32 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



John Parkinson was of a different type. Our 

 portrait illustration depicts him, wearing a stylish 

 Genoa velvet doublet with lace ruff and cuffs, a 

 man who could apparently hold his own in any com- 

 pany of courtiers and men of fashion. Parkinson 

 knew a great many distinguished persons and enter- 

 tained visitors at his nurseries, where he must have 

 held them spellbound (if he talked as well as he 

 wrote) while he explained the beauties of a new 

 yellow gilliflower, the latest new scarlet martagon 

 lily, or the flower that he so proudly holds in his 

 hand "the orange-color Nonesuch." 



Parkinson's talents were recognized at court, for 

 he was appointed "Apothecary to James I." He had 

 a garden of his own at Long Acre, which he culti- 

 vated with enthusiasm, raising new varieties of well- 

 known flowers and tending with care new specimens 

 of foreign importations and exotics "outlandish 

 flowers" they were called in Shakespeare's day 

 and, finally, writing about his floral pets with great 

 knowledge, keen observation, poetic insight, and 

 quaint charm. His great book, "Paradisi in Sole; 

 Paradisus Terrestris," appeared in London in 1629, 

 the most original book of botany of the period and 

 the most complete English treatise until Ray came. 



Although published thirteen years after Shake- 



