[22] Monsieur Thomas, in his eulogy of Descartes says, it should have been pronounced at the foot of Newton's statue: or rather, Newton himself should have been his panegyrist. Of this eulogy, Voltaire, in a most handsome letter to Mons. Thomas, thus speaks:--"votre ouvrage m'enchante d'un bout a l'autre, et Je vais le relire dès que J'aurai dicté ma lettre." The sleep and expanding of flowers are most interestingly reviewed by Mr. Loudon in p. 187 of his Encyclop., and by M. V. H. de Thury, in the above discourse, a few pages preceding his seducing description of the magnificent garden of M. de Boursault. So late ago as the year 1804 it was proposed at Avignon, to erect an obelisk in memory of Petrarch, at Vaucluse: "il a été décidé, qu'on l'élevera, vis-avis _l'ancien jardin_ de Petrache, lieu oû le lit de sorgue forme un angle." [23] This garden (as Mr. Walpole observes) was planted by the poet, enriched by him with the fairy gift of eternal summer. [24] Mr. Pope thus mentions the vines round this cave:-- Depending vines the shelving cavern skreen, With purple clusters blushing through the green. [25] Nearly eight pages of Mr. Loudon's Encyclop. are devoted to a very interesting research on the gardens of the Romans. Sir Joseph Banks has a paper on the Forcing Houses of the Romans, with a list of Fruits cultivated by them, now in our gardens, in vol. 1 of the _Hort. Trans._ [26] Dr. Pulteney gives a list of several manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, the writers of which are unknown, and the dates not precisely determined, but supposed to have been written, if not prior to the invention of printing, at least before the introduction of that art into England. I select the two following.-- No. 2543. De Arboribus, Aromatis, et _Floribus_. No. 2562. Glossarium Latino-anglicum Arborum, _Fructuum_, Frugam, &c. And he states the following from Bib. S. Petri Cant:-- No. 1695. Notabilia de Vegetabilibus, et Plantis. Dr. Pulteney observes, that the above list might have been considerably extended, but that it would have unnecessarily swelled the article he was then writing. The Nouv. Dict. Hist. mentions a personage whose attachment to his garden, and one of whose motives for cultivating that garden, does not deserve a notice:--"Attale III. Roi de Pergame, fils de Stratonice, soùlla la thrône en répandant le sang de ses amis et de sea parens. Il abandonna ensuite le soìn de ses affaires _pour s'occuper entirement de son jardin_. Il y cultivoit des poisons, tels que l'aconit et la ciguë, qu'il envoyoit quelque fois en présent a ses amis. Il mourut 133 ans avant Jesus Christ."