The poor man’s child invited was to dine,
    With flesh of oxen, sheep, and fatted swine,
    (Far better cheer than he at home could find,)
    And yet this child to stay had little minde. 
    “You have,” quoth he, “no apple, froise, nor pie,
    Stewed pears, with bread and milk, and walnuts by.”

The enthusiasm of these transplanters inspired their labours.  They have watched the tender infant of their planting, till the leaf and the flowers and the fruit expanded under their hand; often indeed they have ameliorated the quality, increased the size, and even created a new species.  The apricot, drawn from America, was first known in Europe in the sixteenth century:  an old French writer has remarked, that it was originally not larger than a damson; our gardeners, he says, have improved it to the perfection of its present size and richness.  One of these enthusiasts is noticed by Evelyn, who for forty years had in vain tried by a graft to bequeath his name to a new fruit; but persisting on wrong principles this votary of Pomona has died without a name.  We sympathise with Sir William Temple when he exultingly acquaints us with the size of his orange-trees, and with the flavour of his peaches and grapes, confessed by Frenchmen to have equalled those of Fontainebleau and Gascony, while the Italians agreed that his white figs were as good as any of that sort in Italy; and of his “having had the honour” to naturalise in this country four kinds of grapes, with his liberal distributions of cuttings from them, because “he ever thought all things of this kind the commoner they are the better.”

The greater number of our exotic flowers and fruits were carefully transported into this country by many of our travelled nobility and gentry;[67] some names have been casually preserved.  The learned Linacre first brought, on his return from Italy, the damask rose; and Thomas Lord Cornwall, in the reign of Henry VIII., enriched our fruit gardens with three different plums.  In the reign of Elizabeth, Edward Grindal, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, returning from exile, transported here the medicinal plant of the tamarisk:  the first oranges appear to have been brought into England by one of the Carew family; for a century after, they still flourished at the family seat at Beddington, in Surrey.  The cherry orchards of Kent were first planted about Sittingbourne, by a gardener of Henry VIII.; and the currant-bush was transplanted when our commerce with the island of Zante was first opened in the same reign.  The elder Tradescant, in 1620, entered himself on board of a privateer, armed against Morocco, solely with a view of finding an opportunity of stealing apricots into Britain:  and it appears that he succeeded in his design.  To Sir Walter Raleigh we have not been indebted solely for the luxury of the tobacco-plant, but for that infinitely useful root, which forms a part of our daily meal, and often the entire meal