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should take, if it is likely, as at present it seems to promise, to have an abiding place on our library shelves.

Of course the garden book must not be merely utilitarian, for of this kind we have works that cannot be superseded, such as Mr. William Robinson's invaluable "English Flower Garden" and "Hardy Flowers." These, and others like them, are written by experts, and the mere dilettante cannot hope to rival them in instructive quality. Nor should these books, while claiming to be garden books, deal almost solely with matters apart from gardens. On the contrary, they must treat first of flowers, both from a practical and from an æsthetic point of view, and, that provision secured, the writer may then wander afield to things less vital, such as his taste or studies may suggest. Some rule or other must be laid down, and more or less adhered to, if this kind of literature is not to fall into contempt; and I think that, broadly speaking, such a line as the following may be suggested.

The ideal garden book should contain the experience of the writer as a specialist in his own subject of gardening, in combination with the thoughts or the words or the views of persons who are specialists in other matters, such as poetry, or ethics, or metaphysics. We do not want a gardening dictionary from the amateur, because we can get it in more trustworthy shape from the expert; we do not want mere gentle thoughts on nature, or other deep subjects, whether of earth or heaven, because we know where to turn for our reading on these subjects, as delivered by persons who have given their lives to the study of them. If we want this sort of book at all, we want, as I have said, the simple empirical experience of the amateur gardener combined with the best he (or more usually she) can give us of the ideas of the great whom

already we love and can trust. Unluckily, some of these books tend in exactly the contrary direction; their facts are disputable, and their voices are mere echoes.

The garden book may be poetical, but it must not be written by a poet, or, at any rate, it must not be written by an articulate poet. The poetic feeling is almost essential, but it must express itself in words of others than the compiler. Of course, the imagination can picture an ideal garden book, written by a poet who might happen to be possessed of sufficient knowledge of horticulture to make his book valuable in the double way. It tends to sadness to reflect on the loss we have had in that such work was never given us, for instance, by Tennyson, and we might even gladly have dispensed with some utilitarian value out of gratitude for other features of charm which undoubtedly we should have secured. But, failing such a book by a great and original poet, we are forced to fall back upon a more modest desire for the second best; and the second best I conceive to be a book by a competent gardener who is, above all, no versemaker, though a true critic of verse, and who can, therefore, give us choice thoughts and passages from our splendid heritage of literature to lend charm to his volume of practical instruction. I might name half a dozen writers who could admirably perform the task, but hitherto they have not spoken in this way.

Let us examine some of these books which have made the vogue in garden literature, and judge how far they are able to satisfy the demand for such reading at its highest standard. I will choose from among a considerable number, three volumes of unequivocal success, which consequently seem to stand out from their companions on the bookshelf, and of themselves to accentuate the need in man's soul at the present

time for this range of work. As there is no denying their enormous success, we may regard them as satisfactory to the general public, which has bought them in their thousands. A short analysis of each will enable us to judge of their scope and object; and when we have examined these features as closely as is possible, we may then be able to decide whether this sort of book is as valuable from the point of view of entertainment or instruction as it might be, or whether the type is capable of improvement.

If the requisites for a garden book are indeed those I have indicated, we must not expect the ideal book from Mr. Alfred Austin, for has he not his bench with the poets? His disabilities, if thus they may be regarded, come, of course, paradoxically enough from his greater gifts. The ideal garden chronicler should be only appreciative of poetry, whereas Mr. Alfred Austin, as we who read our Times (even if not in the habit of perusing volumes of verse) know well, is indeed articulate. He gives us poems to fit our many Imperial moods, and we have the full enjoyment at first hand of the inspiring afflatus, because we are assured that we receive them just as they come to him. The mere man evidently does not venture to correct, to add to, or to take from the God-given beauties sent to the poet's pen.

In "The Garden that I Love" we get a considerable amount of Mr. Austin's verse. We do not know exactly how much, for both he and Shakespeare are alike without inverted commas. This is a great pity. The original verse might have stood unsupported, but surely Shakespeare and other similar writers should have been propped by quotation marks. How else can we distinguish between them and him? The situation even disarms criticism. for how could the mere reviewer venture to take exception to a passage for

which Milton might turn out to be responsible? Even the boldest is bound to hold his breath for a time and to make good his character as critic over the prose; and herein is another difficulty. The heaven-sent gift of words has sometimes tiresome limitations. The poet may be inspired in his verse, and not altogether inspired in his prose, which is one of those mysteries that hurt the understanding. How else can be explained such a sentence as this: "I am greatly interested in seeing the result of a new border I have made in the extreme north angle of the garden, and which Veronica has christened Poet's Corner"? This and some similar modes of expression make us fear that the less is not always included in the greater, that the afflatus sent for poetry does not necessarily contain the essentials of prose. Well, it is but a small matter; still, we are justified, I think, in asking as much of perfection as we believe ourselves likely to get.

Four persons inhabit "The Garden that I Love:" the writer, who is also the gardener, his sister Veronica, and his friends, the Poet and Lamia. At least we are artfully persuaded that there are four persons; in reality there are only two, Veronica and the gardenerpoet rolled with Lamia into one. When these speak seriously-and there is a good deal of serious speaking in the book-you would not know, if you shut your eyes, which of them is addressing you. Lamia, to be sure, has her frivolous moments, when, for a brief space, she makes a possible third; but when she is rhetorical she is one with the gardener and the poet. Veronica, on the other hand, has a separate identity; she is a simple being, and if she has views she keeps them carefully to herself. There is something very lovable about Veronica. She listens patiently for hours to all that the others have to say, and then she goes away and makes tea for them. She

knows how exhausted they must be. They give away so many treasures of thought that they must necessarily be left swept and empty; the need of sustenance is plainly indicated, and Veronica supplies it.

Perhaps, however, the exhaustion is less than it might have been if circumstances had not come to their aid; and herein we see the wisdom of the PoohBah arrangement. The chronicler can give us treasures of verse from the mouth of the poet, pages of floricultural details through the lips of the gardener, and gems of general utility from the irresponsible Lamia. The talents of the three, if displayed in one person, would invite incredulity. We should think it impossible that one small head could carry all the aphorisms and gnomic sayings which the three are anxious to distribute. We should begin to fear cerebral congestion. So, to spare ourselves distress and anxiety, we allow the writer to persuade us that there are, indeed, three heads under the three hats, and thus we breathe again.

The poet sometimes gives vent to an untenable theory, but the gardener and Lamia of course cannot be expected to set him right, and dear little Veronica adores him far too much to do so. He is bold enough to justify in the name of restraint the bald and simple verse which is held by some of our later poets to be one with the true stuff. It is difficult to go with him here. Restraint is, no doubt, an admirable quality, but we cease to admire it when it is compulsory. We cannot esteem the restraint of a gagged man, who refrains from using bad language. Restraint and nothing more, of which we see so much, is a poor thing as a quality of verse, and it is even difficult to see how l'âme agitée of a great poet, in its moments of finest frenzy, could be "controlled by the serenity of the mind." Rigorous self-criticism is an

essential, but it would follow, not accompany, the frenzy. A poet must feel much in order to make his readers feel a little; he must weep many tears to ensure that they shall weep a few. When a poet places us in a situation where tears are obviously indicated, I fancy we are warranted in blaming him if they do not come. If we accuse him, not of restraint, but, like the gagged man, of want of power, I think we could justify our opinion. I do not for a moment mean to disparage the poet's admiration of restraint as a necessary and beautiful quality in verse, but merely to contend that most of the restraint that calls itself by that name is of the sort that cannot help itself, and this must be regarded as a defect, and not as a beauty.

But if the poet sometimes rouses in us the spirit of contradiction, the gardener takes his revenge by mystifying us just as we think we are getting on nicely. It is a wonderful garden that he owns, and its orientation is exceedingly difficult to understand. In one place we are told that it slopes from northeast to southwest, and in another that it looks southeast. But even this readjustment of Nature's aspects will not quite account for all the wonders that are in that garden. On the 30th of May the gardener's wood is covered with primroses, and this is not mentioned as an out-of-the-way state of things, but is given as a mere matter of fact. We who have not his gift of extending the seasons to keep our gardens in beauty, have indeed seen primroses on the 30th of May, but we have never had the luck of beholding a wood in the south of England "diapered with them" on that date. We can only hear and sigh for our more limited seasons. On the same day the gardener describes his tulips as having closed their petals for the night. Though it is a little late for Dutch tulips, we might be persuaded to recognize the

same latitude for them as for the primroses, but that the gardener has informed us in a previous chapter that he takes up these bulbs during the third week of May and lays them in by the heels. Of course we then jump to the conclusion that these flowers which have just closed their petals for the night are the English late tulips, until we remember that he has told us that he has never made proper use of these. Here, again, we are mystified. Has he made any use of them, and are they the flowers which have just closed their petals for the night, or are the Dutch tulips as kind to him, as I have supposed, in giving him, as the primroses do, an extended season of their beauty? These mysteries in a book which should help us in our gardening ought not so to be. They are too cruel to the merely average floriculturist. They make us feel how small are our powers in comparison with those of the gardener in this book. We cannot find large expanses of bluebells on our property towards the latter end of June; our woods are not diapered as a matter of course with primroses on the 30th of May; we cannot grow woodruff from cuttings. We cannot get half the good results that this gardener gets from his garden, and the consciousness, not only of our inferior powers, but also of Nature's unkindness in giving less lavishly to us than to others, induces feelings of depression and impatience. The gardener-poet tells us that if he were asked which of his works he likes best he would answer "My Garden." We have never seen his garden, and it is obviously impossible for us, therefore, to re-echo his sentiment. But it would be pleasant to see it, and to wander in it, and to admire, even though at the risk of unworthy feelings of envy and the like. Loving care has been lavished without stint upon it, and Nature has met the workers more than half way, and has given them of her best.

The book has little to do with gardening, but is admirable as a description of a successful garden, such as it rarely falls to the ordinary lot to hear of. There are absolutely no failures in it. But the real raison d'être of this garden betrays itself on every page of Mr. Alfred Austin's volume. It is intended to be a beautiful background in a beautiful picture-a background for inspired and inspiring thoughts, which demand an outlet there before appearing on the printed page to delight a wider though hardly a more appreciative audience. A totally different book is Mrs. Earle's "Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden." It does not depend for its interest on the conversational qualities of its inhabitants; it is strictly utilitarian. It is, like Mr. Austin's, the record of a gardener who has attained. But it does not, as his does, dazzle us with gems of thought and learning; nor does it, like Elizabeth's volume, which will be considered later, blind us to its faults by artless irresponsibility. It sets out to give practical directions, and practical directions are freely given, but they are cookery, not garden recipes. We are entitled to expect that pot-pourri shall consist chiefly of flowers, and it is a distinct grievance that we get so little about them. The author is evidently as careful and successful a housekeeper as she is a gardener, and this is where her weakness comes in. When we want to hear about spring bulbs she is far away in the kitchen framing an indictment against the modern cook. The fury which possesses her on the subject of tinned saucepans would be better directed, the reader cannot help thinking, against wireworm or slugs. She tries conscientiously to do her duty by the reader who is buying a garden book, but her heart is in the store closet or the scullery when we want all her attention elsewhere. She will even take us to the kitchen-garden rather than to the parterre, and try to

persuade us that there is the haven where we would be, and in order to detain us there she tries to rouse us to indignation like her own by holding forth on the wickedness of the modern cook. But we are impatient prisoners of her glittering eye; we do not care in the least how the scullery-maid dresses her vegetables, if only the flavor is right when they are brought to the dinnertable. So with a few polite conventionalities we try to lead the way back to the flowers, only to find ourselves again most unexpectedly in the kitchen regions, and forced, whether we will or no, to discuss the neglect of vegetables in the ordinary English household a hundred years ago or more. And here we gather courage of a defiant sort to incite us to disagreement for a moment. Was the neglect of vegetables at that time indeed due to the Protestant influence of the Reformation? Was it not rather owing in the towns to the lack of transport facilities, and in the country districts to the miserably inadequate gardens to which landlords had reduced their cottage holdings? That there was never any neglect of vegetables by those who possessed sufficient garden ground for their cultivation our old herbals and horticultural manuals abundantly testify.

But to return to practical things. The reader is entitled to expect that, as regards the comparatively small number of plants which are mentioned in these garden books, he shall be told the secrets of their culture. But "Pot-pourri from a Surrey Garden" is disappointing in this respect. For instance, with regard to the propagation and culture of a flower which every one grows, and for the most part grows badly-the rose. It is not sufficient to tell us in March that Lamarck and various others are beautiful climbers for a house. We search through the pages devoted to June and July and find not a single rose mentioned, except the com

mon Ayrshire. The object of dividing the garden year into its natural monthly sections should be the instructing of the reader little by little as each season brings its work. For instance, in June and July we expect to be told of the beauties of roses, in July and August of their propagation by cuttings, in December of their protection and nourishment by means of their covering from the farmyard. It is not that we expect to be told how to do all this routine work, for such details should be sought for in technical books of instruction, but a hint as to when it should be done would make the garden book valuable. We might not dream of looking for these serviceable particulars from the pens of Elizabeth or Mr. Alfred Austin; they are too much absorbed in more interesting and personal matters to trouble themselves about such minor details as the instruction of their readers. But Mrs. Earle sets out to be useful, and we feel injured bcause we find her not quite so useful as we had hoped that she would be.

The meaning and purpose of a garden is in the growing of flowers and vegetables, so far as possible, all the year round. I think we may agree to ignore the vegetables; they, no more than tinned saucepans, are a proper constituent of pot-pourri. But there are four months in the year during which we cannot reasonably expect to grow flowers out of doors, so we are forced to build greenhouses to provide for our wants. Mrs. Earle has greenhouses, but she does not tell us how she makes use of them. She leaves us for sixteen weeks practically without a blossom; their place is taken by herbals and hashed mutton. An exception might be pleaded for January, the month which leads the way in her volume. She has promised on the first page that gardening shall be her preponderating subject, and in January we get a list of plants in bloom-in a London draw

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