10 THE FLOWER GARDEN. 



ingenious surmises that he was born and bred a gar- 

 dener.* 



Addison amused himself by comparing the dif- 

 ferent styles of gardening with those of poetry 

 " Your makers of parterres and flower-gardens are 

 epigrammatists and sonneteers ; contrivers of bowers 

 and grottos, treillages and cascades, are romance- 

 writers ;" while the gravel-pits in Kensington Gar- 

 dens, then just laid out by London and Wise, were 

 heroic verse. If our modern critics were to draw a 

 similar comparison, we suppose our gardens would 

 be divided into the Classical and the Eomantic. The 

 first would embrace the works of the Italian, Dutch, 

 and French, the second those of the Chinese and 

 English schools. The characteristics of the three 

 symmetric styles are not easily to be distinguished, 

 but from the climate and character of the nations, 

 perhaps even more than from the actual examples 

 existing in their respective countries, a division lias 



* We may perhaps return to the subject of ancient gardens. 

 Meanwhile, we answer to Daines Barrington's remark, that " he knew 

 of no Greek or Latin word for nosegay," that the ancients wore 

 their Mowers on their head, not in their bosom ; and there is surely 

 mention enough about " (rretyavoi" and " coronce." But we need 

 hardly wonder at such an oversight in an author who, noticing the 

 passages on flowers in our early poets, makes no allusion to Shakspeare. 

 To H. Walpole, who says, " their gardens are never mentioned as 

 affording shade and shelter from the rage of the dog-star," we can 

 now only quote 



" Spissa ramis laurea fervidos 



Excludet ictus ;" 

 and 



" platanum potantibus umbram ;" 



and Hor. ii. xi. 13. The platanus was the newly introduced garden- 

 wonder of the Augustan age. 



