86 ENGLISH PLEASURE GARDENS 



various points of view. The arrangement is full of 

 charm. In the most important of these illustrations 

 (which is on the opposite page, and was taken from a 

 fourteenth-century Flemish manuscript preserved at the 

 British Museum), the garden is shown as a whole, 

 ornamented with many quaint details. It is enclosed 

 by a crenellated wall, surrounded by a moat. The 

 subdivisions are formed by a fence of wooden trellis- 

 work, on the topmost railing of which is balanced a 

 peacock. In the left-hand division is a copper fountain 

 head, where the water, spouting from lions' mouths, 

 drips into a circular basin, and runs off through a marble 

 channel embedded in the turf. Velvety grass, thickly 

 sprinkled with daisies, surrounds the fountain and forms 

 a soft seat for the little company of merrymakers who 

 are singing and playing upon musical instruments. The 

 rich texture of such a carpet of turf was often dwelt upon 



in poetry : 



" About the brinkes of these welles 

 And by the stremes over al elles 

 Sprange up the grasse as thick y-set 

 And soft as any veluet, 

 On whiche men myght his lemman ley 

 As on a fetherbed to pley." 



A garden Every kind of a plantation was contained in some 



contained in 



an enclosure, form of an enclosure, as is evident from the different 

 words applied to it; all, like the French courtil, sug- 

 gesting its original location in a courtyard. A garden, 



