This discourse he
begins with the Sacred Garden, in which the first man was placed; and
deduces the practice of horticulture, from the earliest accounts of
antiquity to the time of the Persian Cyrus, the first man whom we
actually know to have planted a quincunx; which, however, our author
is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it in
the description of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems willing
to believe, and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by the
feeders on vegetables before the flood.
Some of the most pleasing performances have been produced by learning
and genius, exercised upon subjects of little importance. It seems to
have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to show how it could exalt
the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things
really and naturally great, is a task not only diflicult but
disagreeable; because the writer is degraded in his own eyes, by
standing in comparison with his subject, to which he can hope to add
nothing from his imagination: but it is a perpetual triumph of fancy
to expand a scanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from obscure
properties, and to produce to the world an object of wonder, to which
nature had contributed little.
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