GARDEN LITERATURE. 



108 



Cheam in Surrey, about the year 1524 (v. Gough's " Brit. 

 Topog.," v. i. p. 133.) 



After the year 1500 all our records go to prove that the evolu- 

 tion of gardening and of gardening literature went on side by 

 side, each acting and reacting most beneficially on the other. 



Our garden literature may be said to have originated from 

 two springs or sources at about the same time, and was of no 

 great or public importance until printing furnished thought with 

 wings, and books became common objects of commerce, and 

 then, as Disraeli tells us, the treasures of the human mind 

 became " as free as air, and as cheap as bread." Then came 

 the earlier Latin or French translations, and the Herbals such as 

 Macer's in 1487, the Great Herbal 1526, and Ascham 1550. 

 These Herbals in the main dealt with plants from a botanico- 

 medical point of view, but they collectively exerted a most 

 beneficial influence on the rise and progress of English gar- 

 dening, seeing that the care and attention devoted to the growth 

 of Herbs or "simples" naturally led to the culture of many 

 other useful and beautiful things. We can see that this really 

 was the case by studying the evolution of the Herbals them- 

 selves. At first purely astrologo-medical and pedantic, they 

 alter gradually until in later years we find those of Gerarde, 

 Johnston, and Parkinson becoming more essentially horticul- 

 tural in character. It is to Herbals and to Cookery Books that 

 we must look for vivid side-lights on early gardening. 



In the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries not 

 only gardening proper, but its literature, had become firmly and 

 extensively established. So general had become the taste for 

 and interest in horticulture, that men of leisure and of literary 

 talent directed their ability to its literature, collected information 

 at home or abroad, and gave the results for the public benefit. 

 This is a decisive proof of the attention aroused, for no author 

 would have written a book, and certainly no publisher would 

 have printed it, unless readers were also expectant and expected, 

 and no one would read a work on plant culture for mere amuse- 

 ment, so that there must have been a demand from those who 

 wished to practise what they read. 



But the earliest of all garden works are in MS., and no 

 doubt there are many MS. works on our craft actually in 

 existence, if they could be found and edited for more general 



