Among many other arts and excellences which you enjoy, I am glad to find this favorite of mine the most predominant. I know nobody that possesses more private happiness than you do in your garden; and yet no man who makes his happiness more public, by a free communication of the art and knowledge of it to others. All that I myself am able yet to do, is only to recommend to mankind the search of that felicity, which you instruct them how to find out and to enjoy. Happy art thou, whom God does bless And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet The fairest garden in her looks, And in her mind the wisest books. Oh, who would change these soft, yet solid joys, And all which rank ambition breeds, Which seem such beauteous flowers, and are such poisonous weeds? When Epicurus to the world had taught That pleasure was the chiefest good, (And was perhaps i' th' right, if rightly understood), His life he to his doctrine brought, And in a garden's shade that sovereign pleasure sought: Whoever a true epicure would be, May there find cheap and virtuous luxury As many creatures as the ark of old, Help'd with a little art and industry The wanton taste no fish or fowl can choose, Yet still the fruits of earth we see Plac'd the third story high in all her luxury. Where does the wisdom and the power divine Than when we with attention look Upon the third day's volume of the book? Ev'n in a bush, the radiant Deity. (Though no less full of miracle and praise): Upon the flowers of heaven we gaze ; The stars of earth no wonder in us raise, Though these perhaps do, more than they, Although no part of mighty nature be More stor'd with beauty, power and mystery, God has so order'd, that no other part We nowhere art do so triumphant see, As when it grafts or buds the tree : It over-rules and is her master here. It imitates her Maker's power divine, And changes her sometimes and sometimes does refine : It does, like grace, the fallen tree restore, To its blest state of Paradise before. Who would not joy to see his conquering hand O'er all the vegetable world command ? And the wild giants of the wood receive What law he's pleas'd to give? He bids th' ill-natur'd crab produce He does the savage hawthorn teach Though she refus'd Apollo's suit, Even she, that chaste and virgin tree, That she's a mother made, and blushes in her fruit. Methinks I see great Dioclesian walk T'entice him to a throne again. If I, my friends (said he), should to you show Than ever, after the most happy fight, To thank the gods, and to be thought, myself, almost a god. A noble finish that, to a sometimes prosaical, often poetical, and always engaging and thoughtful effusion. The garden possessed by Cowley's friend Evelyn was at his seat of Sayes Court, Deptford. It contained, among other beauties, an enormous hedge of holly, which made a glorious show in winter time with its shining red berries. The Czar Peter, who came to England in Evelyn's time, and occupied his house, took delight (by way of procuring himself a strong Russian sensation), in being drawn through this hedge "in a wheel-barrow !" He left it in sad condition accordingly, to the disgust and lamentation of the owner. The garden cuts rather a formal and solemn figure, to modern eyes, in the engravings that remain of it. But such engravings can suggest little of color and movement of flowers and the breathing trees; and our ancestors had more reason to admire those old orderly creations of theirs than modern improvement allows. We are too apt to suppose that one thing cannot be good, because another is better; or that an improvement cannot too often reject what it might include or ameliorate. There was no want of enthusiasm in the admirers of the old style, whether they were right or wrong. Hear what an arbiter of taste in the next age said of it, the famous Sir William Temple. He was an honest statesman and mild Epicurean philosopher, in the real sense of that designation; that is to say, temperate and reflecting, and fonder of a garden and the friends about him than of anything else. He was a great cultivator of fruit. He had the rare pleasure of obtaining the retirement he loved; first at Sheen, near Richmond, in Surrey, which is the place alluded to in the following "Thoughts on Retirement;" and, secondly, at Moor Park, near Farnham, in the same county-a residence probably named after the Moor Park which he eulogizes in the subsequent description of a garden. In the garden of his house at Farnham he directed that his heart should be buried; and it was. The sun-dial, under which he desired it might be deposited, is still remaining. SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE'S THOUGHTS ON RETIREMENT. FROM ONE OF HIS LETTERS. AS the country life, and this part of it more particularly (gardening), were the inclination of my youth itself, so they are the pleasure of my age; and I can truly say, that, among many great employments that have fallen to my share, I have never asked or sought for any one of them, but often endeavored to escape from them into the ease and freedom of a private scene, where a man may go his own way and his own pace, in the common paths or circles of life. "Inter cuncta leges et per cunctabere doctos But above all the learned read, and ask By what means you may gently pass your age, What lessens care, what makes thee thine own friend, Or else a private path of stealing life. |