Gardens of the Poets 
227 
Dr. Holmes was also a master in the description 
of garden flowers. I should know, had I never 
been told save from his verses, just the kind of a 
Cambridge garden he was reared in, and what 
flowers grew in it. Lowell, too, gives ample evi- 
dence of a New England childhood in a garden. 
The gardens of Shenstone’s Schoolmistress and 
of Thomson’s poems come to our minds without 
great warmth of welcome from us ; while Clare’s 
lines are full of charm : — 
“ And where the Marjoram once, and Sage and Rue, 
And Balm, and Mint, with curl’d leaf Parsley grew. 
And double Marigolds, and silver Thyme, 
And Pumpkins ’neath the window climb. 
And where I often, when a child, for hours 
Tried through the pales to get the tempting flowers. 
As Lady’s Laces, everlasting Peas, 
True-love-lies-bleeding, with the Hearts-at-ease 
And Goldenrods, and Tansy running high. 
That o’er the pale tops smiled on passers by.” 
A curious old seventeenth-century poet was the 
Jesuit, Rene Rapin. The copy of his poem en- 
titled Gardens which I have seen, is the one in my 
daughter’s collection of garden books; it was “Eng- 
lish’d by the Ingenious Mr. Gardiner,” and pub- 
lished in 1728. Hal lam in his Introduction to the 
Literature of Europe gives a capital estimate of this 
long poem of over three thousand lines. I find 
them pretty dull reading, with much monotony of 
adjectives, and very affected notions for plant names. 
I fancy he manufactured all his tedious plant tradi- 
tions himself. 
