“A Shelf of Old Gardening Books” 
ALEXANDER POPE 
charming book, and loses nothing by its translation. 
His catalogue of fruit trees is curious and interesting. 
He also devotes much space to the directions for 
pickling, preserving, and candying fruits, though 
a lady friend, a person of quality, assured the 
author that there was “ nothing extraordinary 
amongst them, but what the fair sex do infin¬ 
itely exceed, whenever they please to divertise 
themselves in that sweet employment.” In 1664, 
he published his “Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest 
Trees and Pomona, or an Appendix concerning 
Fruit Trees, in relation to Cider,” and the Kalen- 
danum Hortense , “or Gardener’s Almanac, Direct¬ 
ing what he is to do monthly throughout the year.” 
This Calendar is, with the exception of Bacon’s 
essay, the earliest of the many manuals which have 
been published containing directions with regard to 
the management of gardens. It is an attractive 
book, wherein the charming personality of the 
writer is enshrined; and he tells us much about 
jessamine, laurel and hollies, and the fair denizens 
of our woods and how to prune and propagate 
them. 
Side by side with Evelyn’s book, I keep Cowley’s 
poems. The two authors were friends, so their 
works shall lie together. Cowley, writing ‘To J. 
Evelyn, Esquire,” says, “I never had any other 
desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that 
HORACE WALPOLE 
one which I have had always, that I might be master 
at last of a small house and large garden with every 
moderate conveniences joined to them, and there 
dedicate the remainder of my life only to the culture 
of them and the study of nature. And there (with 
no design beyond my wall) whole and entire to lie, 
in no unactive ease and no unglorious poverty. 
* * * I know nobody that possesses more private 
happiness than you do in your garden, and yet no 
man who makes his happiness more public by a 
free communication of the art and knowledge of 
it to others.” 
Cowley’s whole poem on “the Garden” is full of 
beautiful thought and the sweet love of Nature’s 
beauty. Was it Johnson who said, “there is more 
sense in a line of Cowley than in a page of Pope” ? 
Other poets may be read, Cowley must be studied. 
Here is noble verse: 
“ Oh blessed shades! Oh, gentle, cool retreat 
From all the immoderate heat, 
In which the frantic world does burn and sweat. 
The birds that dance from bough to bough 
And sing above in every tree, 
Are not from fears and cares more free 
Than we who lie, or sit, or walk below, 
And should by right be singers too.” 
Here speaks the true lover of the country: 
“ Who that has reason and his smell 
Would not among roses and jasmine dwell, 
Rather than all his spirits choke 
With exhalations of dirt and smoke.” 
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