OLD ENGLISH GARDENS 61 



done so much for English horticulture begins with the 

 Great Herbal (1516). 



Among the single benefactors who have enriched the 

 gardens of Western Europe with flowers and trees un- 

 known to mediaeval times, few deserve our gratitude more 

 richly than Busbecq, if it is true that we owe to him the 

 lilac, the tulip, the seringa, the horse-chestnut and the 

 sweet flag. It is hard to get conclusive proof of facts so 

 remote, but besides the statement of Busbecq himself 

 that he sent the sweet flag and many other plants to his 

 botanical correspondents, we have the acknowledgments 

 of Mattioli and de 1'Ecluse. Mattioli, in his Commentaries, 

 figures the horse-chestnut and the lilac from branches sent 

 by Busbecq. De 1'Ecluse is the authority for the packets 

 of tulips received from Busbecq, then living in Vienna, 

 but still keeping up communications with Constantinople. 

 The word tulip, as the dictionaries tell us, is Turkish or 

 Persian, and means a turban. Busbecq (1522-1592) was 

 a Fleming, and served long as ambassador from the 

 emperor to the Turk. He is familiar in history as the 

 describer from first-hand knowledge of the sultan Suley- 

 man and his Turks at the height of their power, when they 

 made Hungary into an Ottoman province and swept 

 round the walls of Vienna. He has his place in literature 

 too as a graphic and unaffected writer. "On ne trouve 

 point ailleurs tant de faits historiques en si peu de dis- 

 cours." A well-known jingling sentence in Bacon's Essays 

 has made his name familiar to many an English school- 

 boy. Busbecq was an unwearied collector. During his 

 fatiguing and sometimes dangerous travels it was his 

 practice on reaching his lodging to inquire for old inscrip- 

 tions or coins, and failing these, for rare plants. Bernardin 

 de Saint Pierre proposed to call the lilac Busbecquia ; let 

 us at least give a thought now and then to old Busbecq 

 when the lilacs make our shrubberies gay with their 

 blooms. 



