Natural Hi/lory of the Ancients. 137 



" Fine ewe, popler, and lindis faire, 

 And othir trees full many a paire." 



Of fruit-trees appear " pomgranetts a full grete 

 dele," " nutmeggis," " almandris," " figgis, and 

 many a date tre." 



To fay nothing of the cedars, the nutmegs here 

 mow that, poet-like, Chaucer was drawing on 

 his imagination, and that the lift cannot be 

 accepted implicitly as being the contents of a four- 

 teenth-century garden. The next lines, the fpices 

 it contained, prove this more conclufively "clowe, 

 gilofre, licorice, gingeber, grein de Paris " (grains 

 of Paradise), " canell " (cinnamon), " fetewale of 

 pris " (valerian). 



" And many homely trees there were 

 That peches, coines " (quinces), " and apples here, 

 Medlers, plommis, peris, chefteinis, 

 Cherife, of whiche many one faine is, 

 Notis and aleis " (alife), " and bolas, 

 That for to fene it was folas, 

 With many high laurer and pine, 

 Was rengid clene all that gardine 

 With cipris and with oliveris, 

 Of which that nigh no plenty here is." 



If this garden had no exiftence in the outer 

 world, it at all events mows what the ideal of a 

 garden was in Chaucer's time " the platform of a 

 princely garden," as Bacon fays. In " The 

 Pardonere and Tapftere," however, we do get 

 fome idea of what a garden of herbs was like in 

 the poet's day. Therein, he fays : 



" Many a herb grewe for fewe and furgery, 

 And all the aleys feir, and parid, and raylid, and ymakid, 

 The favige and the ifope yfrethid and yftakid, 

 And other beddis by and by frefh ydight." 



