GARDENS IN LITERATURE 
have the alleys spacious and fair. ... I wish also, in the 
very middle, a fair mount, with three ascents and alleys, 
enough for four to walk abreast. . . . For fountains, they 
are a great beauty and refreshment; but pools mar all, 
and make the garden unwholesome, and full of flies and 
frogs.” 
This garden was to be divided into three portions, “a 
green in the entrance, a heath, or desert, in the going 
forth, and the main garden in the midst, besides alleys 
on both sides.” Nothing, he tells us, is more pleasant 
to the eye than green grass kept finely shorn. And as 
for the heath, he would wish that “framed, as much as 
may be, to a natural wildness. Trees, I would have 
none in it, but some thickets made only of sweet-briar 
and honeysuckle and some wild vine amongst; and the 
ground set with violets, strawberries, and primroses, for 
these are sweet and prosper in the shade.” 
A sweet place enough, stately and spacious, full of 
English posies and safeguarded from inroad by those 
tall arched hedges, all bespeaking an Elizabethan 
magnificence. 
Some fifty years later Sir William Temple wrote his 
delightful book on the gardens of Epicurus, as well as 
many others, all over the then known world. But it is 
when he comes home again that he gives his most 
charming picture, and falls into his chiefest rhapsody. 
“ But after much Ramble into Ancient Times and 
Remote Places, to return Home and consider the Way 
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