One reason why the Olive is not more grown as a garden tree is that it is a tree very little admired by most travellers. Yet this is entirely a matter of taste, and some of the greatest authorities are loud in its praises as a picturesque tree. One short extract from Ruskin's account of the tree will suffice, though the whole description is well worth reading. "The Olive," he says, "is one of the most characteristic and beautiful features of all southern scenery. . . . What the Elm and the Oak are to England, the Olive is to Italy. . . . It had been well for painters to have felt and seen the Olive tree, to have loved it for Christ's sake; . . . to have loved it even to the hoary dimness of its delicate foliage, subdued and faint of hue, as if the ashes of the Gethsemane agony had been cast upon it for ever; and to have traced line by line the gnarled writhing of its intricate branches, and the pointed fretwork of its light and narrow leaves, inlaid on the blue field of the sky, and the small, rosy-white stars of its spring blossoming, and the heads of sable fruit scattered by autumn along its topmost boughs--the right, in Israel, of the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow--and, more than all, the softness of the mantle, silver-grey, and tender, like the down on a bird's breast, with which far away it veils the undulation of the mountains."--_Stones of Venice_, vol. iii. p. 176.
[186:1] _See_ Spenser's account of the first introduction of the Olive in "Muiopotmos."
And, most dear actors, eat no Onions nor Garlic, for we are to utter sweet breath.
_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 2 (42).
Mine eyes smell Onions, I shall weep anon: Good Tom Drum, lend me a handkercher.
_All's Well that Ends Well_, act v, sc. 3 (321).
Indeed the tears live in Onion that should water this Sorrow.
_Antony and Cleopatra_, act i, sc. 2 (176).
Look, they weep, And I, an ass, am Onion-eyed.
And if the boy have not a woman's gift To rain a shower of commanded tears, An Onion will do well for such a shift, Which in a napkin being close conveyed Shall in despite enforce a watery eye.
_Taming of the Shrew_, Induction, sc. 1 (124).
There is no need to say much of the Onion in addition to what I have already said on the Garlick and Leek, except to note that Onions seem always to have been considered more refined food than Leek and Garlick. Homer makes Onions an important part of the elegant little repast which Hecamede set before Nestor and Machaon--