Here is a similar allusion by the same poet to the delights which great
men amongst the ancients have taken in a rural retirement.
Methinks, I see great Dioclesian walk
In the Salonian garden's noble shade
Which by his own imperial hands was made,
I see him smile, methinks, as he does talk
With the ambassadors, who come in vain
To entice him to a throne again.
"If I, my friends," said he, "should to you show
All the delights which in these gardens grow,
'Tis likelier much that you should with me stay,
Than 'tis that you should carry me away:
And trust me not, my friends, if every day
I walk not here with more delight,
Than ever, after the most happy sight
In triumph to the Capitol I rode,
To thank the gods, and to be thought myself almost a god,"
The Garden.
Cowley does not omit the important moral which a garden furnishes.
Where does the wisdom and the power divine
In a more bright and sweet reflection shine?
Where do we finer strokes and colors see
Of the Creator's real poetry.
Than when we with attention look
Upon the third day's volume of the book?
If we could open and intend our eye
We all, like Moses, might espy,
E'en in a bush, the radiant Deity.
In Leigh Hunt's charming book entitled The Town, I find the following
notice of the partiality of poets for houses with gardens attached to
them:--
"It is not surprizing that garden-houses as they were called; should
have formerly abounded in Holborn, in Bunhill Row, and other (at that
time) suburban places. We notice the fact, in order to observe how fond
the poets were of occupying houses of this description. Milton seems to
have made a point of having one. The only London residence of Chapman
which is known, was in Old Street Road; doubtless at that time a rural
suburb. Beaumont and Fletcher's house, on the Surrey side of the Thames,
(for they lived as well as wrote together,) most probably had a garden;
and Dryden's house in Gerard Street looked into the garden of the
mansion built by the Earls of Leicester. A tree, or even a flower, put
in a window in the streets of a great city, (and the London citizens, to
their credit, are fond of flowers,) affects the eye something in the
same way as the hand-organs, which bring unexpected music to the ear.
They refresh the common-places of life, shed a harmony through the busy
discord, and appeal to those first sources of emotion, which are
associated with the remembrance of all that is young and innocent."
Milton must have been a passionate lover of flowers and flower-gardens
or he could never have exhibited the exquisite taste and genial feeling
which characterize all the floral allusions and descriptions with which
so much of his poetry is embellished. He lived for some time in a house
in Westminster over-looking the Park. The same house was tenanted by
Jeremy Bentham for forty years. It would be difficult to meet with any
two individuals of more opposite temperaments than the author of
Paradise Lost and the Utilitarian Philosopher. There is or was a stone
in the wall at the end of the garden inscribed TO THE PRINCE OF POETS.
Two beautiful cotton trees overarched the inscription, "and to show"
says Hazlitt, (who subsequently lived in the same house himself,) "how
little the refinements of taste or fancy entered Bentham's system, he
proposed at one time to cut down these beautiful trees, to convert the
garden, where he had breathed an air of truth and heaven for near half a
century, into a paltry Chreistomathic School, and to make Milton's house
(the cradle of Paradise Lost) a thoroughfare, like a three-stalled
stable, for the idle rabble of Westminster to pass backwards and
forwards to it with their cloven hoofs!"
No poet, ancient or modern, has described a garden on a large scale in
so noble a style as Milton. He has anticipated the finest conceptions of
the latest landscape-gardeners, and infinitely surpassed all the
accounts we have met with of the gardens of the olden time before us.
His Paradise is a
Spot more delicious than those gardens feigned
Or of revived Adonis or renowned
Alcinous, host of old Laertes' son
Or that, not mystic, where the sapient King
Held dalliance with his fair Egyptian spouse[010]
The description is too long to quote entire, but I must make room for a
delightful extract. Familiar as it must be to all lovers of poetry, who
will object to read it again and again? Genuine poetry is like a
masterpiece of the painter's art:--we can gaze with admiration for the
hundredth time on a noble picture. The mind and the eye are never
satiated with the truly beautiful. "A thing of beauty is a joy for
ever."
PARADISE.[011]
So on he fares, and to the border comes
Of Eden, where delicious Paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides
With thicket overgrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied: and overhead up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,
Cedar, and pine, and fir, and branching palm,
A sylvan scene; and as, the ranks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view. Yet higher than their tops,
The verdurous wall of Paradise up-sprung:
Which to our general sire gave prospect large
Into his nether empire neighbouring round;
And higher than that wall a circling row
Of goodliest trees, loaden with fairest fruit,
Blossoms and fruits at once, of golden hue,
Appear'd, with gay enamell'd colours mix'd;
On which the sun more glad impress'd his beams,
Than on fair evening cloud, or humid bow.
When God hath shower'd the earth; so lovely seem'd
That landscape: and of pure now purer air
Meets his approach, and to the heart inspires
Vernal delight and joy, able to drive
All sadness but despair: now gentle gales,
Fanning their odoriferous wings, dispense
Native perfumes and whisper whence they stole
Those balmy spoils. As when to them who sail
Beyond the Cape of Hope, and now are past
Mozambic, off at sea north-east winds blow
Sabean odours from the spicy shore
Of Araby the Blest; with such delay
Well pleased they slack their course, and many a league
Cheer'd with the grateful smell, old Ocean smiles.
Southward through Eden went a river large,
Nor changed his course, but through the shaggy hill
Pass'd underneath ingulf'd; for God had thrown
That mountain as his garden mould, high raised
Upon the rapid current, which through veins
Of porous earth with kindly thirst up-drawn,
Rose a fresh fountain, and with many a rill
Water'd the garden; thence united fell
Down the steep glade, and met the nether flood,
Which from his darksome passage now appears;
And now, divided into four main streams,
Runs diverse, wandering many a famous realm
And country, whereof here needs no account;
But rather to tell how, if art could tell,
How from that sapphire fount the crisped brooks,
Rolling on orient pearl and sands of gold,
With mazy error under pendent shades,
Ran nectar, visiting each plant, and fed
Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art
In beds and curious knots, but nature boon
Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain,
Both where the morning sun first warmly smote
The open field, and where the unpierced shade
Imbrown'd the noontide bowers; thus was this place
A happy rural seat of various view;
Groves whose rich, trees wept odorous gums and balm;
Others whose fruit, burnish'd with golden rind,
Hung amiable, Hesperian fables true,
If true, here only, and of delicious taste:
Betwixt them lawns, or level downs, and flocks
Grazing the tender herb, were interposed;
Or palmy hillock, or the flowery lap
Of some irriguous valley spread her store,
Flowers of all hue, and without thorn the rose:
Another side, umbrageous grots and caves
Of cool recess, o'er which the mantling vine
Lays forth her purple grape, and gently creeps
Luxuriant; meanwhile murmuring waters fall
Down the slope hills, dispersed, or in a lake,
That to the fringed bank with myrtle crown'd
Her crystal mirror holds, unite their streams.
The birds their quire apply; airs, vernal airs,
Breathing the smell of field and grove attune,
The trembling leaves, while universal Pan,
Knit with the Graces and the Hours in dance,
Led on the eternal Spring.
Pope in his grounds at Twickenham, and Shenstone in his garden farm of
the Leasowes, taught their countrymen to understand how much taste and
refinement of soul may be connected with the laying out of gardens and
the cultivation of flowers. I am sorry to learn that the famous retreats
of these poets are not now what they were. The lovely nest of the little
Nightingale of Twickenham has fallen into vulgar hands. And when Mr.
Loudon visited (in 1831) the once beautiful grounds of Shenstone, he
"found them in a state of indescribable neglect and ruin."
Pope said that of all his works that of which he was proudest was his
garden. It was of but five acres, or perhaps less, but to this he is
said to have given a charming variety. He enumerates amongst the friends
who assisted him in the improvement of his grounds, the gallant Earl of
Peterborough "whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines."
Know, all the distant din that world can keep,
Rolls o'er my grotto, and but soothes my sleep.
There my retreat the best companions grace
Chiefs out of war and statesmen out of place.
There St. John mingles with my friendly bowl
The feast of reason and the flow of soul;
And he whose lightnings pierced the Iberian lines
Now forms my quincunx and now ranks my vines;
Or tames the genius of the stubborn plain
Almost as quickly as he conquered Spain.
Frederick Prince of Wales took a lively interest in Pope's tasteful
Tusculanum and made him a present of some urns or vases either for his
"laurel circus or to terminate his points." His famous grotto, which he
is so fond of alluding to, was excavated to avoid an inconvenience. His
property lying on both sides of the public highway, he contrived his
highly ornamented passage under the road to preserve privacy and to
connect the two portions of his estate.
The poet has given us in one of his letters a long and lively
description of his subterranean embellishments. But his verse will live
longer than his prose. He has immortalized this grotto, so radiant with
spars and ores and shells, in the following poetical inscription:--
Thou, who shalt stop, where Thames' translucent wave
Shines a broad mirror through the shadowy cave,
Where lingering drops from mineral roofs distil,
And pointed crystals break the sparkling rill,
Unpolished gems no ray on pride bestow,
And latent metals innocently glow,
Approach! Great Nature studiously behold,
And eye the mine without a wish for gold
Approach--but awful! Lo, the Egerian grot,
Where, nobly pensive, ST JOHN sat and thought,
Where British sighs from dying WYNDHAM stole,
And the bright flame was shot thro' MARCHMONT'S soul;
Let such, such only, tread this sacred floor
Who dare to love their country, and be poor.
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