[008] _Crisped knots_ are figures curled or twisted, or having waving
lines intersecting each other. They are sometimes planted in box.
Children, even in these days, indulge their fancy in sowing mustard and
cress, &c. in 'curious knots,' or in favorite names and sentences. I
have done it myself, "I know not how oft,"--and alas, how long ago! But
I still remember with what anxiety I watered and watched the ground, and
with what rapture I at last saw the surface gradually rising and
breaking on the light green heads of the delicate little new-born
plants, all exactly in their proper lines or stations, like a
well-drilled Lilliputian battalion.
Shakespeare makes mention of garden _knots_ in his _Richard the Second_,
where he compares an ill governed state to a neglected garden.
Why should we, in the compass of a pale,
Keep law, and form, and due proportion,
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate?
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land,
Is full of weeds; her finest flowers choked up,
Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined,
Her _knots_ disordered, and her wholesome herbs
Swarming with caterpillars.
There is an allusion to garden _knots_ in _Holinshed's Chronicle_. In
1512 the Earl of Northumberland "had but one gardener who attended
hourly in the garden for setting of erbis and _chipping of knottis_ and
sweeping the said garden clean.
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