m 



CHAPTER V 



THE FORMAL GARDEN IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY UNDER 

 FRENCH AND DUTCH INFLUENCE : ORIENTAL TRAVELLERS 

 ON PERSIAN AND JAPANESE GARDENS. 



SIR pOR though Physick may plead high, from that medical act of 



BROWNE God, in casting so deep a sleep upon our first Parent ; And 



(1605-1682). Chirurgery find its whole Art, in that one passage concerning the 

 Rib of Adam : yet is there no rivality with Garden-contrivance 

 and Herbery. For if Paradise were planted the third day of 

 the Creation as wiser Divinity concludeth, the Nativity thereof 

 was too early for Horoscopie ; Gardens were before Gardiners, 

 and but some hours after the liarth. Of deeper doubt is its 

 topography and local designation ; yet being the primitive garden, 

 and without much controversy seated in the East it is more than 

 probable the first curiosity, and cultivation of plants, most 

 flourished in those quarters. . . . 



However, the account of the pensile or hanging gardens of 

 Babylon, if made by Semiramis, the third or fourth from Nimrod, 

 is of no slender antiquity ; which being not framed upon ordinary 

 level of ground, but raised upon pillars, admitting under-passages, 

 we cannot accept as the first Babylonian gardens, — but a more 

 eminent progress and advancement in that art than any that went 

 before it ; somewhat answering or hinting the old opinion con- 

 cerning Paradise itself, with many conceptions elevated above the 

 plane of the Earth. ^ Nabuchodonosor (whom some will have to 



1 Simon Wilkin, the editor of Browne's Works, quotes a passage from MS. 

 Sloan, 1847, which he thinks intended for this work, wherein Browne writes, 

 ** We are unwilling to diminish or loose 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 Garden of Hesperies, we 

 know nothing singular but some golden apples." 

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