56 THE SHAKESPEARE GARDEN 



ever see that when ages grow to civility and elegancy 

 men come to build stately sooner than to garden 

 finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." 



The Elizabethan Age, with its superlatively culti- 

 vated men and women, was certainly one of those 

 ages of civility and elegancy of which Bacon speaks. 

 The houses were stately and the gardens perfection, 

 affording appropriate setting for the brilliant cour- 

 tiers and accomplished ladies of both Tudor and 

 early Stuart times. 



We sometimes hear it said that Francis Bacon's 

 garden was his ideal of what a garden should be 

 and that his garden was never realized. This, how- 

 ever, is not the case. Old prints are numerous of 

 gardens of wealthy persons in the reign of Elizabeth 

 and James I. Then, too, we have Sir William 

 Temple's description of Moor Park, and "this gar- 

 den," says Horace Walpole, "seems to have been 

 made after the plan laid down by Lord Bacon in 

 his Forty-sixth Essay." 



Sir William's account is as follows : 



"The perfectest figure of a garden I ever saw, 

 either at home or abroad, was that of Moor Park in 

 Hertfordshire, when I knew it about thirty years 

 ago. It was made by the Countess of Bedford, 

 esteemed among the perfectest wits of her time and 



