HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE. 73 



Nature's share therein. " The contents ought not 

 well to be under thirty acres of ground, and to be 

 divided into three parts ; a green in the entrance, 

 a heath or desert in the going forth, and the main 

 garden in the midst, besides alleys on both sides ; 

 and I like well that four acres be assigned to the 

 Green, six to the Heath, four and four to either 

 side, and twelve to the main Garden. The Green 

 hath two pleasures : the one, because nothing is 

 more pleasant to the eye than green grass kept finely 

 shorn ; the other, because it will give you a fair 

 alley in the midst, by which you may go in front 

 upon a stately hedge, which is to enclose the garden." 

 " For the heath, which was the third part of our plot, 

 I wished it be framed as much as may be to a 

 natural wildness," &c. Of which more anon.* 



Whether the garden of Bacon's essay is the por- 

 trait of an actual thing, whether the writer to use 

 a phrase of Wordsworth "had his eye upon the 

 subject," or whether it was built in the man's brain 

 like Tennyson's " Palace of Art," we cannot tell. 

 From the singular air of experience that animates 

 the description, the sure touch of the writer, we may 

 infer that Gorhambury had some such garden, the 

 fruit of its master's " Leisure with honour," or 

 " Leisure without honour," as the case may be. But 

 what seems certain is, that the essay is only a sign 

 of the ordinary English gentleman's mind on the 

 subject at that time ; and in giving us this master- 

 piece, Bacon had no more notion of posing as the 



* Nonsuch had its wilderness of ten acres. 



