206 CHAPTERS ON BRITISH BOTANY. {Ju^V , 



Gerard was patrouized by the great Lord Burleigh, also an 

 amateur of the innocent craft, and who had, for these early times, 

 a choice collection of botanical rarities. Our hero superintended 

 his Lordship's garden, as he tells us, '' for the space of twenty 

 years." " To the large and singular furniture of this noble is- 

 land/' Gerard writes, " I have added from forreine places all the 

 varieties of herbes and floures that I might in any way obtaine. 

 I have laboured with the soile to make it fit for plants, and with 

 the plants that they might delight in the soile, thut so they might 

 live and prospir under our clymat as in their native and proper 

 countrey. What my successe hath beene, and what my furni- 

 ture is, I leave to the report of they that have seen your Lord- 

 ship's gardens, and the little plot of mine owne special care and 

 husbandry." The worthy author then refers to the general mu- 

 tability of human things, from which gardens are not exempt, 

 for a good gardener may be followed by an ignorant successor ; 

 and proceeds to tell both his Lordship, in his dedication, and the 

 botanical public, a small one, that he trusts to his pen for the 

 perpetuity of hh furniture, both of his garden and of his mind 

 and spirit. The result has proved the wisdom of his resolution, 

 for both gardens have perished, but the memory of their super- 

 intendent is still as green as the holly and mistletoe at merry 

 Christmastide. 



The little that we know of Gerard is to be gleaned from his 

 book ; all other memorials have passed away. His garden in Hol- 

 born, the little plot which he called his own, and the large and 

 well-furnished garden of his noble patron, are now, alas ! no more; 

 they have for ages been occupied or traversed by thousands and 

 myriads of men, women, and children, many of whom never 

 heard of the humble botanist, nor knew much about the powerful 

 minister of Queen Elizabeth, his powerful patron. 



Gerard's earliest work is a catalogue of the " furniture" of 

 his own garden, as he calls his plants ; now so scarce, that the 

 library of Sir Joseph Banks, in the British Museum, possesses 

 only a manuscript copy of this rarity, published in 1596. 



His ' Herball ' was published in the following year, 1597, and 

 dedicated as aforesaid to his noble patron, the great Earl of Bur- 

 leigh. Gerard died about 1607, being upwards of threescore. 



Honest John Parkinson should be placed before Johnson, the 

 learned and brave emaculator of Gerard ; for, although Johnson's 



