book iv
.
None of us probably would now wish to exchange the straight walks and level terraces of the sixteenth century for our winding walks and undulating lawns, in the laying out of which the motto has been "ars est celare artem"--
"That which all faire workes doth most aggrace, The art, which all that wrought, appeareth in no place."
_F. Q._, ii, xii, 58.
Yet it is pleasant to look back upon these old gardens, and to see how they were cherished and beloved by some of the greatest and noblest of Englishmen. Spenser has left on record his judgment on the gardens of his day--
"To the gay gardens his unstaid desire Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights; There lavish Nature, in her best attire, Poures forth sweete odors and alluring sights: And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire To excell the naturall with made delights; And all, that faire or pleasant may be found, In riotous excesse doth there abound.
* * * * *
There he arriving around about doth flie, From bed to bed, from one to other border; And takes survey, with curious busie eye, Of every flowre and herbe there set in order."
_Muiopotmos._
Clearly in Spenser's eyes the formalities of an Elizabethan garden (for we must suppose he had such in his thoughts) did not exclude nature or beauty.
It was also with such formal gardens in his mind and before his eyes that Lord Bacon wrote his "Essay on Gardens," and commenced 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 gardening 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 affectation 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 "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"--
_Il 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 remember that it held its ground in England for nearly two hundred years, and that during that time the gardens of England and the flowers they bore won not the cold admiration, but the warm affection of the greatest names in English history, the affection of such a queen as Elizabeth,[349:1] of such a grave and wise philosopher as Bacon, of such a grand hero as Raleigh, of such poets as Spenser and Shakespeare.
FOOTNOTES:
[343:1] These beds (as we should now call them) were called "tables" or "plots"--
"Mark out the tables, ichon by hem selve Sixe foote in brede, and xii in length is beste To clense and make on evey side honest."
_Palladius on Husbandrie_, i. 116.
"Note this generally that all plots are square."--LAWSON'S _New Orchard_, p. 60.
[344:1] For an account of Levens, with a plate of the Topiarian garden, see "Archæological Journal," vol. xxvi.
[347:1] Including shrubs--
"'Tis another's lot To light upon some gard'ner's curious knot, Where she upon her breast (love's sweet repose), Doth bring the Queen of flowers, the English Rose."
BROWNE'S _Brit. Past._, i, 2.
[347:2] For a good account of mazes and labyrinths see "Archæological Journal," xiv. 216.
[349:1] 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 _Archæologia_, vol. vii. 120.
III.--GARDENERS.
(1) _Queen._
But stay, here come the gardeners; Let's step into the shadow of these trees.
* * * * *
Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden, How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee To make a second fall of cursed man? Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed? Darest thou, thou little better thing than earth, Divine his downfal?
_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 4 (24, 72).
(2) _Clown._
Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.
_Hamlet_, act v, sc. 1 (34).
Very little is recorded of the gardeners of the sixteenth century, by which we can judge either of their skill or their social position. Gerard frequently mentions the names of different persons from whom he obtained plants, but without telling us whether they were professional or amateur gardeners or nurserymen; and Hakluyt has recorded the name of Master Wolfe as gardener to Henry VIII. Certainly Richard II.'s Queen did not speak with much respect to her gardener, reproving him for his "harsh rude tongue," and addressing him as a "little better thing than earth"--but her angry grief may account for that. Parkinson also has not much to say in favour of the gardeners of his day, but considers it his duty to warn his readers against them: "Our English gardeners are all, or the most of them, utterly ignorant in the ordering of their outlandish (_i.e._, exotic) flowers as not being trained to know them. . . . And I do wish all gentlemen and gentlewomen, whom it may concern for their own good, to be as careful whom they trust with the planting and replanting of their fine flowers, as they would be with so many jewels, for the roots of many of them being small and of great value may soon be conveyed away, and a clean tale fair told, that such a root is rotten or perished in the ground if none be seen where it should be, or else that the flower hath changed his colour when it hath been taken away, or a counterfeit one hath been put in the place thereof; and thus many have been deceived of their daintiest flowers, without remedy or true knowledge of the defect." And again, "idle and ignorant gardeners who get names by stealth as they do many other things." This is not a pleasant picture either of the skill or honesty of the sixteenth-century gardeners, but there must have been skilled gardeners to keep those curious-knotted gardens in order, so as to have a "_ver perpetuum_ all the year." And there must have been men also who had a love for their craft; and if some stole the rare plants committed to their charge, we must hope that there were some honest men amongst them, and that they were not all like old Andrew Fairservice, in "Rob Roy," who wished to find a place where he "wad hear pure doctrine, and hae a free cow's grass, and a cot and a yard, and mair than ten punds of annual fee," but added also, "and where there's nae leddy about the town to count the Apples."
IV.--GARDENING OPERATIONS.
A. PRUNING, ETC.
(1) _Orlando._
But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree, That cannot so much as a blossom yield In lieu of all thy pains and industry.
_As you Like It_, act ii, sc. 3 (63).
(2) _Gardener._
Go, bind thou up yon dangling Apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight: Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou, and like an executioner, Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays, That look too lofty in our commonwealth: All must be even in our government. You thus employ'd, I would go root away The noisome weeds, which without profit suck The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.
* * * * *
O, what pity is it, That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land As we this garden! We at time of year Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees, Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood, With too much riches it confound itself: Had he done so to great and growing men, They might have lived to bear and he to taste Their fruits of duty; superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughs may live: Had he done so, himself had borne the crown Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.
_Richard II_, act iii, sc. 4 (29).
This most interesting passage would almost tempt us to say that Shakespeare was a gardener by profession; certainly no other passages that have been brought to prove his real profession are more minute than this. It proves him to have had practical experience in the work, and I think we may safely say that he was no mere 'prentice hand in the use of the pruning knife.
The art of pruning in his day was probably exactly like our own, as far as regarded fruit trees and ordinary garden work, but in one important
## particular the pruner's art of that day was a for more laborious art
than it is now. The topiary art must have been the triumph of pruning, and when gardens were full of castles, monsters, beasts, birds, fishes, and men, all cut out of Box and Yew, and kept so exact that they boasted of being the "living representations" and "counterfeit presentments" of these various objects, the hands and head of the pruner could seldom have been idle; the pruning knife and scissors must have been in constant demand from the first day of the year to the last. The pruner of that day was, in fact, a sculptor, who carved his images out of Box and Yew instead of marble, so that in an amusing article in the "Guardian" 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.
_Constable._
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_, act ii, sc. 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.[353:1] 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_, act iv, sc. 3 (126).
And in the same way Iago says--
Either to have it (a garden) sterile with idleness or manured with industry.
_Othello_, act i, sc. 3 (296).
Milton and many other writers used the word in this its original sense; and Johnson explains it "to cultivate by manual labour," according to its literal derivation. In one passage Shakespeare uses the word somewhat in the modern sense--
_Carlisle._ The blood of English shall manure the ground.
_Richard II_, act iv, sc. 1 (137).
But generally he and the writers of that and the next century expressed the operation more simply and plainly, as "covering with ordure," or as in the English Bible, "I shall dig about it and dung it."
C. GRAFTING.
(1) _Buckingham._
Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants.
_Richard III_, act iii, sc. 7 (127).
(2) _Dauphin._
O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us, The emptying of our fathers' luxury, Our scions, put in wild and savage stock, Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds, And overlook their grafters?
_Henry V_, act iii, sc. 5 (5).
(3) _King._
His plausive words He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them, To grow there and to bear.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, act i, sc. 2 (53).
(4) _Perdita._
The fairest flowers o' the season Are our Carnations and streak'd Gillyvors, Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden's barren; I care not To get slips of them.
_Polixenes._
Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them?
_Perdita._ For I have heard it said There is an art which in their piedness shares With great creating Nature.
_Polixenes._
Say there be; Yet Nature is made better by no mean, But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which you say adds to Nature, is an art That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentle scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature.
_Perdita._
So it is.
_Polixenes._
Then make your garden rich in Gillyvors, And do not call them bastards.
_Perdita._
I'll not put The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them.
_Winter's Tale_, act iv, sc. 4 (81).
The various ways of propagating plants by grafts, cuttings, slips, and artificial impregnation (all mentioned in the above passages), as used in Shakespeare's day, seem to have been exactly like those of our own time, and so they need no further comment.
FOOTNOTES:
[353:1] 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."
V.--GARDEN ENEMIES.
A. WEEDS.
(1) _Hamlet._
How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on it, ah fye! 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.
_Hamlet_, act i, sc. 2 (133).
(2) _Titus._
Such withered herbs as these Are meet for plucking up.
_Titus Andronicus_, act iii, sc. 1 (178).
(3) _York._
Grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper, My Uncle Rivers talk'd how I did grow More than my brother. "Ay," quoth my Uncle Glo'ster, "Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace;" And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast, Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.
_Richard III_, act ii, sc. 4 (10).
(4) _Queen._
Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted; Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden, And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.
_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 1 (31).
(5)
Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring, Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers.
_Lucrece_ (869).
(6) _K. Henry._
Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds.
_2nd Henry IV_, act iv, sc. 4 (54).
The weeds of Shakespeare need no remark; they were the same as ours; and, in spite of our improved cultivation, our fields and gardens are probably as full of weeds as they were three centuries ago.
B. BLIGHTS, FROSTS, ETC.
(1) _York._
Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud, And caterpillars eat my leaves away.
_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 1 (89).
(2) _Montague._
But he, his own affection's counsellor, Is to himself--I will not say, how true-- But to himself so sweet and close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious worm, Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.
_Romeo and Juliet_, act i, sc. 1 (153).
(3) _Imogene._
Comes in my father, And like the tyrannous breathing of the north Shakes all our buds from growing.
_Cymbeline_, act i, sc. 3 (35).
(4) _Bardolph._
A cause on foot Lives so in hope as in an early spring We see the appearing buds--which to prove fruit, Hope gives not so much warrant as despair That frost will bite them.
_2nd Henry IV_, act i, sc. 3 (37).
(5) _Violet._
She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek.
_Twelfth Night_, act ii, sc. 4 (113).
(6) _Proteus._
Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.
_Valentine._
And writers say as the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turn'd to folly, blasting in the bud, Losing his verdure even in the prime And all the fair effects of future hopes.
_Two Gentlemen of Verona_, act i, sc. 1 (42).
(7) _Capulet._
Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of the field.
_Romeo and Juliet_, act iv, sc. 5 (28).
(8) _Lysimachus._
O sir, a courtesy Which if we should deny, the most just gods For every graff would send a caterpillar, And so afflict our province.
_Pericles_, act v, sc. 1 (58).
(9) _Wolsey._
This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes, to-morrow blossoms, And bears his blushing honours thick upon him: The third day comes a frost, a killing frost, And, when he thinks, good easy man, full surely His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.
_Henry VIII_, act iii, sc. 2 (352).
(10) _Saturninus._
These tidings nip me, and I hang the head As Flowers with frost, or Grass beat down with storms.
_Titus Andronicus_, act iv, sc. 4 (70).
(11)
No man inveigh against the withered flower, But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd; Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour, Is worthy blame.
_Lucrece_ (1254).
(12)
For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter, and confounds him there; Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o'ersnow'd, and bareness everywhere; Then, were not summer's distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was; But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.[357:1]
_Sonnet_ v.
With this beautiful description of the winter-life of hardy perennial plants, I may well close the "Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare." The subject has stretched to a much greater extent than I at all anticipated when I commenced it, but this only shows how large and interesting a task I undertook, for I can truly say that my difficulty has been in the necessity for condensing my matter, which I soon found might be made to cover a much larger space than I have given to it; for my object was in no case to give an exhaustive account of the flowers, but only to give such an account of each plant as might illustrate its special use by Shakespeare.
Having often quoted my favourite authority in gardening matters, old "John Parkinson, Apothecary, of London," I will again make use of him to help me to say my last words: "Herein I have spent my time, pains, and charge, which, if well accepted, I shall think well employed. And thus I have finished this work, and have furnished it with whatsoever could bring delight to those that take pleasure in those things, which how well or ill done I must abide every one's censure; the judicious and courteous I only respect; and so Farewell."
FOOTNOTES:
[357:1]
"Flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown; Where they together, All the hard weather Dead to the world, keep house unknown."
G. HERBERT, _The Flower_.
APPENDIX I.
_THE DAISY:_
_ITS HISTORY, POETRY, AND BOTANY._
There's a Daisy.--_Ophelia._
Daisies smel-lesse, yet most quaint.
_Two Noble Kinsmen_, Introd. song.
The following Paper on the Daisy was written for the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, and read at their meeting, January 14th, 1874. It was then published in "The Garden," and a few copies were reprinted for private circulation. I now publish it as an Appendix to the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare," with very few alterations from its original form, preferring thus to reprint it _in extenso_ than to make an abstract of it for the illustration of Shakespeare's Daisies.
THE DAISY.
I almost feel that I ought to apologize to the Field Club for asking them to listen to a paper on so small a subject as the Daisy. But, indeed, I have selected that subject because I think it is one especially suited to a Naturalists' Field Club. The members of such a club, as I think, should take notice of everything. Nothing should be beneath their notice. It should be their province to note a multitude of little facts unnoticed by others; they should be "minute philosophers," and they might almost take as their motto the wise words which Milton put into the mouth of Adam, after he had been instructed to "be lowlie wise" (especially in the study of the endless wonders of sea, and earth, and sky that surrounded him)--
"To know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom."--_Paradise Lost_, viii. (192).
I do not apologize for the lowness and humbleness of my subject, but, with "no delay of preface" (Milton), I take you at once to it. In speaking of the Daisy, I mean to confine myself to the Daisy, commonly so-called, merely reminding you that there are also the Great or Ox-eye, or Moon Daisy (_Chrysanthemum leucanthemum_), the Michaelmas Daisy (_Aster_), and the Blue Daisy of the South of Europe (_Globularia_). The name has been also given to a few other plants, but none of them are true Daisies.
I begin with its name. Of this there can be little doubt; it is the "Day's-eye," the bright little eye that only opens by day, and goes to sleep at night. This, whether the true derivation or not, is no modern fancy. It is, at least, as old as Chaucer, and probably much older. Here are Chaucer's well-known words--
"Men by reason well it calle may The Daïsie, or else the Eye of Day, The Empresse and the flowre of flowres all."
And Ben Jonson boldly spoke of them as "bright Daye's-eyes."
There is, however, another derivation. Dr. Prior says: "Skinner derives it from dais or canopy, and Gavin Douglas seems to have understood it in the sense of a small canopy in the line:
"The Daisie did unbraid her crounall small.
"Had we not the A.-S. dæges-eage, we could hardly refuse to admit that this last is a far more obvious and probable explanation of the word than the pretty poetical thought conveyed in Day's-eye." This was Dr. Prior's opinion in his first edition of his valuable "Popular Names of British Plants;" but it is withdrawn in his second edition, and he now is content with the Day's-eye derivation. Dr. Prior has kindly informed me that he rejected it because he can find no old authority for Skinner's derivation, and because it is doubtful whether the Daisy in Gavin Douglas's line does not mean a Marigold, and not what we call a Daisy. The derivation, however, seemed worth a passing notice. Its other English names are Dog Daisy, to distinguish it from the large Ox-eyed Daisy; Banwort, "because it helpeth bones[362:1] to knit agayne" (Turner); Bruisewort, for the same reason; Herb Margaret, from its French name; and in the North, Bairnwort, from its associations with childhood. As to its other names, the plant seems to have been unknown to the Greeks, and has no Greek name, but is fortunate in having as pretty a name in Latin as it has in English. Its modern botanical name is Bellis, and it has had the name from the time of Pliny. Bellis must certainly come from _bellus_ (pretty), and so it is at once stamped as the pretty one even by botanists--though another derivation has been given to the name, of which I will speak soon. The French call it Marguerite, no doubt for its pearly look, or Pasquerette, to mark it as the spring flower; the German name for it is very different, and not easy to explain--Gänseblume, _i.e._, Goose-flower; the Danish name is Tusinfryd (thousand joys); and the Welsh, Sensigl (trembling star).
As Pliny is the first that mentions the plant, his account is worth quoting. "As touching a Daisy," he says (I quote from Holland's translation, 1601), "a yellow cup it hath also, and the same is crowned, as it were, with a garland, consisting of five and fifty little leaves, set round about it in manner of fine pales. These be flowers of the meadow, and most of such are of no use at all, no marvile, therefore, if they be namelesse; howbeit, some give them one tearme and some another" (