THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE 373 
for 1713 (No. 173), said to have been written by Pope, is a 
list of such sculptured objects for sale, and we are told that 
the “eminent town gardener had arrived to such perfection 
that he cuts family pieces of men, women, and children. Any 
ladies that please may have their own effigies in Myrtle, or 
their husbands in Hornbeam. He is a Puritan wag, and 
never fails when he shows his garden to repeat that passage in 
the Psalms, ‘ Thy wife shall be as the fruitful Vine, and thy 
children as Olive branches about thy table.’ ” 
B. Manuring, etc. 
And you shall find his vanities forespent 
Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus, 
Covering discretion with a coat of folly ; 
As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots 
That shall first spring and be most delicate .—Henry V. ' ii. 4, 36. 
The only point that needs notice under this head is that 
the word “ manure ” in Shakespeare’s time was not limited to 
its present modern meaning. In his day “manured land” 
generally meant cultured land in opposition to wild and barren 
land. 1 So Falstaff uses the word— 
Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did 
naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, 
manured, husbanded, and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good 
and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant. 
2nd Henry IV, iv. 3, 126. 
And in the same way Iago says— 
Either to have it (a garden) sterile with idleness or manured with 
industry. — Othello , i. 3, 296. 
Milton and many other writers used the word in this its 
1 The Act 31 Eliz. c. 7, enacts that “noe person shall within this 
Realme of England make buylde or erect any Buyldinge or Howsinge 
.... as a Cottage for habitation .... unlesse the same person do 
assigne and laye to the same Cottage or Buyldinge fower acres of Grounde 
at the least ... to be contynuallie occupied and manured therewith.” 
Gerard’s Chapter on Vines is headed, “ Of the manured Vine,” 
