THE PEACH. 93 



this fruit has, however, by no means been confined to mere 

 voluptuaries, but is specially associated with more than 

 one man of genius. G-oethe records, in the memorials of 

 his youth, how, after all the terrors his father held over 

 him 'had failed to control his childish fear of going to sleep 

 alone in the dark, his mother's soothing promise of an 

 unlimited peach-feast on the morrow proved a sufficiently 

 strong incitement to conquer himself at night in order 

 that he might not lose the promised reward in the morn- 

 ing. The best-remembered portrait, too, which his bio- 

 graphers have given of the Poet of Indolence is that which 

 represents him as lounging about the Leasowes with his 

 hands in his pockets, and languidly lifting his head to 

 bite off the sunny side of a growing peach as it hung upon 

 the wall. Less dainty, because more greedy, Johnson, 

 who demanded quantity as well as quality to appease his 

 luxuriousness, was so fond of this fruit that though, as 

 Boswell says, " he would eat seven or eight large peaches 

 of a morning before breakfast began, and treated them 

 with proportionate attention after dinner again, yet I have 

 heard him protest that he never had quite as much as he 

 wished of wall-fruit, except once, in his life." There are 

 many thousands who might make the same complaint and 

 who have had far less alleviation of it, for the present state 

 of its culture in England makes the peach almost exclu- 

 sively a luxury confined to the wealthy. It is but few, 

 therefore, who are likely to be practically concerned with 

 the information that the fruit should not be plucked until 

 it is so fully ripe that it will fall into the hand at the 

 slightest touch, and that the flavour is best developed 

 when it is gathered some time before it is required, and 

 left for a few hours in a cool place before being eaten ; for 

 to the majority of the population the only hope that can 

 be held out of ever being able to partake plentifully of 

 peaches, involves nothing less than an emigration across 

 the Atlantic. 



