SACRED GARDENS.
The origin of sacred gardens among the heathen nations may be traced up to the garden of Eden. The gardens of the Hesperides, of Adonis, of Flora, were famous among the Greeks and Romans. “The garden of Flora,” says Mr. Spence, (Polymetis, p. 251) “I take to have been the Paradise in the Roman Mythology. The traditions and traces of Paradise among the ancients must be expected to have grown fainter and fainter in every transfusion from one people to another. The Romans probably derived their notions of it from the Greeks, among whom this idea seems to have been shadowed out under the stories of the gardens of Alcinous. In Africa they had the gardens of the Hesperides, and in the East those of Adonis, or the Horti Adonis, as Pliny calls them. The term Horti Adonides was used by the ancients to signify gardens of pleasure, which answers to the very name of Paradise, or the garden of Eden, as Horti Adonis does to the garden of the Lord.”
SIR THOMAS WYAT.
[DIED 1541.]
The story of this eminent person, probably one of the principal ornaments of an age unable to discern his merits, or unwilling to record them, has been very imperfectly related. He was born at Allington Castle, in Kent, the ancient seat of his family, in 1503, and was the son of Sir Henry Wyat. He may be said to have finished his education in the society of that eminent character Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, with whom he travelled abroad, and with whom he “tasted in Italy,” says Wood, “the sweet and stately measures of the Italian poesy.” These, as far as the rude state of our language, and the still ruder taste of the times, would allow, he applied to English verse. His poems were printed at London in 1565, and have since been frequently republished, in conjunction with those of his noble friend; but here, as in other points of view, we have but glimpses of him; for through the ignorance or carelessness of the original editor, his pieces are so confusedly blended with the Earl’s, that not many of them can be positively ascertained.[[32]]
Having been introduced at Court, where his endowments both of body and mind, recommended him to the favour of king Henry the Eighth, he was employed in several foreign embassies, which he discharged with great ability. His influence with the king was proverbial. Lloyd tells us that “when a man was newly preferred, they said he had been in Sir Thomas Wyat’s closet.”
We are informed by Wood (Athen. Oxon.) that Sir Thomas was sent by the king to Falmouth, for the purpose of conducting a Spanish Minister from thence to London. Being desirous of making great expedition, he fatigued himself so much that he was thrown into a fever, and was obliged to stop at Sherborne, in Dorsetshire, where he died a few days after, in the 38th year of his age, “to the great reluctancy,” says Wood, “of the king, kingdom, his friends, and all that knew the great worth and virtues of the person.” He was buried in Sherborne Church.[[33]]
He left behind him a son of the same name, who lost his head for exciting a rebellion in the reign of queen Mary, from whom our poet is commonly distinguished by the appellation of Sir Thomas Wyat the elder.