214 A HISTORY OF GARDENING IN ENGLAND 



Park he laid out a garden in the Dutch style. It is not to be 

 wondered at, that the statesman who negotiated the Triple 

 Alljance should prefer the taste of the Netherlands to that of 

 France, but he was large-minded enough to get what was good 

 from France also. He prided himself on having introduced 

 four new sorts of grapes into England : (i) The " Arboyse from 

 Franche Compte, which is a small white grape ... it agrees 

 well with our climate ... it is the most delicious of all grapes 

 that are not muscat. (2) The Burgundy, which is a grizelin, 

 or pale red, and of all others surest to ripen in our climate, so 

 that I have never known them to fail one summer these 15 

 years, when all others have ; and have had it very good upon 

 an east wall. (3) A Black Muscat, which is called the Dowager, 

 and ripens as well as the common white grape. (4) The 

 Grizelin Frontignac, the noblest of all grapes I ever ate in 

 England, but it requires the hottest wall and the sharpest 

 gravel, and must be favoured by the summer too, to be very 

 good." 1 Unlike the proud possessor of the " Tulipe noire," or 

 Alphonse Karr's enthusiastic old savants, 2 who fought over a 

 Buddlea, Temple was very generous in distributing the vines 

 he introduced, for he writes : " I ever thought of all things of 

 this kind the commoner they are made the better." 



Temple turned his attention chiefly to fruit culture. Of 

 flowers he says : " I only pleased myself with seeing or smelling 

 them, and not troubled myself with the care, which is more the 

 ladies' part than the man's." Perhaps he left the floral part of 

 his garden to his charming wife, Dorothy Osborne. In her 

 delightfully fresh and witty love-letters to Temple during the 

 long years of their engagement, there is one reference which is 

 enough to show that she, too, took an interest in gardening. She 

 writes, in 1654, of Sir Samuel Luke, a neighbour of hers at 

 Chick Sands, in Bedfordshire : " But of late I know not how 

 Sir Sam has grown so kind as to send to me for some things 

 he desired out of this garden, and withal made the offer of 

 what was in his, which I had reason to take for a high favour, 

 for he is a nice florist." 



1 This grape is now rarely seen. There is a plant (grown under glass) 

 at Berwick, near Shrewsbury. 



2 Autour de mon Jar din. 



