CHAPTER IV 



EARLY GARDEN LITERATURE 



" And all was walled that wone iAoug it wid were 

 "With posterns in pryuytie to pasen when hem list 

 Orchegardes and erberes eused well clene." 



Piers Plowman's Crede, C. 1394. 



BEFORE proceeding any farther with the history of 

 gardening, it will be as well to pass in review the litera- 

 ture on the subject relating to the periods which have been 

 traversed. The knowledge of herbs and flowers in Saxon 

 times, and for several centuries later, was all learnt from 

 classical authors. The works of Theophrastus, Dioscorides, 

 Galen, Pliny, and Apuleius, formed the basis of Saxon plant- 

 lore. The Herbarium of Apuleius (who lived about the fourth 

 century A.D.) was founded on the works of Dioscorides and 

 Pliny, and it is chiefly through Apuleius that these earlier 

 writers were known. This herbal was translated into Anglo- 

 Saxon, and must have been a very popular book, for no less 

 than four MSS. of it exist, which is a large proportion out of the 

 scanty remains of books of such early times. 1 The names of 

 plants which are to be found in these MSS. are most interesting, 

 and are useful for the identification of the names used in later 

 herbals. Another good list of herbs in Anglo-Saxon is to be 



1 Translations are to be found in Cockayne, Leechdom and Wort- 

 cunning of Early England, 1864, notes in Early-English Plant Names, 

 Earle, 1880 — original MSS. Cotton Vitellius ciii. Brit. Mus. date circa 

 1000-1066. Trinity College, Cambridge, O. 2. 48, 14th century. Also 

 in Harleian 815, Liber Medicinalis. (Harleian 5066, Herbarium 

 Saxonicum. Thus described in the Catalogue, is not in the MS. 

 thus numbered, and a note to say it was not there in 1804 is 

 signed " D.") 



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