ed with painted Grapes,
Do forfeit by the eye and pine the maw.

_Venus and Adonis_ (601).

(27)

For one sweet Grape, who will the Vine destroy?

_Lucrece_ (215).

Besides these different references to the Grape Vine, some of its
various products are mentioned, as Raisins, wine, aquavitae or brandy,
claret (the "thin potations" forsworn by Falstaff), sherris-sack or
sherry, and malmsey. But none of these passages gives us much insight
into the culture of the Vine in England, the whole history of which is
curious and interesting.

The Vine is not even a native of Europe, but of the East, whence it was
very early introduced into Europe; so early, indeed, that it has
recently been found "fossil in a tufaceous deposit in the South of
France."--DARWIN. It was no doubt brought into England by the Romans.
Tacitus, describing England in the first century after Christ, says
expressly that the Vine did not, and, as he evidently thought, could not
grow there. "Solum, praeter oleam vitemque et caetera calidioribus terris
oriri sueta, patiens frugum, faecundum." Yet Bede, writing in the eighth
century, describes England as "opima frugibus atque arboribus insula, et
alendis apta pecoribus et jumentis Vineas etiam quibusdam in locis
germinans."[301:1]

From that time till the time of Shakespeare there is abundant proof not
only of the growth of the Vine as we now grow it in gardens, but in
large Vineyards. In Anglo-Saxon times "a Vineyard" is not unfrequently
mentioned in various documents. "Edgar gives the Vineyard situated at
Wecet, with the Vine-dressers."--TURNER'S _Anglo-Saxons_. "'Domesday
Book' contained thirty-eight entries of valuable Vineyards; one in Essex
consisted of six acres, and yielded twenty hogsheads of wine in a good
year. There was another of the same extent at Ware."--H. EVERSHED, in
_Gardener's Chronicle_. So in the Norman times, "Giraldus Cambrensis,
speaking of the Castle of Manorbeer (his birthplace), near Pembroke,
said that it had under its walls, besides a fishpond, a beautiful
garden, enclosed on one side by a Vineyard and on the other by a wood,
remarkable for the projection of its rocks and the height of its Hazel
trees. In the twelfth century Vineyards were not uncommon in
England."--WRIGHT. Neckam, writing in that century, refers to the
usefulness of the Vine when trained against the wall