122 NOTES. 



Highgate of which he thought, when he spoke of the 

 garden in which Sylvio's fawn was wont to hide ? 



" I have a garden of my own, 

 But so with roses overgrown 

 And lilies, that you would it guess 

 To be a little wilderness." 



Cowley's love of a garden was of quite another kind. 

 He cared about it as a horticulturist, and knew the 

 various plants and their qualities ; but he never luxuri- 

 ated in it like Milton or like Marvell. His elaborate 

 poem is interesting, if only to show the flowers that 

 were cultivated in his day, and it is curious to find the 

 Tomato (or love-apple) grown for beauty and not for use, 

 and the Canna Indica, which is hardly common with us 

 even now, mentioned as among the ordinary flowers of 

 his time. On the whole, however, there are very few 

 lines of Cowley about flowers (we are not speaking of 

 anything else) which are worth quoting or remembering. 



Herrick's use of flowers is very different. He loved 

 them, no doubt, and is always talking about them, and 

 making them useful. 



" He twists his coronals of fancy 

 Out of all blossoms," 



if I may so misapply a line from Lord Houghton's 

 Letters of Youth. He makes moralities out of Daffo- 

 dils, and compliments from Carnations, and warnings 

 from Rosebuds. Charming as many of his poems about 

 flowers are, it is impossible not to feel that the motive of 

 the poem is not the flower itself, but the Anthea or 

 Sappho or Julia, to whom the flower is to teach a 

 lesson of the power of love or the uncertainty of life. 



