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Books Versus Gardens 



Bookes (Courteous Reader) may rightly be 

 compared to Gardens ; Wherein, let the painfull 

 Gardiner expresse never so much care and diligent 

 endeavor ; yet among the very fairest, sweetest and 

 freshest Flowers, as also Plants of most precious 

 Vertue ; ill savouring and stinking weeds, fit for no 

 use but the fire or mucke-hill, will spring and sprout 

 up. So fareth it with Bookes of the very best qual- 

 ity ; let the Author bee never so indulgent, and the 

 Printer vigilant; yet both may misse their ayme, by 

 the escape of Errors and Mistakes, either in sense 

 or matter, the one fault by a ragged Written Copy ; 

 and the other through want of wary Correction. 



Giovanni Boccaccio. 



1 write in a nook that I call my boudoir; it is 

 a summer-house not bigger than a sedan-chair; the 

 door of it opens into the garden that is now crowded 

 with pinks, roses and honeysuckles, and the window 

 into my neighbour's orchard. It formerly served 

 an apothecary as a smoking-room; at present, how- 

 ever, it is dedicated to sublimer uses. 



x_ William Cotoper. 



A Garden of Books 



Where 'may one indulge in day-dreams, if not 

 in a Garden! In the very centre of the garden, 

 away from house or cottage, but united to it by a 

 pleached alley or pergola of vines or roses, an oc- 

 tagonal book-tower like Montaigne's rises upon 

 arches forming an arbour of scented shade. Between 

 the book-shelves, windows at every angle," as in 

 Pliny's Villa library, opening upon a broad gallery 

 supported by pillars of "faire carpenter's work," 



