SIR THOMAS BROWNE 95 



be the famous Syrian King of Diodoms) beautifully repaired that 

 city, and so magnificently built his hanging gardens, 1 that from 

 succeeding writers he had the honour of the first. From whence, 

 overlooking Babylon, and all the region about it, he found no 

 circumscription to the eye of his ambition ; till, over-delighted 

 with the bravery of this Paradise, in his melancholy metamor- 

 phosis he found the folly of that delight, and a proper punishment 

 in the contrary habitation in wild plantations and wanderings 

 of the fields. The Persian gallants, who destroyed this mon- 

 archy, maintained their botanical bravery. Unto whom we 

 owe the very name of Paradise, wherewith we meet not in 

 Scripture before the time of Solomon, and conceived origin- 

 ally Persian. The word for that disputed garden, expressing, 

 in the Hebrew, no more than a field enclosed, which from the 

 same root is content to derive a garden and a buckler. The 

 Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunciar 1 Lozenge, or Net-work 

 Plantations of the Ancients. Artificially, Naturally, Mystically 

 considered? 



1 Josephus. 



2 Quid quincunce speciosius, qui in quamcunque partem spectaveris, rectus 

 est. Quintilian. 



3 The Garden of Cyrus, though it ends indeed with a passage of wonderful 

 felicity, certainly emphasises (to say the least) the defects of Browne's literary 

 good qualities. His chimeric fancy carries him here into a kind of frivolous- 

 ness, as if he felt almost too safe with his public, and were himself not quite 

 serious or dealing fairly with it ; and in a writer such as Browne, levity must 

 of necessity be a little ponderous. Still, like one of those stiff gardens, half- 

 way between the medieval garden and the true ' English ' garden of Temple or 

 Walpole, actually to be seen in the background of some of the conventional 

 portraits of that day, the fantasies of this indescribable exposition of the 

 mysteries of the quincunx form part of the complete portrait of Browne 

 himself; and it is in connection with it that once or twice the quaintly 

 delightful pen of Evelyn comes into the correspondence in connexion with 

 the ' hortulane pleasure' "Norwich" he writes to Browne, "is a place I 

 understand much addicted to the flowery poet." Professing himself a believer 

 in the operation " of the air and genius of gardens upon human spirits, towards 

 virtue and sanctity" he is all for natural gardens as against "those which 

 appear like gardens of paste-board and march-pane, and smell more of paint 

 than of flowers and verdure." Walter Pater, ' Appreciations.' 



