1 88 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



of the fashionable world and a gentleman of 

 fortune. He tells us, after a brief proem 

 about the garden of Eden, the Homeric 

 legend of Alcinous, and the mural records 

 of Herculaneum, all about his rich and dis- 

 tinguished relatives and friends, and tells us 

 as delightfully as he does elsewhere in his 

 inimitable correspondence. 



But Bacon was also nobly born, and had 

 also high and powerful connections. He 

 was Lord Chancellor of England under 

 James I., and his father had kept the seals 

 under Elizabeth. If Walpole had Straw- 

 berry Hill and Arlington Street, his prede- 

 cessor had Gorhambury and Bacon House. 

 The author of Sylva Sylvarum at least 

 equalled the Earl of Orford in social influence 

 and surroundings, and when one recollects 

 that Bacon divided with Shakespeare the 

 literary glory of the Elizabethan era, and 

 that no such two had before, or have since, 

 appeared in England or in the world, it is a 

 piece of supererogation to say that in intellec- 

 tual force Bacon and Walpole were not for 

 an instant comparable. 



