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The contrast of such beauty and such woe as this, struck Palamon to the heart:

The fayrnesse of a lady that I se Yond in the gardin roming to and fro Is cause of all my crying and my wo. Chaucer's Athenian garden, where the freshness of an English spring belies the far-off name, inspired the creation of another and scarcely less famous garden in literature, hardly a quarter of a century after great Chaucer was buried in the Chapel of St. Benedict in the Abbey. It is the garden of the Tower of London, made famous in The Kingis Quhair, written by King James I. of Scotland when in captivity. When he gazed down into the garden and there saw the beauteous Joan Beaufort, he must have recalled the story of Palamon and Emelie. His poem indeed proves this. But first let us see his garden, his May-time English garden:

Now was there made, fast by the Tower's wall,

A garden fair, and in the corners set An arbor green, with wandés long and small

Railed about; and so with trees set Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet

That life was none walking there forby,

That might within scarce any wight espy.

So thick the boughés met the leavés green,

Beshaded all the alleys that were there; And midst of every arbor might be

seen

The sharpé, greené, sweeté, juniper, Growing so fair, with branches here

and there;

That, as it seemed to a life without, The boughés spread the arbor all about.

And on the smallé greené twistis sat The little sweeté nightingale, and sang So loud and clear the hymnés consecrat

Of Love's use; now soft, now loud among

That all the garden and the wallés rung

Right of their song.

It was in this Garden of the Tower that King James espied Joan Beaufort walking with her two women:

Ah, sweet, are ye a worldly créature Or heavenly thing in likeness of natúre. Or are ye god Cupidé's own princess And comen are to loose me out of band?

Or are ye very Nature, the goddess That have depainted with your heavenly hand

This garden full of flowers as they stand?

This golden-haired maiden, decked (says the poet) with pearls and rubies, emeralds and sapphires, crowned with "a chaplet fresh of hue." and flower o' broom, showed "her fair fresh face, as white as any snow," as she walked under "the sweet green boughs," and won the heart of a captive King.

These English gardens of the fourteenth century were part of the poetry of a romantic age, when the damoiselles and damoiseaux of each little feudal Court wandered from Bower to Garden-close (thick set with hedges and roses, planned with walks and arbors) in that atmosphere of chivalry which did so much to soften the harshness and violence of medieval life. Garden culture was not the least part of the culture of the age. The Romans had brought their gardens, with so many other things and institutions that in changing forms have survived, to Britain, and it is pleasing enough to look back on the lost springs of half a thousand years ago, and on the lost gardens of their kings and queens. Each of us can cry. with Charles d'Orleans, "Jeunesse sur moi a puissance," when the spring time stirs our garden

as it stirred those gardens. We can, if we think truly and strongly enough, answer poor François Villon; we can call up once again the gardens and those that walked therein, and so answer the plaintive cry:

Dictes moy où, n'en quel pays, Est Flora, la belle Rom maine?

She is here, and with her are all her company.

Shakespeare knew this well enough, and we must wander, with easy scorn of speeding centuries, from the gardens of Chaucer and the King to his gardens, so sweet and full of spiritual help. They are his own gardens, not the brilliant gardens of earth and earthly love that the exquisite art of Pierre de Ronsard pictures in a thousand forms, that are sad with the sadness that haunted Ronsard and his school, the thought that love and beauty do not abide:

Et bref, Rose, tu es belle sur toute chose

and yet the Rose and the Gardens of Bourgueil must pass utterly away. It was not so with Shakespeare; he knew, at least as well as Keats, that

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever; Its loveliness increases.

The garden to Shakespeare is utilitarian in the most spiritual of senses; it is a symbol of spiritual growth. To see this we have but to turn to the wonderful Garden Scene in King Richard II. (Act III., Scene IV.). The Queen and her two ladies are in the garden seeking "to drive away the heavy thought of care"; but all sport fails them and suddenly the Queen cries:

But stay, here come the gardeners: Let's step into the shadow of these trees.

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Go thou, and like an executioner, Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays,

That look too lofty in our Commonwealth:

All must be even in our government. You thus employ'd I will go root away The noisome weeds, that without profit suck

The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

First Servant. Why should we, in

the compass of a pale,

Keep law, and form, and due proportion?

Showing, as in a model, our firm estate, When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,

Is full of weeds; her fairest flowers choked up, Her fruit trees

hedges ruin'd,

all unpruned, her

Her knots disordered, and her wholesome herbs

Swarming with caterpillars

Gardener. O, what pity is it, That he hath not so trimmed and dressed his land,

As we this garden! We at time of year Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees,

Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood,

With too much riches it confound itself:

Had he done so to great and growing

men,

They might have lived to bear, and he to taste

Their fruits of duty. All superfluous

boughs

We lop away, that bearing boughs may live:

Had he done so, himself had borne the crown,

Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

The Queen can bear no more and breaks in on this doctrine of the garden. When she has gone the gardener ends with a touch that is immortal:

Here did she shed a tear; here in this place,

I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace:

Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall

be seen

In the remembrance of a weeping queen.

Could not a treatise be written on Shakespeare's garden-herbs and flowers? Ophelia, the Rose of May, knew all about them, and of the Rue knew most:

There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance; pray, Love, remember: and there is Pansies, that's for thoughts. . . . There's Fennel for you, and Columbines:-There's Rue for you; and here's some for me: we may call it Herb of Grace o' Sundays:-You may wear your Rue with a differenceThere's a Daisy:-I would give you some Violets, but they withered all when my father died.

Well might Gertrude strew her grave with flowers

There's Rosemary and Rue.

From so sad a scene let us turn for a space to the utilitarian garden of Elizabethan times, not procured, we may believe, from Holland. It was as plentifully supplied as ours, saving, of course, the potato, even then on its way thither from even more romantic climes. Alexander Iden's Garden in Kent, where Jack Cade laid down his valorous life, was a walled garden in

the woods: "On a brick wall have I climbed into this garden, to see if I can eat grass, or pick a sallet another while which is not amiss to cool a man's stomach this hot weather." We see Iden walking in his garden:

Lord, who would live turmoilèd in the Court,

And may enjoy such quiet walks as these?

This small inheritance, my father left me,

Contenteth me and worth a monarchy. I seek not to wax great by other's waning;

Or gather wealth, I care not with what

envy.

Sufficeth that I have, maintains my state,

And sends the poor well pleased from my gate.

It is a pleasing picture and is clearly drawn from Nature, and we may fill it with fruits and flowers and herbs and more utilitarian produce from other passages in the plays. If we look beyond the garden and beyond the woods we may see the village with

The white sheet bleaching on the hedge;

and the fields

Rich leas

Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease,

and hedges filled with blackberries or dewberries, and in the autumn watch the farm men

Sow the headland with wheat! with red wheat.

In the kitchen garden we shall find "onions" and "turnips." Who does not remember the wench who "married in an afternoon as she went to the garden for parsley to stuff a rabbit"? In the same garden were "good worts, good cabbage," and there, too, men used to "sow lettuce, set hyssop, and weed up thyme." There, too, they

could gather a "bunch of radish," even forked radish; and here hung "peas and beans as dank as a dog." We fear that Rhubarb was used chiefly as a "purgative drug," but it was an age for drugs and the labors of the herbalist.

"Hot lavender, mints, savory, majoram," and sorrel we must add to the other herbs we have already smelt. Shakespeare draws lessons from the kitchen garden as well as from the set parterre. And the moral is put, with the ironic touch of which he was master, in the mouth of Iago: "Our bodies are gardens; to the which our wills are gardeners; so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce; set hyssop and weed up thyme; supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many; either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry; why the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills." What a model of will-power was Iago and what a moralist! We may doubt if any of Shakespeare's moralists has a finer lesson to teach than Iago with his garden moral.

It is pleasing to turn from the utilitarian garden (where, doubtless, the gooseberry of which Sir John Falstaff speaks grew) to the walled orchard where the Prince and Claudio walked, "in a thick-pleached alley." There were fruit trees in abundance, all wellpruned. There grew the medlar tree, there hung the poperin pear Mercutio knew of. It was Capulet's garden, an English garden, after all, whose

Orchard walls are high and hard to climb.

There Peas-blossom, Cobweb, Moth, and Mustard-seed fed Bottom

With apricocks, and dewberries, With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries.

at Titania's gentle wish. There grew the codling that was to become an apple, and there were gathered "the dish The Contemporary Review.

of applejohns"; and the strawberry, the plum, the cherry; and the fig that Constance speaks of. There, too, was the arbor where Sir John Falstaff would fain have eaten a pippin of his own grafting with a dish of caraways. The walled orchard was full enough of fruits to delight the heart of childhood and satisfies the desires of our first parents. And through the lovely orchard we wander into that blessed flower garden of Bohemia which Shakespeare found on English soil and set in summer's ripest hour:

The fairest flowers o' the season Are our carnations and streaked gillyflowers,

Which some call Nature's bastards. Perdita and Polyxenes-not Iagogives us the final garden parable:

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THE RACE TO THE SOUTH POLE.
LETTER FROM DR. NANSEN.

Dr. Fridtjof Nansen writes from Lysaker, under date April 20, as follows:

I understand that Captain Amundsen has been blamed in the English Press for not having announced at an earlier date his intention of going to the South Pole before starting on his long North Polar expedition; the opinion being, as far as I can gather, that his plan ought to have been discussed beforehand; indeed, it seems that some people are even inclined to regard his action as unfair. I cannot but think that such views are due to some misconstruction of Amundsen's real motives, and as he is prevented by absence from defending himself, I hope you will permit me to give a statement of the facts in your columns. First, however, I wish to say that I have had much to do with Amundsen, and on all occasions, whatever the circumstances might be, he always acted as a man, and my firm conviction is that an unfair act of any kind would be entirely alien to his nature.

His decision to go to the Antarctic came as a surprise to us all, and I well understand that it might give rise to misconception to people who do not know him. In a letter sent from Madeira, and dated "The Fram, August 22, 1910," he explained his new plan to me. He says:

It is not with a light heart I send you these lines, but there is no alternative, and I may therefore as well go straight to the point. When the news of Cook's and later on of Peary's journeys to the North Pole arrived last autumn, I understood at once that this spelt ruin to my undertaking [i.e., the North Polar expedition]. I concluded that, after this, I could no more expect to receive the economical support I still needed. That I was right in this was

proved by the refusal of the Storting [i.e. the Norwegian Parliament] of my application for an additional grant of 25,000 kroner [£1,380].

To give up my undertaking never entered into my head. The question then arose how to raise the necessary funds. Unless something very much out of the common were accomplished, it was not to be thought of. Something that could rouse the interest of the great public was absolutely necessary. Only one problem is left within the Polar regions, the solution of which might excite general interest, and that is to reach the South Pole. If able to achieve this I felt sure that the funds for the North Polar expedition planned by me would be secured.

It is hard to confess, but the fact is that ever since September, 1909, it has been my intention to take part in the solution of this problem. I have many a time been on the point of telling you everything, but I always shrank from it, fearing that you might induce me to alter my plan. I have often wished that Scott had known of my decision, so that it might not appear as if I wished to steal my way down yonder without his knowledge, in order to get the start of him; but I have not ventured to risk to make it public in any form, fearing that I might then be prevented. I will, however, do all I can to meet him in the South Polar regions and tell him my plan.

It was thus as far back as September last year that this resolution was taken, and I think I may say that we are well equipped. But at the same time I must tell you that if I had succeeded in obtaining the funds still necessary for my North Polar expedition-about 150,000 kroner [£8,250)-I would gladly have given up this additional trip; but the raising of this sum was quite out of the question.

From Madeira we shape our course towards the south. . . . I cannot decide where we shall go ashore, but it is my intention not to land near the

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