have not heard who set up this bust with its impudent inscription. I hope it was not Stanhope himself. I cannot help thinking that it would have been a truer compliment to the memory of Pope if the house and grounds had been kept up exactly as he had left them. Most people, I suspect, would greatly have preferred the poet's own "unfolding of his soul" to that "unfolding" attempted for him by a Stanhope and commemorated by a Nugent. Pope exhibited as much taste in laying out his grounds as in constructing his poems. Sir William, after his attempt to make the garden more worthy of the original designer, might just as modestly have undertaken to enlarge and improve the poetry of Pope on the plea that it did not sufficientlyunfold his soul. A line of Lord Nugent's might in that case have been transferred from the marble bust to the printed volume:
His fancy now displays a fairer scope.
Or the enlarger and improver might have taken his motto from Shakespeare:
To myunfoldinglend a gracious ear.
This would have been an appropriate motto for the title-page of "The Poems of Pope: enlarged and improved: or The Soul of the Poet Unfolded."
But in sober truth, Pope, whether as a gardener or as a poet, required no enlarger or improver of his works. After Sir William Stanhope had left Pope's villa it came into the possession of Lord Mendip, who exhibited a proper respect for the poet's memory; but when in 1807 it was sold to the Baroness Howe, that lady pulled down the house and built another. The place subsequently came into the possession of a Mr. Young. The grounds have now no resemblance to what the taste of Pope had once made them. Even his mother's monument has been removed! Few things would have more deeply touched the heart of the poet than the anticipation of this insult to the memory of so revered a parent. His filial piety was as remarkable as his poetical genius. No passages in his works do him more honor both as a man and as a poet than those which are mellowed into a deeper tenderness of sentiment and a softer and sweeter music by his domestic affections. There are probably few readers of English poetry who have not the following lines by heart,