Part 27 (1/2)
”He found such strange enchantment there, In that garden sweet and rare, Where night and day The nightingales still sing their roundelay, And plas.h.i.+ng fountains 'neath the verdure play, That for his life he could not thence away; And even yet, though he hath long been dead, 'Tis said his spirit haunts the pleasant shade.”
-_The Ring of Charlemagne_.
A great showman, as I have heard, once declared that in establis.h.i.+ng a menagerie, one should have the indispensable lion, an _obligato_ elephant, a requisite tiger, an essential camel, and imperative monkeys.
One of the ”indispensable lions” of Florence is the Boboli Gardens, joining the Pitti Palace, which, from their careful preservation in their original condition, give an admirable idea of what gardens were like in an age when far more was thought of them than now as places of habitual resort and enjoyment, and when they entered into all literature and life.
Abraham a Santa Clara once wrote a discourse against gardens, as making life too happy or simple, basing his idea on the fact that sin originated in the Garden of Eden.
The Boboli Gardens were planned by Il Tribolo for Cosimo di Medici. The ground which they occupy is greatly varied, rising high in some places, from which very beautiful views of Florence, with its ”walls and churches, palaces and towers,” may be seen. Of their many attractions the guide-book remarks poetically in very nearly the following words:-
”Its long-embowered walks, like lengthened arbours, Are well adapted to the summer's sun; While statues, terraces, and vases add Still more unto its splendour. All around We see attractive statues, and of these A number really are restored antiques, And many by good artists; best of all Are four by mighty Michel Angelo, Made for the second Julius, and meant To decorate his tomb. You see them at The angles of the grotto opposite The entrance to the gardens. Of this grot The famous Redi sang in verse grotesque:
”Ye satyrs, in a trice Leave your low jests and verses rough and hobbly, And bring me a good fragment of the ice Kept in the grotto of the Garden Boboli.
With nicks and picks Of hammers and sticks, Disintegrate it And separate it, Break it and split it, Splinter and slit it!
Till at the end 'tis fairly ground and rolled Into the finest powder, freezing cold.”
There are also, among the things worth seeing, the Venus by Giovanni of Boulogne (called di Bologna); the Apollo and Ceres by Baccio Bandinelli; the group of Paris carrying off Helen by V. de' Rossi, and the old Roman fountain-bath and obelisk. The trees and flowers, shrubbery and _boschetti_, are charming; and if the reader often visits them, long sitting in the sylvan shade on sunny days, he will not fail to feel that strange enchantment which seems to haunt certain places, and people them with dreams, if not with elves.
The fascination of these dark arbours old, and of the antique gardens, has been recognised by many authors, and there are, I suppose, few visitors to Florence who have not felt it and recalled it years after in distant lands as one recalls a dream. Therefore, I read with interest or sympathy the following, which, though amounting to nothing as a legend, is still valuable as setting forth the fascination of the place, and how it dates even from him who gave the Boboli Gardens their name:
IL GIARDINO BOBOLI.
”The Boboli Garden is the most beautiful in Europe.
”Boboli was the name of the farmer who cultivated the land before it was bought by Cosimo de' Medici and his wife Eleanora.
”After he had sold the property he remained buried in grief, because he had an attachment for it such as some form for a dog or a cat. And so great was his love for it that it never left his mind, nor could he ever say amen to it; for on whatever subject he might discourse, it always came in like one who will not be kept out, and his refrain was, 'Well, you'll see that my place will become _il nido degli amori_ (the nest of loves), and I myself after my death will never be absent from it.' His friends tried to dissuade him from thinking so much of it, saying that he would end by being lunatic, but he persevered in it till he died.
”And it really came to pa.s.s as he said; for soon after his death, and ever since, many have on moonlight nights seen his spirit occupied in working in the gardens.”
The story is a pretty one, and it is strangely paralleled by one narrated in my own Memoirs of the old Penington mansion in Philadelphia, the gardens of which were haunted by a gentle ghost, a lady who had lived there in her life, and who was, after her death, often seen watering the flowers in them by moonlight. And thus do-
”printless footsteps fall By the spots they loved before.”
The second legend which I recovered, relating to the Boboli Gardens, is as follows:
LE DUE STATUE E LA NINFA.
”There are in the Boboli Gardens two statues of two imprisoned kings, and it is said that every night a beautiful fairy of the grotto clad in white rises from the water, emerging perfectly dry, and converses with the captive kings for one hour, going alternately from one to the other, as if bearing mutual messages, and then returns to the grotto, gliding over the ground without touching the gra.s.s with her feet, and after this vanishes in the water.”
”This tale is, as I conceive,” writes the observant Flaxius, ”an allegory, or, as Petrus Berchorius would have called it, a _moralisation_, the marrow whereof is as follows: The two captive kings are Labour and Capital, who have, indeed, been long enchained, evil tongues telling each that the other was his deadly foe, while the fairy is Wise Reform, who pa.s.ses her time in consoling and reconciling them.
And it shall come to pa.s.s that when the go-betweens or brokering mischief-makers are silenced, then the kings will be free and allied.”
”Then indeed, as you may see, All the world will happy be!”
_Vivat Sequenz_! Now for the next story.