AND CELEBRATED GARDENS 
of the garden wherein Fiametto and her companions took refuge, 
and which he likened to a Paradise on earth—have almost their 
counterpart in Chaucer’s ‘‘ Romaunt of the Rose,”’ in which he 
describes : 
A ‘garden fair to see,” bounded by a high, embattled wall, 
and entered only by “‘ a wicked smal... .” 
** So fair it was, that trusteth wel 
It seemed a place esperitual 
For certes! as at my devys 
There is no place in Paradys 
So good in for to dwelle or be 
As in that garden thoughte me.” 
He describes the concert of the birds—the nightingale, the 
finch, the laverock (sky lark), the throstle, the mavis, and the 
turtle, each one seeking to eclipse the other in the sweetness of 
its song—truly a chorus known to few foreign lands. He tells 
us also of another garden : 
‘A garden saw I, full of bloomy bowes 
Upon a river in a grene mede .. . 
With flowers whyte, blew, yeloe and rede.” 
The poet of the “‘ Canterbury Tales ” died in 1400, and thirty- 
seven years later another British singer, James I. of Scotland, fell 
by the hands of assassins at Perth. His poetic genius was of no 
mean order, but I fear Scotland may scarcely claim him exclusively, 
since it was nurtured in England, where he was a captive for nineteen 
years. From his prison at Windsor he beheld the fair young 
daughter of the Earl of Sussex walking in the garden below, and 
fell in love with her. She ultimately became his Queen. 
In his beautiful poem, ‘‘ The King’s Quhair,” he describes the 
garden : 
“So thick the boughis and the leavis greene 
Beshaded all the alleys that there were, 
And mids of every arbour might be seen 
The sharp greene sweete juniper, 
Growing so fair with branches here and there. 
‘“* And on the smalle greene twistie sat 
The little nightingale and sung 
So loud and clear, the hymis consecrat 
Of lovis use, now soft, now loud, the wallis rung 
Right of their song.” 
3 1* 
