a hot-bed; but cannot find in all my books a
catalogue of these plants which require that culture, nor
of such as must be set in pots; which defects, and all
others, I hope shortly to see supplied, as I hope shortly
to see your work of Horticulture finished and published;
and long to be in all things your disciple, as I am in all
things now,

"Sir, your most humble and most obedient Servant,
"A. COWLEY."

[Barn Elms, from whence this letter is dated, was the first
country residence of Cowley. It lies low on the banks of the
Thames, and here the poet was first seized with a fever, which
obliged him to remove; but he chose an equally improper
locality for a man of his temperament, in Chertsey, where he
died from the effects of a severe cold.]

Such were the ordinary letters which passed between two men
whom it would be difficult to parallel for their elegant
tastes and gentle dispositions. Evelyn's beautiful retreat at
Sayes Court, at Deptford, is described by a contemporary as
"a garden exquisite and most boscaresque, and, as it were,
an exemplar of his book of Forest-trees." It was the
entertainment and wonder of the greatest men of those times,
and inspired the following lines of Cowley, to Evelyn and
his lady, who excelled in the arts her husband loved; for she
designed the frontispiece to his version of Lucretius--

"In books and gardens thou hast placed aright
(Things well which thou dost understand,
And both dost make with thy laborious hand)
Thy noble innocent delight;
And in thy virtuous wife, where thou again dost meet
Both pleasures more refined and sweet;
The fairest garden in her looks,
And in her mind the wisest books."

[28] A term the French apply to those _botches_ which bad poets use
to make out their metre.

[29] This comedy was first presented very hurriedly for the amusement
of Prince Charles as he passed through Cambridge to York.
Cowley himself describes it, then, as "neither _made_ nor
_acted_, but _rough-drawn_ by him, and _repeated_ by his
scholars" for this temporary purpose. After the Restoration he
endeavoured to do more justice to