THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE 369 
It was also with such formal gardens in his mind and before 
his eyes that Bacon wrote his “ Essay on Gardens,” and com¬ 
menced it with the well-known sentence (for I must quote him 
once again for the last time), “ God Almighty first planted a 
garden, and indeed it is the purest of all human pleasures; it is 
the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which 
buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man 
shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegance, men 
come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if garden¬ 
ing were the greater perfection.” And, indeed, in spite of their 
stiffness and unnaturalness, there must have been a great charm 
in those gardens, and though it would be antiquarian affecta¬ 
tion to attempt or wish to restore them, yet there must have 
been a stateliness about them which our gardens have not, and 
they must have had many points of real comfort which it seems 
a pity to have lost. Those long shady “ covert alleys,” with 
their <c thick-pleached ” sides and roof, must have been very 
pleasant places to walk in, giving shelter in winter, and in 
summer deep shade, with the pleasant smell of Sweet Brier and 
Roses. They must have been the very places for a thoughtful 
student, who desired quiet and retirement for his thoughts— 
“And adde to these retired leisure 
That in trim gardens takes his pleasure ”— II Penseroso . 
and they must have been also “pretty retiring places for 
conference” for friends in council. The whole fashion of 
the Elizabethan garden has passed away, and will probably 
never be revived; but before we condemn it as a ridiculous 
fashion, unworthy of the science of gardening, we may re¬ 
member that it held its ground in England for more than two 
hundred years, and that during that time the gardens of 
England and the flowers they bore won not the cold admira¬ 
tion, but the warm affection of the greatest names in English 
history, the affection of such a queen as Elizabeth, 1 of such 
1 Queen Elizabeth’s love of gardening and her botanical knowledge 
were celebrated in a Latin poem by an Italian who visited England in 
1586, and wrote a long poem under the name of “Melissus.”—See 
Archceologia , vol. vii. 120. 
