Without the court, and to the gates adjoined
A spacious garden lay, fenced all around,
Secure, four acres measuring complete,
There grew luxuriant many a lofty tree,
Pomgranate, pear, the apple blushing bright,
The honeyed fig, and unctuous olive smooth.
Those fruits, nor winter's cold nor summer's heat
Fear ever, fail not, wither not, but hang
Perennial, while unceasing zephyr breathes
Gently on all, enlarging these, and those
Maturing genial; in an endless course.
Pears after pears to full dimensions swell,
Figs follow figs, grapes clustering grow again
Where clusters grew, and (every apple stripped)
The boughs soon tempt the gatherer as before.
There too, well rooted, and of fruit profuse,
His vineyard grows; part, wide extended, basks
In the sun's beams; the arid level glows;
In part they gather, and in part they tread
The wine-press, while, before the eye, the grapes
Here put their blossoms forth, there gather fast
Their blackness. On the garden's verge extreme
Flowers of all hues[040] smile all the year, arranged
With neatest art judicious, and amid
The lovely scene two fountains welling forth,
One visits, into every part diffused,
The garden-ground, the other soft beneath
The threshold steals into the palace court
Whence every citizen his vase supplies.
Homer's Odyssey, Book VII.
The mode of watering the garden-ground, and the use made of the water by the public--
Whence every citizen his vase supplies--
can hardly fail to remind Indian and Anglo-Indian readers of a Hindu gentleman's garden in Bengal.
Pope first published in the Guardian his own version of the account of the garden of Alcinous and subsequently gave it a place in his entire translation of Homer. In introducing the readers of the Guardian to the garden of Alcinous he observes that "the two most celebrated wits of the world have each left us a particular picture of a garden; wherein those great masters, being wholly unconfined and pointing at pleasure, may be thought to have given a full idea of what seemed most excellent in that way. These (one may observe) consist entirely of the useful part of horticulture, fruit trees, herbs, waters, &c. The pieces I am speaking of are Virgil's account of the garden of the old Corycian, and Homer's of that of Alcinous. The first of these is already known to the English reader, by the excellent versions of Mr. Dryden and Mr. Addison."
I do not think our present landscape-gardeners, or parterre-gardeners or even our fruit or kitchen-gardeners can be much enchanted with Virgil's ideal of a garden, but here it is, as "done into English," by John Dryden, who describes the Roman Poet as "a profound naturalist," and "a curious Florist."
THE GARDEN OF THE OLD CORYCIAN.
I chanc'd an old Corycian swain to know,
Lord of few acres, and those barren too,
Unfit for sheep or vines, and more unfit to sow:
Yet, lab'ring well his little spot of ground,
Some scatt'ring pot-herbs here and there he found,
Which, cultivated with his daily care
And bruis'd with vervain, were his frugal fare.
With wholesome poppy-flow'rs, to mend his homely board:
For, late returning home, he supp'd at ease,
And wisely deem'd the wealth of monarchs less:
The little of his own, because his own, did please.
To quit his care, he gather'd, first of all,
In spring the roses, apples in the fall:
And, when cold winter split the rocks in twain,
And ice the running rivers did restrain,
He stripp'd the bear's foot of its leafy growth,
And, calling western winds, accus'd the spring of sloth
He therefore first among the swains was found
To reap the product of his labour'd ground,
And squeeze the combs with golden liquor crown'd
His limes were first in flow'rs, his lofty pines,
With friendly shade, secur'd his tender vines.
For ev'ry bloom his trees in spring afford,
An autumn apple was by tale restor'd
He knew to rank his elms in even rows,
For fruit the grafted pear tree to dispose,
And tame to plums the sourness of the sloes
With spreading planes he made a cool retreat,
To shade good fellows from the summer's heat
Virgil's Georgics, Book IV.