t, and which show also that the gardens of those days were by no means
ill-furnished either with fruit or flowers. Coming a little later,
Chaucer takes every opportunity to speak with a most loving affection
for flowers, both wild and cultivated, and for well-kept gardens; and
Spenser's poems show a familiar acquaintance with them, and a warm
admiration for them. Then in Shakespeare's time we have full records of
the gardens and gardening which must have often met his eye; and we find
that they were not confined to a few fine places here and there, but
that good gardens were the necessary adjunct to every country house, and
that they were cultivated with a zeal and a skill that would be a credit
to any gardener of our own day. In Harrison's description of "England in
Shakespeare's Youth," recently published by the new Shakespeare Society,
we find that Harrison himself, though only a poor country parson, "took
pains with his garden, in which, though its area covered but 300ft. of
ground, there was 'a simple' for each foot of ground, no one of them
being common or usually to be had." About the same time Gerard's
Catalogues show that he grew in his London garden more than a thousand
species of hardy plants; and Lord Bacon's famous "Essay on Gardens" not
only shows what a grand idea of gardening he had himself, but also that
this idea was not Utopian, but one that sprang from personal
acquaintance with stately gardens, and from an innate love of gardens
and flowers. Almost at the same time, but a little later, we come to the
celebrated "John Parkinson, Apothecary of London, the King's Herbarist,"
whose "Paradisus Terrestris," first published in 1629, is indeed "a
choise garden of all sorts of rarest flowers." His collection of plants
would even now be considered an excellent collection, if it could be
brought together, while his descriptions and cultural advice show him to
have been a thorough practical gardener, who spoke of plants and gardens
from the experience of long-continued hard work amongst them. And
contemporary with him was Milton, whose numerous descriptions of flowers
are nearly all of cultivated plants, as he must have often seen them in
English gardens.

And so we are brought to the conclusion that in the passages quoted
above in which Shakespeare speaks so lovingly and tenderly of his
favourite flowers, these expressions are not to be put down to the fancy
of the poet, but that he was faithfully describing wh