a farmer than as a kind-hearted
poet; too soft of the edge to cut very deeply into hard-pan, and too
porous and flimsy of character for any compacted resolve: yet taking
life tenderly, withal; good to those poorer than himself; making a
rattling appeal for Christmas charities; hospitable, cheerful, and
looking always to the end with an honest clearness of vision:--

"To death we must stoop, be we high, be we low,
But how, and how suddenly, few be that know,
What carry we, then, but a sheet to the grave,
(To cover this carcass,) of all that we have?"

* * * * *

I now come to Sir Hugh Platt, called by Mr. Weston, in his catalogue of
English authors, "the most ingenious husbandman of his age."[7] He is
elsewhere described as a gentleman of Lincoln's Inn, who had two
estates in the country, besides a garden in St. Martin's Lane. He was an
enthusiast in agricultural, as well as horticultural inquiries,
corresponding largely with leading farmers, and conducting careful
experiments within his own grounds. In speaking of that "rare and
peerless plant, the grape," he insists upon the wholesomeness of the
wines he made from his Bednall-Greene garden: "And if," he says, "any
exception shold be taken against the race and delicacie of them, I am
content to submit them to the censure of the best mouthes, that professe
any true skill in the judgment of high country wines: although for their
better credit herein, I could bring in the French Ambassador, who (now
almost two yeeres since, comming to my house of purpose to tast these
wines) gaue this sentence upon them: that he neuer drank any better new
wine in France."

[Footnote 7: Latter part of sixteenth century; and was living, according
to Johnson, as late as 1606.]

I must confess to more doubt of the goodness of the wine than of the
speech of the ambassador; French ambassadors are always so complaisant!

Again he indulges us in the story of a pretty conceit whereby that
"delicate Knight," Sir Francis Carew, proposed to astonish the Queen by
a sight of a cherry-tree in full bearing, a month after the fruit had
gone by in England. "This secret he performed, by straining a Tent or
couer of canuass ouer the whole tree, and wetting the same now and then
with a scoope or horne, as the heat of the weather required: and so, by
witholding the sunne beams from reflecting upon the berries, they grew
both great, and were very long before