HISTORICAL EPILOGUE 345 



Poet,' has already been given 1 although the 'intricacy' of its 

 'setting' hardly seems to equal the 'twisting, turnings and 

 windings ' of the poet's rhetorical conceits ; and if the symbolical 

 three arbours standing in a triangle cannot be detected, the 

 walks one within another like * the rind of an onion ' are certainly 

 visible. 



According to the letter-press with the copper-plates, the garden 

 was 1000 feet long by 400 feet broad, and was divided into three 

 long squares or parallelograms. The first from the house con- 

 tained four platts embroidered, each with a fountain in the midst, 

 marble statues, platts of flowers, and a little 'terrass.' The second 

 comprised two groves or woods, with the River Nadar running 

 through them under a bridge, the breadth of the Great Walk. 

 In the groves were two white marble statues, 8 feet high, of 

 Bacchus and Flora; and at the sides two covered arbours, 300 

 feet long, and alleys. In the third division were two ponds with 

 fountains, and two columns in the middle, the water causing 

 two crowns to revolve. Then came a green ' Compartment,' the 

 walks planted with cherry-trees, and in the middle a great Oval 

 with an antique Statue of a Gladiator in brass ; at the sides were 

 three arbours with ' twining Gallery es.' 



At the end of the Great Walk stood a stone portico with pilasters 

 and niches containing white marble figures, and a ' terrass ' with 

 sea-monsters upon the steps casting water from top to bottom ; 

 and above the portico was a ' reserve ' of water for the grotto. 



Of Elizabethan writers not before quoted Sir Hugh Platt of 

 Lincoln's Inn, Gentleman, 'the most ingenious husbandman 

 of the age he lived in,' 2 should be remembered as the author of 

 ' The Jewel House of Art and Nature,' ' The Paradise of Flora' and 

 ' The Garden of Eden.' He was an advocate for complete indi- 

 viduality of action in ' shaping or fashioning a Garden ' and 

 considered that 'every Drawer or Embroiderer, nay (almost) 



1 Ante p. 87. 



2 Tracts on practical Agriculture and Gardening, to which is added a com- 

 plete Chronological Catalogue of English Authors on Agriculture, Gardening, 

 etc., by Richard Weston, London, 1769, 8vo, 



