IX. 



BACON AS A GARDENER. 



HAVE drawn attention in a former 

 place to the warm interest mani- 

 fested by this great man in his 

 Essays in the subject before us. But there 

 the topic was treated in an incidental and 

 cursory way. In his Sylva Sylvarum, or A 

 Naturall Historic, In Ten Centuries, a posthu- 

 mous publication edited by Rawley, and 

 printed in 1627, he enters upon the matter 

 copiously and systematically ; it occupies in 

 fact the whole of the fifth and sixth, and part 

 of the seventh, Century. 



Bacon, for whose immense intellectual 

 grasp no point of research was too large or 

 too small, is supposed to have had a hand 

 in laying out the fine grounds which, before 



