Horace's incomparable lines on the happiness and delight of a country life, his country granges, his woods, his garden, and his grove; and many of the other Roman writers, abundantly shew their attachment to gardens, as accompaniments to their splendid villas. There was scarcely a romantic valley that was not crowded with their villas.
Martial and Juvenal ridicule the clipped box trees, cut dragons, and similar grotesque fancies, at some of their villas, both admiring the nobler grace with which nature adorned each spot.[25]
The Romans were perhaps the first who introduced that art into Britain, meagerly as they did introduce it. The earliest account I can find of an English writer on Gardening, is,
Alfred, an Englishman, surnamed the Philosopher, much respected at Rome. He died 1270, and left four books on the Meteors of Aristotle; also one on Vegetables, and five on the Consolations of Boethius. We are not very likely to discover his portrait. Nor that of the following:—
Henry Daniel, a Dominican friar, said to be well skilled in the natural philosophy and physic of his time, left a manuscript inscribed Aaron Danielis. He therein treats De re Herbaria, de Arboribus, Fructibus, &c. He flourished about the year 1379.—N. B. I have copied this article from Dr. Pulteney's Sketches, vol. 1, page 23.[26]
I believe there are no Portraits engraved, nor perhaps yet discovered, of the following sixty-nine persons; at least I know of none:—
Richard Arnolde, who in his Chronicle, printed in 1502, has a chapter on "The crafte of graffynge, and plantyne, and alterynge of fruyts, as well in colours, as in taste." The celebrated poem of the Nut-brown Maid first appeared in this Chronicle. Sir E. Brydges, in vol. 6 of his Censura Literaria, has transcribed the whole poem as it appears in Arnolde.
Thomas Tusser, whose memory has had the felicity to merit the notice of Mr. Warton, in his History of English Poetry, from his having published his poem of "A Hundreth good Pointes of Husbandrie, imprinted at London, in Flete strete, within Temple barre, at the syne of the Hand and Starre, by Richard Totell, An. 1577." A copy of this first edition (probably unique) is preserved in the British Museum. A re-print of this singular literary rarity is given in Mr. Hazlewood's British Bibliographer. The subsequent editions of this curious book are interestingly enumerated by Mr. Mavor, in his edition of Tusser. No portrait I believe has been discovered of this benevolent man, whose good sense, impressive maxims, enlightened and philosophic turn of mind and feeling for the poor, shine through most pages of his poem:—
What better bed than conscience good, to pass the night with sleep,
What better work, than daily care, from sin thyself to keep?
What better thought, than think on God, and daily him to serve,
What better gift than to the poor, that ready be to sterve?
His estimate of life is concise:—