36 BACON'S PLAN OF A GARDEN 



alleys of the side grounds, there to walk (if you be 230 

 disposed) in the heat of the year or day, but to make 

 account that the main garden is for the more tem- 

 perate parts of the year, and in the heat of summer 

 for the morning and the evening or overcast days. 

 Large For aviaries, I like them not, except they be of that 



on?? -*// l ar g eness as they may be turfed and have living plants 

 any. and bushes set in them, that the birds may have more 

 scope and natural nestling and that no foulness appear 

 in the floor of the aviary. 



The cost! So I have made a platform of a princely garden, 240 

 partly by precept, partly by drawing not a model, 

 but some general lines of it ; and in this I have spared 

 for no cost. But it is nothing for great princes ; that, 

 for the most part, taking advice with workmen, with 

 no less cost set their things together, and sometimes 

 add statues and such things for state and magnificence 

 but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden. 



ESSAYS : Of Gardens. 



NOTES 



[Francis Bacon (Lord St. Albans) was born in 1561, and died 

 in 1626. His first important book (1597) was a collection of 

 ten short Essays, gradually enlarged till in the last edition 

 (1625) the number was fifty-eight. The Essays are still popular 

 'they come home to men's business and bosoms'.] 



LINE 5. when ages grow to civility and elegancy. As in the 

 course of time nations become civilized and refined. (' Civility ' 

 for ' civilization '.) 



10. months . . . in which, severally, things of beauty may be then 

 in season. Here ' severally ' means ' respectively '. [Each month 

 has its peculiar growth.] 



