The waters fall with difference discreet,
Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.

_The Faerie Queene, Book II. Canto XII._

Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides. The story
is told in many different ways. According to some accounts, the
Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of
the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their
wedding day. A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of
Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree. It was one of the twelve
labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples. He slew
the dragon and gathered three golden apples. The gardens, according to
some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas.

Shakespeare seems to have taken _Hesperides_ to be the name of the
garden instead of that of its fair keepers. Even the learned Milton in
his _Paradise Regained_, (Book II) talks of _the ladies of the
Hesperides_, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with
"Hesperian gardens." Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the passage in
"Paradise Regained," asks, "What are the Hesperides famous for, but the
gardens and orchards which _they had_ bearing golden fruit in the
western Isles of Africa." Perhaps after all there may be some good
authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden
itself. Malone, while condemning Shakespeare's use of the words as
inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way,
and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:--

Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold,
Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat,
That watched _the garden_ called the _Hesperides_.

_Robert Greene_.

For valour is not love a Hercules,
Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

_Love's Labour Lost_.

Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,
With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched
For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.

_Pericles, Prince of Tyre_.

Milton, after the fourth line of his Comus, had originally inserted, in
his manuscript draft of the poem, the following description of the
garden of the Hesperides.

THE GARDEN OF THE HESPERIDES

Amid the Hesperian gardens, on whose banks
Bedewed with nectar and celestial songs
Eternal roses grow, and hyacinth,
And fruits of golden rind, on whose fa