I was awakened out of these my philosophical speculations, by observing the company often seemed to laugh at me. I accidentally praised a tulip as one of the finest that I ever saw; upon which they told me, it was a common fool's-coat. Upon that I praised a second, which it seems was but another kind of fool's-coat. I had the same fate with two or three more; for which reason I desired the owner of the garden to let me know which were the finest of the flowers, for that I was so unskilful in the art, that I thought the most beautiful were the most valuable, and that those which had the gayest colours were the most beautiful. The gentleman smiled at my ignorance: he seemed a very plain honest man, and a person of good sense, had not his head been touched with that distemper which Hippocrates calls the Τυλιππομανια (Tulippomania); insomuch that he would talk very rationally on any subject in the world but a tulip.
He told me, that he valued the bed of flowers which lay before us, and was not above twenty yards in length, and two in breadth, more than he would the best hundred acres of land in England; and added, that it would have been worth twice the money it is, if a foolish cook-maid of his had not almost ruined him the last winter, by mistaking a handful of tulip-roots for a heap of onions, "and by that means," says he, "made me a dish of porridge, that cost me above £1000 sterling." He then showed me what he thought the finest of his tulips, which I found received all their value from their rarity and oddness, and put me in mind of your great fortunes, which are not always the greatest beauties.
I have often looked upon it as a piece of happiness, that I have never fallen into any of these fantastical tastes, nor esteemed anything the more for its being uncommon and hard to be met with. For this reason, I look upon the whole country in spring-time as a spacious garden, and make as many visits to a spot of daisies, or a bank of violets, as a florist does to his borders and parterres. There is not a bush in blossom within a mile of me which I am not acquainted with, nor scarce a daffodil or cowslip that withers away in my neighbourhood without my missing it. I walked home in this temper of mind through several fields and meadows with an unspeakable pleasure, not without reflecting on the bounty of Providence, which has made the most pleasing and most beautiful objects the most ordinary and most common.
FOOTNOTES:
[67] Grass mown and spread for drying.
[68] "Paradise Lost," ix. 445.
[69] Sir Isaac Newton.
[No. 219. [? Steele.][70]
From Thursday, Aug. 31, to Saturday, Sept. 2, 1710.
——Solutos
Qui captat risus hominum famamque dicacis,...
Affectat, niger est, hunc tu, Romane, caveto.