In My Vicarage Garden 



pleasant reading. The drawback to one's pleasure 

 in reading him is that I am afraid he was not an 

 honest man. His method of compiling his book 

 was not honest, and his editor, Johnson, often 

 corrects him, and not to his advantage. Thus 

 Gerard, in his account of the pceony, says that he 

 found it wild " upon a conny berry in Betsome, 

 being in the parish of Southfleet, in Kent, two 

 miles from Gravesend, and in the ground some- 

 times belonging to a farmer there called John 

 Bradley ; " but Johnson says : " I have beene 

 told that our Author himselfe planted that 

 Peioniee there, and afterwards seemed to finde 

 it there by accident." For this reason, among 

 others, I much prefer Parkinson. His Paradisi 

 in Sole Paridisus Terrestris (i.e. " Park-in-son's 

 Earthly Paradise " ) is altogether a delightful 

 book, and from beginning to end there is a 

 thoroughly honest ring about it. You feel that 

 he is telling you nothing about his plants but 

 what he has himself seen or done, and the wood- 

 cuts are drawn from the living plants, without the 

 least exaggeration. The collection of plants in 

 the two books, the Paradisus and Theatrum, is 

 really a wonderful collection, and his descriptions 

 of them are given in strong vigorous English which 

 leaves nothing to be desired. Take his description 

 of the seed vessels of the Pceony, which I have 

 just named ; first, however, taking a modern 

 botanical description of the plant, "Follicles 2-5, 

 downy recurved, with many seeds and covered 



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