JOHN MILTON 97 



sow all wholesome herbs, and delightful flowers according to every 

 season, and whatever else was to be done in a well-husbanded 

 nursery of plants and fruits. Now, when the time was come that 

 he should cut his hedges, prune his trees, look to his tender slips, 

 and pluck up the weeds that hindered their growth, he gets him 

 up by break of day, and makes account to do what was needful 

 in his garden ; and who would think that any other should know 

 better than he how the day's work was to be spent ? Yet for all 

 this there comes another strange gardener that never knew the 

 soil, never handled a dibble or spade to set the least pot-herb 

 that grew there, much less had endured an hour's sweat or 

 chilness, and yet challenges as his right the binding or unbinding 

 of every flower, the clipping of every bush, the weeding and 

 worming of every bed, both in that and all other gardens 

 thereabout. The honest gardener, that ever since the day-peep, 

 till now the sun was grown somewhat rank, had wrought painfully 

 about his banks and seed-plots, at his commanding voice turns 

 suddenly about with some wonder ; and although he could have 

 well beteemed to have thanked him of the ease he proffered, yet 

 loving his own handywork, modestly refused him, telling him 

 withal, that for his part, if he had thought much of his own pains, 

 he could for once have committed the work to one of his fellow- 

 labourers, for as much as it is well known to be a matter of less 

 skill and less labour to keep a garden handsome, than it is to 

 plant it or contrive it, and that he had already performed himself. 

 No, said the stranger, this is neither for you nor your fellows to 

 meddle with, but for me only that am for this purpose in dignity 

 far above you ; and the provision which the Lord of the soil 

 allows me in this office is, and that with good reason, tenfold 

 your wages. The gardener smiled and shook his head ; but what 

 was determined, I cannot tell you till the end of this parliament. 

 — Animadversions upon the Re?nonstrattf s Defence against 

 Smectymnuus. 



