A LOVER OF GARDENS 



be, by the skilful editor of these travels, that makes us 

 lean to the man as being a real person. It is his love of 

 Gardens, and his pains to tell of them, and the stories 

 of trees, and legends. And whether one who confessed 

 to the fraud of putting these travels together Jean de 

 Bourgogne, by name was a keen gardener or herbalist, 

 or whether it was a literary habit of the fourteenth 

 century (which, when I come to think of it, is so), some- 

 how I feel that there is a garden-loving spirit in forming 

 the book, and for that I love the man. 



In his wanderings Sir John meets many things, and 

 of these I beg leave to choose here and there one or two 

 of his anecdotes when they touch an idea such as gar- 

 deners love. The first is of the True Cross, and the story 

 of its origin. All of Sir John I have read in Mr. Pol- 

 lard's edition, than which nothing could be more satis- 

 factory and clear expressed. 



OF THE CROSS 



" And the Christian men, that dwell beyond the sea, 

 in Greece, say that the Tree of the Cross, that we call 

 Cypress, was one of that tree that Adam ate the apple 

 off ; and that find they written. And they say also, that 

 their Scripture saith, that Adam was sick, and said to his 

 son Seth, that he should go to the angel that kept Para- 

 dise, that he would send him the oil of mercy, for to 

 anoint with his members, that he might have health. 

 And Seth went. But the angel would not let him come 

 in ; but said to him, that he might not have of the oil of 

 mercy. But he took him three grains of the same tree, 

 that his father ate the apple off ; and bade him, a soon 

 as his father was dead, that he should put these three 

 grains under his tongue, and grave him so ; and so he 

 did. And of these three grains sprang a tree, as the 



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