LEIGH HUNT 249 



decorate the unostentatious abodes of middle life. The rudest 

 habitation, the most unpromising and scanty portion of land, in 

 the hands of an Englishman of taste, becomes a little paradise. 



With a nicely discriminating eye, he seizes at once upon its 

 capabilities, and pictures in his mind the future landscape. The 

 sterile spot grows into loveliness under his hand ; and yet the 

 operations of art which produce the effect are scarcely to be 

 perceived. The cherishing and training of some trees; the 

 cautious pruning of others ; the nice distribution of flowers and 

 plants of tender and graceful foliage ; the introduction of a green 

 slope of velvet turf; the partial opening to a peep of blue 

 distance, or silver gleam of water : all these are managed with a 

 delicate tact, a pervading yet quiet assiduity, like the magic 

 touchings with which a painter finishes up a favourite picture. — 

 The Sketch Book (' Rural Life in England:) 



—'A!\l\t^r— 



Describing his two years' imprisonmejit in the Kings Bench for '■libelling'' LEIGH 



the Prince Regent as an ' Adonis-o^ Fifty,' writes :— /^J^^T. % 



(1754-1559;. 



BUT I had another surprise, which was a garden. There was a 

 little yard outside, railed off from another belonging to the 

 neighbouring ward. This yard I shut in with green paHngs, 

 adorned it with a trellis, bordered it with a thick bed of earth 

 from a nursery, and even contrived to have a grass-plot. The 

 earth I filled with flowers and young trees. There was an apple- 

 tree from which we managed to get a pudding the second year. 

 As to my flowers they were allowed to be perfect. A poet from 

 Derbyshire (Mr Moore) told me he had seen no such heartsease. 

 I bought the Farnaso Italiano while in prison,, and used often to 

 think of a passage in it, while looking at this miniature piece of 

 horticulture : — 



Mio picciol orto, 

 A me sei vigna, e campo, e silva, e prato. 



— Baldi. 

 My little garden, 

 To me thou'rt vineyard, field, and wood, and meadow. 



