OF
English Authors on Gardening.
The earliest accounts we have of gardens, are those recorded in Holy Writ; their antiquity, therefore, appears coeval with that of time itself. The Garden in Eden had every tree good for food, or pleasant to the sight. Noah planted a Vineyard. Solomon, in the true spirit of horticultural zeal, says, I planted me Vineyards, I made me Gardens and Orchards, and I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruit. We have all heard of the grandeur of Nebuchadnezzar's Gardens.
Whether that of Alcinous was fabulous or not, it gave rise to Homer's lofty strains:—
The balmy spirit of the western gale
Eternal breathes on flowers untaught to fail;
The same mild season gives the blooms to blow,
The buds to harden, and the fruit to grow.[23]
That Homer was all alive to the rich scenery of nature, is evident, even from his Calypso's Cave:—
All o'er the cavern'd rock a sprouting vine
Laid forth ripe clusters. Hence four limpid founts
Nigh to each other ran, in rills distinct,
Huddling along with many a playful maze.
Around them the soft meads profusely bloom'd
Fresh violets and balms.[24]
The Egyptians, the Persians, and other remote nations, prided themselves on their magnificent gardens. Diodorus Siculus mentions one "enriched with palm trees, and vines, and every kind of delicious fruit, by flowery lawns and planes, and cypresses of stupendous magnitude, with thickets of myrtle, and laurel, and bay." He paints too the attachment which some of the ancients had to landscape scenery:—
None of art's works, but prodigally strown
By nature, with her negligence divine.