GARDENS OF CELEBRITIES 



ideas in horticulture, and the difficulties to be met with in 

 carrying them out, Bacon left the sciences of horticulture and 

 floriculture very much where he found them, and he himself 

 being under a cloud, his various schemes would be dis- 

 credited. 



I do not propose to dwell upon his theories, which are well 

 known to all readers of his essays. ' God Almighty," he says, 

 " first Planted a Garden, and indeed it is the purest of Humaine 

 pleasures. It is the Greatest Refreshment to the Spirits of Man." 

 He does " not like Images Cut out in Juniper, or other Garden 

 Stuff e. They be for Children." He recommends Fountains as 

 " a great Beauty and Refreshment, but Pooles marre all and 

 make the Garden unwholesome, and full of Flies and Frogs." 

 He gives a long list of flowers and plants that flourished in his day, 

 among them, all those that are mentioned by Spenser and 

 Shakespeare. 



"I do hold," he prettily says, " in the Roy all ordering of 

 Gardens, there ought to be a garden for all the moneths of the 

 yeare ; in which severally, things of Beauty may be there in Season ; ' 

 and then he proceeds to unfold the wonderful pageant of the 

 procession of Flora, and under the heading of each month gives 

 a catalogue surprisingly long of her offspring, beginning with 

 things that are " Greene all Winter," and winding up with " These 

 Particulars are for the Climate of London." " Roses Damask and 

 Red" he says, " are fast flowers of their Smels " ; three hundred 

 years ago " damask " so often used by the poets in describing a 

 maiden's cheek meant pink, not dark crimson, as with us. When 

 I was a child I wondered why the delicately-fringed, sweetly-scented 

 little flower which I was taught to call a " pink " was so named, 

 since, unlike Burns' daisy, the common example was not even 

 ' crimson- tipped," but pure white. Bacon teaches us that the 

 modern name is etymologically incorrect. Pink would appear to 

 be a corruption of Pinct or pinked stabbed, pierced, decorated by 

 scallops as the petals of this flower certainly are. " Prime-Roses " 

 is a better word than primrose. " Dammasin " is prettier than 

 damson ; but one does not at once recognize in Bacon's " Lelacke 

 Tree," the lilac, the favourite of our April gardens, with its heavy 

 clusters of pale purple flowers to my mind the fairest and most 

 fragrant of all the flowering trees of our English spring. 



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