EARLY GARDEN LITERATURE. 67 



The original was written in Anglicised Norman-French, but this 

 treatise concerns the farm more than the garden.* 



Necham, who lived at the same time as Grosseteste, was a 

 more original writer. He was born in 1157, passed the early 

 part of his life at St. Albans, and was made the director of the 

 school belonging to the Abbey at Dunstable ; by 1180 he was 

 a distinguished professor at Paris University, returned to 

 Dunstable about 1186, but soon after left the Benedictines of 

 St. Albans, and joined the Augustines of Cirencester, was there 

 elected Abbot in 1213, and died in 1217. Necham's " De laudibus 

 divinse Sapientiae," a poem in ten parts, devotes many lines to 

 the praise of various flowers and fruits. The seventh book is on 

 the excellence of such herbs as betony, centaury, plantain, worm- 

 wood ; the eighth is about fruits cherries, peaches, medlars, 

 and so forth. He does not, however, confine his praises to 

 English productions, but sings of terebinth, cinnamon, and 

 spices, and fruits which he had probably never seen in their 

 natural state. In like manner, his description in his other 

 work, De Naturis Rerum, of what a " noble garden" should be, 

 is drawn from imagination, as many plants, quite unfit for 

 culture in the open air in this country, or even in Europe, are 

 included in the list of what the garden should contain. This 

 is easily accounted for, as Necham, like others of his time, 

 borrowed freely from classical writers. "The garden, "t he writes, 

 " should be adorned with roses and lilies, turnsole, violets, and 

 mandrake ; there you should have parsley and cost, and fennel, 

 and southernwood, and coriander, sage, savory, hyssop, mint, 

 rue, dittany, smallage, pellitory, lettuce, garden cress, peonies. 

 There should also be planted beds with onions, leeks, garlick, 

 pumpkins, and shalots ; cucumber, poppy, daffodil, and acanthus 

 ought to be in a good garden. There should also be pottage 

 herbs, such as beets, herb mercury, orach, sorrel, and mallows." 

 So far, this is evidently a simple catalogue of what was to be 

 seen in his garden at Cirencester, or any other fair-sized garden 



* Several MSS. exist, see Dr. Cunningham's Introduction to Walter de 

 Henley's Husbandry. Royal Historical Society, 1890. 



t The translation of the names of plants is taken from Wright's edition 

 of Necham's works. 



5* 



