* * * * *

      Eftsoones they heard a most melodious sound,
      Of all that mote delight a daintie eare,
      Such as attonce might not on living ground,
      Save in this paradise, be heard elsewhere: 
      Right hard it was for wight which did it heare,
      To read what manner musicke that mote bee;
      For all that pleasing is to living eare
      Was there consorted in one harmonee;
    Birdes, voices, instruments, windes, waters all agree: 

      The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade,
      Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
      Th’ angelicall soft trembling voyces made
      To th’ instruments divine respondence meet;
      The silver-sounding instruments did meet
      With the base murmure of the waters fall;
      The waters fall with difference discreet,
      Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;
    The gentle warbling wind low answered to all.

The Faerie Queene, Book II.  Canto XII.

Every school-boy has heard of the gardens of the Hesperides.  The story is told in many different ways.  According to some accounts, the Hesperides, the daughters of Hesperus, were appointed to keep charge of the tree of golden apples which Jupiter presented to Juno on their wedding day.  A hundred-headed dragon that never slept, (the offspring of Typhon,) couched at the foot of the tree.  It was one of the twelve labors of Hercules to obtain possession of some of these apples.  He slew the dragon and gathered three golden apples.  The gardens, according to some authorities, were situated near Mount Atlas.

Shakespeare seems to have taken Hesperides to be the name of the garden instead of that of its fair keepers.  Even the learned Milton in his Paradise Regained, (Book II) talks of the ladies of the Hesperides, and appears to make the word Hesperides synonymous with “Hesperian gardens.”  Bishop Newton, in a foot-note to the passage in “Paradise Regained,” asks, “What are the Hesperides famous for, but the gardens and orchards which they had bearing golden fruit in the western Isles of Africa.”  Perhaps after all there may be some good authority in favor of extending the names of the nymphs to the garden itself.  Malone, while condemning Shakespeare’s use of the words as inaccurate, acknowledges that other poets have used it in the same way, and quotes as an instance, the following lines from Robert Greene:—­

    Shew thee the tree, leaved with refined gold,
    Whereon the fearful dragon held his seat,
    That watched the garden called the Hesperides.

Robert Greene.

    For valour is not love a Hercules,
    Still climbing trees in the Hesperides?

Love’s Labour Lost.

    Before thee stands this fair Hesperides,
    With golden fruit, but dangerous to be touched
    For death-like dragons here affright thee hard.