That these flowers were the most favourite ones of Shakspeare, there can be little doubt—Perditta fondly calls them
——sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes
Or Cytherea's breath.
When Petrarch first saw Laura: "elle avail une robe verte, sa coleur favorite, parsemée de violettes, la plus humble des fleurs."—Childe Harold thus paints this flower:
The sweetness of the violet's deep blue eyes
(Kiss'd by the breath of heaven) seems colour'd by its skies.
[19] One almost fancies one perceives Lord Bacon's attachment to gardens, or to rural affairs, even in the speech he made before the nobility, when first taking his seat in the High Court of Chancery; he hoped "that these same brambles that grow about justice, of needless charge and expence, and all manner of exactions, might be rooted out;" adding also, that immediate and "fresh justice was the sweetest." Mr. Mason, in a note to his English Garden, after paying a high compliment to Lord Bacon's picturesque idea of a garden, thus concludes that note:—"Such, when he descended to matters of more elegance (for, when we speak of Lord Bacon, to treat of these was to descend,) were the amazing powers of this universal genius."
[20] Mr. Pope's delight in gardens, is visible even in the condensed allusion he makes to them, in a letter to Mr. Digby; "I have been above a month strolling about in Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from garden to garden, but still returning to Lord Cobham's, with fresh satisfaction. I should be sorry to see my Lady Scudamore's, till it has had the full advantage of Lord Bathurst's improvements."
[21] A biographer thus speaks of the Prince de Ligne: "Quand les rois se reunirent a Vienne en 1814, ils se firent tous un devoir de l'accuellier avec distinction, et furent enchanté de la vivacité de son esprit, et de son intarissable gaieté, qui malgré ses infirmités et son grand âge, ne l'avoit pasencore abandonné. Ses saillies, et ses bon mots etoiént comme autrefois répétés pour tous." His generous heart thus speaks of the abused and unfortunate Marie Antoinette:—"The breath of calumny has not even respected the memory of the loveliest and best of women, of whose spotless heart and irreproachable conduct, no one can bear stronger evidence than I. Her soul was as pure as her face was fair; yet neither virtue nor beauty could save the victim of sanguinary liberty." In relating this (says his biographer), his voice faultered, and his eyes were suffused with tears. He thus briefly states, with his usual humour and vivacity, his conversation with Voltaire as to the garden at Ferney:
P. de L.—Monsieur, Monsieur, cela doit vous coupé beaucoup, quel charmant jardin!
Volt.—Oh! mon jardinier est un bête: c'est moi meme qui ait fait tout.
P. de L.—Je le croi.