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Qfarttell HmoetaUg SItbrarg 
 
 3tliaia. Jfetn Inrk 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
i^b^ ^(jaksp^r^ flora. 
 
v'S 
 
 
THE 
 
 SHAKSPERE FLORA. 
 
 A GUIDE TO ALL THE PRINCIPAL PASSAGES IN WHICH 
 MENTION IS MADE OF 
 
 protractions; 
 
 IV/TH COMMENTS AND BOTANICAL PARTICULARS. 
 
 BY LEO H. GRINDON, 
 
 Author of ^^ Lancashire: Historical and Descriptive;^* ^^ Country 
 
 Rambles;^* ^* Manchester Banks af id Bankers ;" ''The 
 
 Little Things of Nature;"*^ and otJier works. 
 
 Then to the well-trod stage anon, 
 If JoDson's learned sack be on. 
 Or sweetest Shakspere, fancy's child. 
 Warble his native wood-notes wild. 
 
 L" Allegro. 
 
 MANCHESTER : 
 
 PALMER & HOWE, 73, 75, and 77, PRINCESS-ST. 
 
 LONDON: SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, & CO. 
 
 1883. 
 

 /\^46. /f Y 
 
 MANCHESTER : 
 PALMER AND HOWE, PRINTERS, 73, 75, AND 77, PRINCESS-STREET. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 O results of an acquaintance with 
 Shakspere are more useful, pleasing, 
 and varied, than such as arise upon 
 familiarity with his references to 
 trees and plants. These references are key-notes 
 to far more than appears upon the surface: — in 
 the following pages it is attempted to show to 
 what they lead; to bring out the poetry of every 
 allusion, where poetry is involved ; and to show the 
 purpose and significance of the terms employed. 
 Every tree, plant, flower, and vegetable production 
 
vi. Preface. 
 
 named in the plays and poems, is dealt with; 
 every important passage in which the name 
 occurs, is quoted; — the characters speaking are 
 also dealt with, when the beauty of the reference 
 makes this desirable. 
 
 That the practised Shaksperean critic will in 
 this volume find anything new, I do not for a 
 moment presume to suppose. Happily there is 
 now a daily growing national interest in Shak- 
 spere, as shown particularly by the increase, 
 during the last few years, of Shakspere Societies, 
 arid the introduction of Shakspere as one of the 
 chief levers of education in all high-class schools. 
 This encourages me to hope that I am at all 
 events providing a guide to Shakspere's plants 
 which may be useful to beginners, and to these 
 I offer such help as they may find. For the sake 
 also of students, endeavour is made to explain 
 any curious and unusual words occurring in the 
 passages quoted. 
 
 So far as regards my predecessors in Shak- 
 sperean commentary, I ask only to be regarded 
 
Preface. vii. 
 
 as a technical botanist, following in their wake, 
 and possibly suggesting an illustration here and 
 there that may have been overlooked. 
 
 " Shakspere" is adopted because the shortest of 
 the various spellings of the name, and because 
 approved by the New Shakspere Society of 
 London, — if erring with whom, I am at least in 
 good company. Incomparably more important 
 than settling which of the several modes may be 
 the right one, is the striving with all our power 
 to win over as many as we can of the rising 
 generation to reverence for the poet himself. 
 
 On page 17, line 7 from bottom, "birch" has 
 been accidentally printed instead of "larch." 
 
 LEO H. GRINDON. 
 
 Maiuhester, May, 1883. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. Page. 
 
 Introductory i 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 In the Woods: The Oak 15 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Ix THE Woods (continued): The Willow, The 
 
 Yew, The Aspen 31 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 Is THE Woods (continued): The Linden, The 
 
 Hawthorn, and other Trees 51 
 
X. Contents. 
 
 CHAPTER V. Page. 
 
 The Wild-flowers: The Violet 71 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Wild-flowers (continued): The Pansy, 
 
 The Primrose, The Cowslip, The Oxlip... 91 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 The AVild- flowers (continued): The Daisy, 
 The Daffodil, 'The Harebell, and 
 OTHERS 119 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 The Wild-flowers (continued): Wild-thvme, 
 The Dog-rose, The Eglantine, and 
 others 137 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 The Garden -flowers 149 
 
Contents. xi. 
 
 CHAPTER X. Page. 
 
 Cultivated Fruits, Esculent Vegetables, and 
 
 Medicinal Herbs 175 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 The Farm 209 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 The Wilderness and the Wayside 229 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Market-place and the Shops 269 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 Book and Hearsay Names 295 
 
xii. Contents. 
 
 FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Page. 
 
 Old Warwick Frontispiece. 
 
 The Shrine 32 
 
 In the Woods 58 
 
 The Cedars 
 
 152 
 
 By the Grave 262 
 
 We are indebted to Mr. Thos. Letherbrow for the Drawing 
 and Etching of the above Illustrations. 
 
%\ft ^Kjakspa^ JFIUrra* 
 
 ©Irajrtcr JFirst. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in our ears. — Merclmnt of Venice, v., i. 
 
 HAKSPERE, pre-eminently the poet of the 
 heart — no man having unveiled as he has 
 done, the many-hued mystery of human 
 emotion — is no less the poet, supremely, 
 of Nature. He sees everything, both 
 great and small, which environs us, and this not only 
 with the eye of the artist, intent upon loveliness of 
 form and colour, but with the profounder comprehensive- 
 ness which gives ability to interpret, asking what may 
 these things signify, what may be their story for the 
 B 
 
The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 imagination. He is not slow either to observe the 
 phenomena of which science takes special cognizance. 
 Were he indifferent to them, he would not in truth be 
 Shakspere, nor even Poet. The number of simple facts 
 belonging to the "scientific" class referred to by Shak- 
 spere is in itself something wonderful. His allusions go 
 far also towards illustrating the ancient and uncontested 
 doctrine that every great discovery in science is the 
 fulfilment of a prophecy put forth by some noble poet of 
 an earlier age. 
 
 Shakspere was not a botanist; not a man skilled, that 
 is to sa3', in the technical knowledge of plants. That he 
 should be one was by no means needful to his pre- 
 eminence as poet. Had his attention been fastened 
 upon plants and flowers; had he qualified himself to 
 write a book about them, probably we should in other 
 respects have lost, and so far we may be thankful that he 
 looked upon them simply as most other men do, i.e., as 
 charming factors in the general loveliness of nature, 
 which it is for individuals of special taste to study and 
 classify. What Shakspere has done for us botanically, 
 and in this respect so excellently, is found in sweeter, 
 and more loving, and more copious mention of plants 
 and flowers than occurs in any other single writer, not 
 professedly technical, the world has seen. For this we 
 may be thankful indeed. It is quite enough to be glad 
 of; and in the consideration of his forms and methods a 
 little time is not ill spent, even by those who care 
 nothing at all for botany as a science. 
 
Other Poets. 
 
 Comparing Shalcspere with other poetic literature, in 
 respect of profusion of reference to trees and plants, he 
 is surpassed only by the Old Testament ^v^iters. After 
 him come two or three of the classical authors — Theo- 
 critus, in the Idylls, and Virgil, in the Eclogues and the 
 Georgics; in later times, those we may call relatively 
 our own, next in order stand Chaucer and Milton. 
 Poets who laid themselves out especially for botanical 
 themes — Erasmus Darwin for example — we do not 
 count; the charm of all such allusions as are now re- 
 ferred to consisting in their purely spontaneous character. 
 Shakspere's purpose, like Chaucer's, was to depict human 
 action and human character in its varied phases, not to 
 talk about wild-flowers. The mention of them, usually, 
 is exquisite; the introduction of their names is still only 
 incidental. Having them, we recognize their fitness of 
 place, and rejoice in their presence; yet were they absent 
 they would not be missed. In no case is it desirable or 
 even prudent to draw any exact comparison as to the 
 quality of the references, and least of all as regards 
 Milton's, though the tendency is no doubt always to 
 couple the names and to look for resemblances. Theo- 
 logical narratives seldom give seasonable opportunities 
 for allusions other than the purely figurative and fanciful. 
 In the entire mass of the two great Protestant epics, not 
 forgetting the picture of the garden of Eden, there is not 
 a passage to put abreast of Perdita's "O Proserpina !" 
 In that most chaste and finished of elegies, Lyddas, 
 there is scope enough, and in Cotnus room is not wanting. 
 
The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 and in these two poems Milton shows well. But we are 
 still thrown back upon the superiority of Shakspere in 
 respect of affectionate intimacy with the things around 
 him, as distinguished from the traditional and far -distant, 
 since a poet is always delightful in the degree that he 
 keeps alive our warmest and tenderest home-sympathies. 
 Milton, as a learned classical scholar, cites chiefly the 
 plants already famous in the literature of ancient Greece 
 and Rome. He talks of the amaranth, of Homer's moly, 
 of the acanthus, the asphodel, "cassia, nard, and balm." 
 Shakspere, on the other hand, e.xcels in regard to the 
 flowers of the wayside, the pretty objects it needs no 
 classical knowledge to understand. Milton fails also in 
 respect of accuracy. His practical knowledge of the 
 things around him was far below Shakspere's, so that — 
 although Shakspere himself in one place makes a slip, 
 and although at times his own epithets are matchless, as 
 when in Lycidas we have the woodbine "well-attired" 
 — unfortunately there are many distinct mistakes. The 
 violet is not a "glowing" flower; wild-thyme does not 
 mingle with the "gadding vine;" nor does the jessamine 
 "rear high its flourished head." The sublimity of 
 Paradise Lost, the music and the incomparable grace of 
 Lycidas and Comus, are qualities of course altogether 
 independent of die botany, and would remain were all 
 the botany detached. These are not the present con- 
 sideration, which is simply the inexpediency of comparing 
 where similarities are in the very nature of things few 
 and distant. 
 
The Poets' Usages. 
 
 The superiority in point of numbers in the Shaksperean 
 allusions may seem at the first glance to come of the 
 vastly greater extent of surface of his writings. But this 
 does not affect the question, since in at least five or six 
 of the dramas there are not more than a dozen plant- 
 allusions, and these very often meagre ones. Among 
 the plays specially deficient in regard to number of 
 references are Julius Ccesar, Much Ado About Nothing, 
 and the Two Geiitlemen of Verona. Very few occur either 
 in the Merchant of Venice, in Macbeth, in King John, King 
 Richard the Third, and Measure for Measure. They 
 arrive in plenty, on the other hand, in the Tempest, Lovers 
 Labour's Lost, Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, 
 Cymbcline, and still increasingly in the Winter's Tale 
 and the Midsummer Nighfs Dream. Not that all are of 
 corresponding poetic eloquence, or fraught with pleasing 
 associations. Often there is no more than the barest 
 mention, and the word seems to serve no purpose but 
 that of completing the measure. In all ages the poets 
 have been prone to introduce names of objects, and even 
 epithets, for the sake purely of metre or euphony. To 
 do so, when genius shines on every page, so far from 
 being a sign of weakness, is in harmony with the wise 
 deliberate repose never disdained or forgotten by 
 Strength. The solitary Shaksperean botanical slip is, 
 like all his other lapses, so palpable as to be detected on 
 the instant. It occurs in the scene in Cytiibeline, where 
 Imogen, lying upon her bed, asleep and half disrobed, is 
 contemplated by lachimo. He notes her closed eyelids, 
 
The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 White, and azure-laced 
 With blue of heaven's own tinct; 
 then, 
 
 On her left breast, 
 A mole cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 I' the bottom of a cowslip. 
 
 A certain amount of latitude is always permissible in 
 descriptions designed to be vivid and picturesque, but it 
 is going quite beyond the reality to say that the spots in 
 the cup of the cowslip are "crimson." The nearest 
 approach to that colour ever seen could only be described 
 as rosy orange. Considering the infinite number of 
 printers' and copyists' errors in the early editions of 
 Shakspere, the famous "first folio" of 1623 taking pre- 
 cedence of all in point of inaccuracy;* considering, too, 
 that in spite of all the criticism bestowed upon Shakspere 
 we have not yet got the poet's exact words in many an 
 obscure passage, nor even the general sense of the 
 phrase — this word "crimson" might at first sight be 
 thought one of the terms awaiting correction. But there 
 is no reason to doubt the authenticity, and we must be 
 content to take it as the exception to the author's other- 
 wise unbroken faithfulness to nature. This, in truth, is 
 the only circumstance which justifies or even calls for 
 
 * "Perhaps," says the Rev. Joseph Hunter, in the preface to his 
 New Illustrations of Sliakspere, "Perhaps in the whole annals of 
 English typography there is no record of any book of any extent, 
 and any reputation, having been dismissed from the press with less 
 care and attention than the first folio of 1623" (the first collective 
 edition). 
 
Criticism. 
 
 the present comment Never mind. We have no time 
 to spare for it. Set against this little slip, — 
 
 Daffodils 
 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 
 The winds of March with beauty, 
 or any one of a score of similar perfections, and it is, a 
 thousand times outweighted. Whoever else you may be 
 disposed to quarrel wth, never fall out with Shakspere; 
 not even over a verbal error, any more than, if you would 
 prosper, over a rule of life. Discover the misprints by 
 all means; amend everything that is clearly not Shak- 
 spere's own; but let the blemishes pass. In works of 
 noble art, before we attend to the flaws, it is no more 
 than common-sense to make sure that we first perceive 
 all the merits. Life is too short, opportunity too limited, 
 for learning even a small portion of the great and 
 glorious. Why, then, waste ever so little of either in 
 search for blots and weaknesses ? There is no real skill 
 or cleverness in discovering the faulty. Far away more 
 clever and creditable is it in any one to point out a 
 feature of loveliness previously concealed or overlooked. 
 Shakspere, above all men — the joy and solace of millions 
 in days gone by, and who will be the joy and solace of 
 millions yet unborn — is the last in the world who should 
 be subjected to pert and ungrateful testing for defects. 
 Look up, rather, when in his presence, as you do at 
 York Minster, and hope that, with much reverence, you 
 may some day be able to appreciate the full splendour. 
 Not that we are to regard Shakspere as a kind of demi- 
 god, and to think even his failings amiable. They go 
 
8 The Shakspere Jtlora. 
 
 •with other men's, and with our own, such as were he 
 living, he could expose as readily, and with still greater 
 reason. It is a matter of satisfaction, after all, that they 
 exist. For while we love, and admire, and honour, no 
 matter who, that may be good and worthy, it is always 
 pleasant to feel that our love and honour are given to 
 good old-fashioned flesh and blood, to a being of sub- 
 stance like our own, animated, sometimes perhaps 
 disfigured, by the same passions, subject to the same 
 deficiencies and failings. This is one of the grand 
 secrets of the universality of men's fondness for Shakspere. 
 While teaching us, as some author says, that love is the 
 best of all things, "he reconciles us to our own defects." 
 With Shakspere we are always at our ease. His forehead 
 touches the sky; his voice gathers tone from the 
 immortals, but he still walks upon the earth and is one 
 of ourselves. Deducting the one little exception referred 
 to, Shakspere, in regard to his botany, though making 
 no pretention to be scientific, may always be trusted — 
 herein, perhaps, standing alone, at all events as compared 
 with all earlier and all contemporary literature, and with 
 the great mass of the poets of later ages. That several 
 of his plant and flower names are vague, and have given 
 rise to much conjecture and speculation, and that one or 
 two are probably undeterminable, may unhesitatingly be 
 conceded. Sometimes this comes of default of contem- 
 porary illustration; sometimes, in all likelihood, of the 
 carelessness of copyists — for it is to be remembered that 
 there is no such thing in existence as an original fnanu- 
 
Shakspere always Trustworthy. 9 
 
 script of any portion of the Shaksperean writings, and 
 that before being printed they were exposed to every 
 species of corruption. But when we have the unques- 
 tionably original words, pure and unvitiated, we can 
 always read in faith, an assurance so much the more 
 agreeable because sometimes, at the first blush, there 
 may be disposition to demur. Take, for instance, the 
 pretty song in Lov^s Labour's Lost: — 
 
 When daisies pied, and violets blue. 
 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue. 
 And Lady-smocks, all silver white, 
 Do paint the meadows with delight." 
 
 Gather a Lady-smock as you tread the rising grass in 
 fragrant May, and, although in individuals the petals are 
 sometimes cream-colour, as a rule the flower viewed in 
 the hand is lilac — pale, but purely and indisputably 
 lilac. Where then is the silver whiteness? It is the 
 "meadows," remember, that are painted. When, as 
 often happens, the flower is so plentiful as to hide the 
 turf, and most particularly if the ground be aslope, and 
 the sun be shining from behind us, all is cha;nged ; the 
 flowers are lilac no longer; the meadow is literally silver- 
 white. So it is always — Shakspere's epithets are like 
 prisms; let them tremble in the sunshine, and we 
 discover that it is he who knows best 
 
 The actual number of different species of trees, plants, 
 
 * The above is the arrangement of the lines in the early editions ; 
 wToiigfully, it would seem, nevertheless, and therefore, in most 
 modern ones, corrected so as to give alteinate rhymes, as in all the 
 other verses of the song. 
 
lO The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 and flowers introduced or referred to by Shakspere, is by 
 no means large, considering how many more must have 
 been familiar to him. The reason we have already 
 adduced ; he never went out of his way for an illustration, 
 or sought to advertise his knowledge by importing any- 
 thing in the least degree uncalled for. He must have 
 looked a thousand times at the scarlet corn-poppies, at 
 the forget-me-nots, and the water-lilies on the stream. 
 But they were not wanted, and he left them to other 
 people. About a dozen wild or field flowers, an equal 
 number of garden flowers, a score of the plants usually 
 called "weeds," and three or four of our indigenous trees, 
 absorb nearly all the passages distinguished for their 
 poetic beauty; and not uncommonly, as in the scant 
 passages in ancient Greek dramatic verse where flowers 
 are mentioned, the names and pictures come in clusters. 
 The plays richest in botanical allusion are, as above- 
 mentioned, the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, the Winter's 
 Tale, The Tempest, Lovis Labour's Lost, Hamlet, Rovieo 
 and Juliet, and King Lear. These, it will be perceived, 
 cover nearly the whole period of Shakspere's productive- 
 ness, so that we cannot suppose him to have been 
 inclined to such allusions more particularly at any one 
 time, sooner or later, than another. Few or many, it is 
 not so much after all, what plants does he name, as after 
 what fashion does he name them ? Had he omitted the 
 cowslip and harebell, and given us instead the poppy 
 and the forget-me-not, it would have been just the same, 
 since to the master everything comes right. The way or 
 
Variety of Allusion. 1 1 
 
 nature of the mention is in itself very interesting, being 
 so various. Sometimes they are cited as objects of 
 simple beauty, serving to decorate the landscape, to 
 throw sweetness on field and woodland, as in "When 
 daisies pied" Sometimes they become capital descrip- 
 tive adjectives, as in "her lily hand." Still more 
 frequently they supply delightful comparisons, — 
 
 Kate, like the hazel twig. 
 Is straight and slender, and as brown in hue 
 As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, ii., I. 
 
 Often, again, they serve the purpose, incomparably, of 
 
 emblems; — 
 
 In such a night. 
 Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand. 
 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love 
 To come again to Carthage. — Merchant of Venue, v., I. 
 
 In some cases, yet further, they appear by elegant 
 
 implication, without actual mention of the name, as in 
 
 the "enchanted herbs" of the wily little Jewess in the 
 
 same play; and in the beautiful picture in the Tempest 
 
 of the "fairy rings" produced by the centrifugal spread 
 
 of certain fungi ; — 
 
 You demi-puppets, that 
 By moonshine do the greensome ringlets make. 
 Whereof the ewe not bites. — (v., i.) 
 
 To the classes indicated may be referred forty or fifty of 
 the total number of plants referred to, and these, from 
 the mode of handling, may be regarded as the eminently 
 poetical ones. Nearly a hundred others are alluded to 
 
12 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 in an ordinary, conventional, or prosaic way, sometimes 
 the fruit or other product being alone spoken of. Of 
 edible vegetables about thirty are mentioned; of fruits, 
 native and foreign, the same number; of spices and 
 medicines about twenty. Occasionally the references to 
 the plants of this second and much larger class are 
 fraught with some kind of curious lateral interest, either 
 historical, or identified, in deference to the popular folk- 
 lore of the time, with some quaint superstition; for the 
 wonderful tales told by Pliny, and diffused during the 
 dark ages, during which he was the great authority, were 
 still implicitly believed in, at all events by the crowd. 
 The seed of the shield-fern sprinkled over one's body, in 
 Shakspere, as in his predecessors, confers invisibility: — 
 
 We have the receipt for fern-seed, 
 We walk invisible. — ist Henry the Fourth, iL, i. 
 
 The bay-trees die when calamity is at hand : — 
 
 'Tis thought the king is dead. We -will not stay. 
 The bay-trees in our country all are withered. 
 
 King Richard the Second, ii., 4. 
 
 The mandrake, source of Rachel's famous dudha'im, 
 when torn out of the earth, shrieks so terribly — 
 
 That liviiig mortals hearing it, go mad. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, iv., 3. 
 
 We must be careful at all times not to assign or attach to 
 Shakspere anything which is not really his own, especially 
 when he simply echoes some popular story. These 
 quaint old fancies and superstitions rank with our own 
 current use of the myths and legends of antiquity. 
 
Shakspere^s Morals. 13 
 
 The singers talk of Apollo, the dancers of Terpsichore, 
 the tragedians of Melpomene. Ulysses' lotus-tree has 
 never ceased to ripen its golden berries for our own 
 personal suasion. Helen still awaits us with her cup of 
 nepenthe, and bestows it with grace as kindly as when 
 offered to weary Telemachus. The tales and superstitions 
 in question are no more a part of Shakspere's veritable 
 and personal botany, than the old Greek fables are a 
 part of our own individual and private religion, therefore 
 not to be mistaken for imperfect scientific knowledge, 
 much less for credulity or folly. The principle is an 
 important one. Not alone in connection with the plants 
 of the ancient fabulists, but at many other times, Shak- 
 spere must be understood as speaking less in propria 
 persona, than in conformity with the tastes and habits 
 of the age. To this circumstance is to be ascribed 
 whatever in his writings is impure. When he wrote to 
 please himself alone, it was always wisely and loveably; 
 that which now offends was written, if not distinctly to 
 please the public, at all events in full consistency with 
 the spirit and the manners of the age, which permitted 
 many things now distasteful; though it may still be asked 
 perhaps, if nineteenth century ideas of refinement and 
 modesty are not, in comparison with Elizabethan ones, . 
 in many cases shadowy and fictitious. 
 
 It is important to remember also that of many of the 
 hundred or more of the second class of plants spoken of, 
 Shakspere had no personal knowledge, citing them either 
 from books or from hearsay. Like every one else he 
 
14 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 talks of things he had never seen. Shakspere never saw 
 either a palm-tree or a cedar, and probably knew as 
 little of the myrtle and the olive. In contemplating his 
 botany all such plants as these have to be differentiated 
 from the trees and flowers he knew as companions and 
 loved so dearly, and should on no account be catalogued 
 with them. 
 
IN THE WOODS. 
 
 Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee ; 
 
 Corruption wins not more than honesty — 
 
 Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace 
 
 To silence envious tongues. Be just and fear not. 
 
 Let all the ends thou aims't at be thy country's, 
 
 Thy God's, and truth's. — King Hairy the Eighth, iii., 2. 
 
 IKE every true lover of nature, Shakspere 
 is always at home in the Woods : — of 
 these, as an artist, he never tires ; in the 
 woods, as a skilful dramatist, he lays some 
 of his most admired and poetic scenes. 
 Shakspere's acquaintance with sylvan scenery was certainly 
 much more intimate than with mountains, waterfalls, and 
 other grand elements of inanimate nature. There is no 
 reason to believe that he ever visited North Wales or the 
 Lake District ; and the seashore must of necessity have 
 
1 6 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 been unfamiliar, though he knew enough of it to give us 
 
 the immortal picture in King I^ar : — 
 
 The murmuring sui^e. 
 That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes, 
 Cannot be heard so high ; 
 
 that Other, in 2nd King Henry the Fourth, 
 
 Yea, this man's brow, like to a title-leaf 
 Betrays the nature of a tragic volume : 
 So looks the strand whereon the imperious flood 
 Hath left a witness'd usurpation ; 
 
 and that lovely one in the Tempest, where wth himself 
 we see the little children giving the wave their old- 
 accustomed summer challenge; — 
 
 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
 And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him. 
 When he comes back. 
 
 Spending his youth in the ancient and glorious forest- 
 shades of Warwickshire, and returning to them after his 
 London life, no wonder that trees hold a place so 
 distinguished in his imagery. It was under the boughs 
 of immemorial forest-monarchs that his imagination 
 found earliest nurture ; and no pleasure that we can 
 conceive of as concurrent with his declining years can 
 have exceeded the calm delight with which he trod the 
 shaded pathways wherein he had gathered his first 
 impressions of the beauty of nature, and tasted the deep 
 joy of meditation. Not only were grand old trees a 
 daily spectacle during his boyhood : he was much alone 
 with them, as with most other elements of wild nature, 
 
Shaksperis Forests. 17 
 
 and thus peculiarly open to their influence. It is for- 
 tunate for us that he was so circumstanced. Mr. Ruskin 
 somewhere remarks that the quietude of Shakspere's 
 early intercourse with nature contributed in no slight 
 measure to the perfection of mental power disclosed 
 so marvellously at a riper age, and which the word 
 " Shaksperean " is sufficient to denote. His walks were 
 in scented meadows, where he would hear no voices but 
 those of the birds, and by the smooth and lilied river, 
 from which he would change to the green recesses of the 
 forest No other scenes were at his command, save in 
 the village, and even here the prevailing condition would 
 be one of tranquillity. But we must not think of Shak- 
 spere's forests from the woodlands of to-day. Except in 
 Sherwood, and the older parts of William Rufiis' famous 
 plantation, we have little of the kind which in the 
 Elizabethan times still existed in plenty. Wheat now 
 grows upon many a broad acre which, when Shakspere 
 wrote, was covered with timber, and not simply timber 
 such as pleases a modem dealer, but magnificent and 
 aboriginal forest, the like of which in England can never 
 be seen again. Many of the trees now so common in 
 England that they seem indigenous, the birch for 
 example, and the Lombardy poplar, had not been 
 introduced; and even the sycamore and the Norway 
 spruce were known only in private pleasure-grounds. 
 Shakspere's forest consisted of trees such as had given 
 shelter to Caractacus, and the great mass of them would 
 be majestic. Those which now occupy the place of the 
 c 
 
1 8 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 -aged Titans of the olden time, are in comparison small 
 and juvenile. We may learn what the former were 
 from the huge slices preserved in the best of the 
 old Elizabethan mansions, Haddon Hall for instance. 
 Happily, too, a few survive to tell their own story, dotted 
 over the country, as the Cowthorpe oak, the Marton 
 oak. Sir Philip Sidne/s, and others of the well-named 
 "memorial trees" of our island. Trees such as these 
 must be tliought of when we would understand in what 
 kind of school Shakspere learned his forest-lessons. 
 They were not received from saplings of only a century 
 or t«'o of birthdays, but from patriarchs. 
 
 Of the many beautiful scenes laid by Shakspere in the 
 quiet of great woods and forests, the most charming are 
 those in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, and in As You 
 Like It, that delicious pastoral, in which it has been said 
 so truly, " he teaches us how to forget the painful lessons 
 of life, in the contemplation of faithfulness, generosity, 
 and affection." The chief part of the action in each of 
 these matchless pieces lies amid trees ; and it is worth 
 noting that it is in these two that Shakspere most wins 
 upon the heart that delights in peace. Nowhere are we 
 nourished more exquisitely by his humane and dulcet 
 wisdom than when listening to him among the trees 
 which bore "love songs on their barks" : — 
 
 Now, mj- co-mates and brothers in exile, 
 Hatli not old custom made this life more sweet 
 Than that of painted pomp ? Are not these woods 
 More free from peril than the envious court ? 
 Here feel we but the penalty of Adam, 
 
As You Like It. 19 
 
 The seasons' difference; as the icy fang, 
 
 And churlish chiding of the winter's wind, 
 
 Which, wlien it bites and blows upon upon my body. 
 
 Even till I shrink with cold, I smile, and say 
 
 This is no flattery; these are counsellors 
 
 That feelingly persuade me what I am. 
 
 Sweet are the uses of adversity. 
 
 Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous. 
 
 Wears yet a precious jewel in his head. 
 
 And this our life, exempt from public haunt. 
 
 Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks. 
 
 Sermons in stones, and good in everything. 
 
 Nowhere, either, are we touched more tenderly with 
 thought of what is gracious and chivahic than when 
 with Helena in "another part of the wood" — not now 
 Arden, but that lovely one "near Athens." 
 
 If you were civil, and knew courtesy. 
 You would not do me thus much injury. 
 Can you not hate me, as I know you do. 
 But you must join in souls to mock me too ? 
 If you were men, as men you are in show. 
 You would not use a gentle lady so. 
 
 A trim exploit, a manly enterprise, 
 
 To conjure tears up in a poor maid's eyes ! 
 
 Midsimimer Night's Dream, iii., 2. 
 
 Nature, says a great essayist, is "coloured by the spirit." 
 Hence, in the former play, to Orlando, who carries 
 sorrowful thoughts with him, all for a time is rude, waste, 
 and disheartening: — 
 
 Speak you so gently? Pardon me, I pray you, 
 I thought that all things had been savage here. 
 And therefore put I on the countenance 
 Of stern commandment. But whate'er you are, 
 
20 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 That in this desert inaccessible. 
 
 Under the shade of melancholy boughs. 
 
 Lose and neglect the creeping hours of time; 
 
 If ever you have look'd on better days, 
 
 If ever been where bells have knoU'd to church. 
 
 If ever sat at any good man's feast. 
 
 If ever from your eyelids wiped a tear. 
 
 And know what 'tis to pit)', and be pitied. 
 
 Let gentleness my strong enforcement be. 
 
 As You Like It, ii., 7. 
 
 The "colour" laid on by sadness, Emerson might have 
 gone on to tell us, is rarely other than one that presently 
 fades and disappears, seeing that the grand function of 
 nature is to refresh and revive the heart. Always ready 
 with an echo for joyfulness, she refuses to sustain the 
 mournful. "In the woods," according to his own 
 experience, "we return to reason and faith. There I 
 feel that nothing can befall me in life — no disease, no 
 calamity, which (leaving me my eyes) nature cannot 
 repair.'' Old Homer represents Achilles as regaining his 
 lost composure through plapng on his harp to the sound 
 of the sea. Shakspere keeps us to the forest; he knew 
 where best to lay his encouraging scene. He shows 
 withal his consummate art in interweaving with wild 
 nature the still more potent realities of human emotion. 
 Orlando soon discovers that the woods, after all, are not 
 melancholy, and henceforward we ourselves enjoy them 
 threefold. Where Rosalind breathes, how can any place 
 be sad — Rosalind, darling maid, one of the quintette of 
 Sliaksperean women to be compared to any one of whom 
 is compliment enough for any of her sex that ever lived — • 
 
Skaksperis Trees. 21 
 
 Rosalind, who, in her boy's clothes, makes believe that 
 she does not know who writes the verses, or for whom 
 they are intended. Women love nothing better than to 
 be able to feign ignorance of the emotions and actions 
 they hold most dear. Shakspere, in this charming 
 episode, shows once again that the poet rightfully so 
 named, is, as the ancients said, neither man alone, nor 
 woman alone, but homo. 
 
 Shakspere did not care to learn much about what a 
 botanist would call the "species" of trees. It is doubtful 
 if he knew familiarly more than half-a-dozen different 
 kinds, including even the smaller ones of the hedgerow. 
 He never once mentions the beech or the abele, and 
 even the ash and the elm hold no place in his landscape 
 pictures. But how quick and accurate his perception of 
 the phenomena of their life, and of the part they play in 
 the universal poesy ! This is the kind of knowledge to 
 be most envied, for it is that to which comparison of 
 forms and colours never reaches. A single instance of 
 the first will suffice. We are all well acquainted with 
 the great outpour of foliage which marks the spring. 
 Are we as apt to notice that in July there is in many 
 kinds of trees a lull or pause, followed in a little while 
 by a distinctly second series of t^Nigs? Sometimes they 
 are yellowish, sometimes roseate, occasionally of a warm 
 and shining ruddy hue, looking like bouquets among 
 the green. 
 
 And never, since the middle summer's spring. 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead. 
 
22 TJie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 By paved fountain, or by nisliy brook. 
 Or on the beached margent of the sea. 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling wind. 
 
 Midsummer Kight's Dream, ii., 2. 
 
 The trees which in our own country are most especially 
 apt to produce these beautiful midsummer shoots, are 
 the oak and the sycamore, the reason being found in the 
 exceptionally large number of lateral buds which these 
 two are prone to develop, in a circlet, around the 
 terminal bud, one of any such circlet, wherever met with, 
 always anticipating its neighbours. Shakspere could 
 scarcely have been able to observe them in the sycamore, 
 as in the time of Elizabeth this tree was only beginning 
 to be known. When he wrote these charming lines his 
 thoughts were with Old England's oak. 
 
 Turn now to the poesy proper. In the sunshine of 
 high summer, 
 
 The green leaves quiver with the cooling wind, 
 And make a chequer'd shadow on the ground. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, ii., 3. 
 
 Then we are asked to note how quiet they can be : — 
 
 The moon shines bright ; in such a night as this, 
 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees. 
 
 And they did make no noise — Merchant of Venice, v., I. 
 
 Presently the breeze quickens : — 
 
 The soutliem wind 
 Doth play the trumpet to his purposes. 
 And by his hollow whistling in the leaves 
 Foretells a tempest, and a blustering day. 
 
 tst Henri- i/ie Fourth, v., 1. 
 
The Oak. 23 
 
 Autumn approaches now : — 
 
 I have lived long enough : ray way of life 
 
 Is fall'n into the sear, the yellovir leaf. — Macbeth, v., 3. 
 
 Lastly, mark the observation, so consummately accurate, 
 of the fact not more true in botany than so admirably 
 employed as an image, that a tree never casts its 
 principal or larger leaves, till decay of everything is 
 imminent : — 
 
 When clouds are seen, wise men put on their cloaks ; 
 When great leaves fall, the winter is at hand ; 
 When the sun sets, who doth not look for night? 
 
 King RUhard the Third, ii., 3. 
 
 THE OAK. 
 
 Every country has its "forest monarch." In England, 
 this proud title is rightfully accorded to the oak — the 
 majestic Quereiis Robur which in associations as well 
 as figure and attributes, owns no rival. Many circum- 
 stances contribute to the supremacy. The dimensions, 
 when full-grown, exceed those of every other British tree. 
 The outline or profile, though in general character so 
 determinate that to mistake an oak is impossible, is 
 inexhaustibly various. The trunk, huge and massive, 
 though never aspiring, holds the place among foresters 
 which the Norman pillar does in cathedral architecture. 
 The lower boughs, spreading horizontally, often so 
 nearly touch the ground as to allow of our gathering not 
 
24 The SItakspere Flora. 
 
 only the acorns, but their pretty tesselated cups. The 
 rugged bark is peculiarly open to the embroidery of 
 delicate mosses, green and golden; and just high enough 
 to be secure from touch, there is often a beautiful tuft 
 of spangled polypody, in winter a cheerful ornament 
 unknov\'n to an)- other English tree. Neither is there in 
 England any tree that presents so wonderful a diversity 
 of leaf-outline, or a richer variety of summer tint. The 
 autumnal hue is scarcely exceeded even by the beech 
 and the elm; and when these beautiful leaves, their 
 tasks completed, pass away, not afraid of dying, the 
 birch itself does not disclose secrets of loveliness more 
 delectable. It should never be forgotten in regard to 
 deciduous trees in general, and in reference to the oak 
 most particularly, that however delightful the spectacle at 
 midsummer, when clothed with foliage, slaking its mighty 
 thirst in the well-pleased sunshine, the inmost form is 
 learned only in winter, or when we are reminded of the 
 classic fable of Mount Ida. 
 
 To Shakspere, widiout question, all these features, the 
 pretty minor ones as well as the noble, must have been 
 familiar. His imagination must needs also have been 
 influenced by the noble ones, an almost daily spectacle, 
 and to a degree it is now very difficult to estimate ; and 
 if the minor ones receive no express or exact mention, it 
 is simply because the verse was complete without. How 
 beautiful the picture of the aged tree by the water side 
 in peaceful Arden, the sturdy roots laid bare by the 
 washing away of the earth that once protected them : — 
 
The Oak. 25 
 
 He lay along, 
 Under an oak whose antique root peeps out 
 Upon the brook that brawls along this wood. 
 
 As You Like It, ii., i. 
 
 That one again, in the same play, of the mighty tree, 
 
 Whose boughs were moss'd with age, 
 And high top bald with dry antiquity. — (iv., 3.) 
 
 If we are so constituted as to delight in trees while they 
 are youthful, and again, while in the full vigour of 
 existence, what is there for which we can be more 
 grateful than the capacity to enjoy them when old and 
 grey? Mr. F. Heath points out very happily that it has 
 pleased God so to adjust the lives of trees to the lives of 
 men, that no generation of mankind comes on the ground 
 without finding both the promise and the perfection of 
 the divine handiwork in the vegetable world side by 
 side. Man has all the stages of tree-life always before 
 him : — Shakspere takes care that this at least we shall not 
 forget. 
 
 The moss and the antiquity re-appear in Timon of 
 Athens: — 
 
 Will these moss'd trees. 
 That have outlived the eagle, page thy heels, 
 And skip when thou point'st out?— (iv., 3.) 
 
 That a very considerable protion of Timon of Atfiens was 
 not written by Shakspere is generally admitted. Timon, 
 like Pericles and Titus Andronicus, came fundamentally 
 from another pen, Shakspere altering and amending. To 
 decide exactly which parts belong to the inferior authors 
 is work for critics who may be competent All that can 
 
26 Tlie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 be done while we are "in the woods" is to take the play 
 
 as it stands, and for what it is, bearing in mind that 
 
 Shakspere in his boundless knowledge of the mingled 
 
 web of human nature, allows even the most ignoble at 
 
 times to utter truths; — thus, that although Apemantus, 
 
 who speaks, is a character when put in comparison with 
 
 the generous Timon, mean and heartless — it was probably 
 
 Shakspere himself who assigned to him the beautiful 
 
 adjuration : — 
 
 Shame not these woods. 
 By putting on the cunning of a carper. — ^iv., 3.) 
 
 Here, in the woods, he means, as we have already 
 learned from the most illustrious of Dukes, regrets and 
 lamentations are out of place : — remember that in the 
 woods we are upon consecrated ground; it is in the 
 woods that the heart finds solace and repair; shame 
 them not with mimnurs. 
 
 Shakspere refers frequently to the prodigious strength 
 and solidity of the oak : — 
 
 I have seen tempests when the scolding winds 
 Have rived the knotty oaks. — Julius Cirsar, i., 3: ■ 
 
 . Merciful heavens ! 
 Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, ' 
 Split' St the unwedgeable and gnarled oak. 
 Than the soft myrtle. — Measure for Measure, ii., 2. 
 
 To the dread rattling thunder 
 Have I giv'n fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak 
 With his own bolL — Tempest, v., i. 
 
 "Jove's," because with the ancients, the oak was dedi- 
 cated to Jupiter, as the myrtle was to Venus, tlie laurel 
 to Apollo. 
 
The Oak. 27 
 
 The same qualities recommend it for use in simile, 
 
 and for metaphor, as in Much Ado, "An oak with but 
 
 one green leaf upon it would have answered her." (ii., i.) 
 
 So in Coriolanus: — 
 
 He that depends 
 Upon your favours, swims with fins of lead. 
 And hews down oaks with rushes. — (i., I.) 
 
 And in Lov^s Labour's Lost, iv., 2., — lines which occur 
 
 also in the Passionate Pilgrim : — 
 
 Though to myself forsworn, to thee I'll faithful prove, 
 Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. 
 
 Pauline, in the Winter's Tale, ii., 3.; Montano, in Othello, 
 ii, I.; Arviragus in Cynibeline, iv., 2.; and Lear, iii., 2., 
 turn to it for the same species of illustration. There are 
 similar examples in Troilus and Cressida, i., 3.; and 
 others in Coriolanus, v., 2 ; v., 3.J while in 3rd Henry the 
 Sixth, ii., I., comes that old familiar and beautiful 
 picture of the final reward of perseverance : — 
 And many strokes, though with a little axe. 
 Hew down, and fell the hardest-timbered oak. 
 
 Individual trees mark the scene of assignations and 
 adventures, as in the Midsumiiur Nighfs Dream, "At 
 the duke's oak we meet"; and in the mirth-provoking 
 Merry Wives, tliat joyous play, the finest example ever 
 produced of the purely and thoroughly English local 
 drama, in which we are introduced to the famous legend 
 of Heme the Hunter : — 
 
 There is an old tale goes that Heme the Hunter, 
 
 Some time a keeper here in Windsor forest, 
 
 Doth all the winter-time, in still midnight, 
 
 Walk round about an oak, with great ragg'd horns. — (iv., 4.) 
 
28 The SJmkspere Flora. 
 
 There is no need to quote the remaining passages, seven 
 or eight in all. Suffice it to say that this celebrated 
 tree — the individual, at all events, always pointed to as 
 "Heme's Oak," existed till as late as 1834, and continued 
 even till then, to bear acorns just as in the time of 
 "Sweet Anne Page." It then succumbed, partly through 
 exhaustion, partly to the effects of tempest, though the 
 dead ruins remained in their place up to 1863. 
 
 The Romans gave chaplets of oak to distinguished 
 soldiers. Reserved for the most valiant, and as the 
 reward of special acts of heroism, they were the antetype 
 of our own "Victoria Cross," and are fittingly mentioned 
 in Coriolanus: — 
 
 He comes the third time home with the oaken garland. — 
 
 (ii., I.) 
 He prov'd best man i' the field, and for his meed, 
 Was brow-bound mth the oak. — (ii., 2.) 
 
 In one curious instance "oak" appears to be a copyist's 
 error for "hawk": — 
 
 She that so j'oung could give out such a seeming 
 
 To seel her father's eyes up close as oak. — Othello, iii., 3. 
 
 When falconry was a royal sport, newly-captured hawks 
 had their eyelids stitched together, so as to accustom 
 them to the hood. The operation, called "seeling," 
 supplies a grand metaphor in Macbeth : — 
 
 Come, seeling night. 
 Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, 
 
 and the same, in all probability, is referred to in this 
 otherwise obscure Othello passage. 
 
Acorns. 29 
 
 Acorns, the fruit of the oak, are mentioned upon some 
 half-dozen occasions. "I found him," says Celia, "under 
 a tree, like a dropped acorn." Rosalind is ready for 
 her: "It may well be called Jove's tree, when it drops 
 forth such fruit." Then comes the picture drawn from 
 chivalry or the wars: "There lay he:, stretched along 
 like a wounded knight," followed up by Rosalind's sweet 
 sympathy, as earnest as her love, "Though it be pity 
 to see such a sight, it well becomes the ground," a most 
 beautiful phrase, to be interpreted as "embellishing" it; 
 just as at the end of Hamlet, when the dead are lying so 
 thick upon the stage: — 
 
 Such a sight as this 
 Becomes the field, but here shows much amiss. 
 
 It is easily understood if we think of the similar use of 
 the word in our own current vernacular, as when it is 
 said so fittingly that a blush becomes a woman. 
 
 In the Midsumnur Night's Dream, the cups give 
 shelter to the fairies: — 
 
 All their elves for fear. 
 Creep into acom-cups, and hide them there. — (i., i.) 
 
 The same, in the Tempest, are to serve as food for 
 Ferdinand, whose deserts, for the time being, are only 
 those of the Prodigal Son :— ■ 
 
 Sea-water shalt thou drink : thy food shall be 
 The fresh-brook mussels, withered roots, and husks. 
 Wherein the acorn cradled. —(i., 2.) 
 
 Allusions of similar character in the Tempest, i., 2, Timon 
 
 of Athens, iv., 3., and a few others of quite subordinate 
 
30 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 importance, being added to the above, the total number 
 of references to the oak by Shakspere, appears to be 
 thirty-one, or excluding the repetitions in the Merry 
 Wives, twenty-four. No other tree is mentioned so 
 often, and thus, upon his own showing, it was his 
 favourite; though we must not forget that the oak has in 
 all ages held a front place in metaphor, the various 
 names under which it appears denoting several species 
 not British, as in the case of the Hebrew 'alloii, and the 
 Greek SpSc, the word employed in that famous line in the 
 Odyssey : — 
 
 " For thou art not of the oak of ancient story.'' 
 
ffilrajrtcr fljirtr. 
 
 THE WILLOW. 
 
 This above all. To thine own self be true, 
 And it must follow, as the night the day. 
 Thou can'st not then be false to any man. 
 
 Hamld, \., 3. 
 
 HE willow, like the oak, is placed before 
 us by Shakspere both as an object of 
 natural beauty and as an emblem. It 
 is interesting to observe, at the outset, 
 that, excepting a slight reference in Virgil 
 
 to the form and colour, he is the first poet by whom it is 
 
 substantially so employed. 
 
 Queen : Your sister's drowned, Laertes ! 
 
 Laertes : Drowned ! O, where ? 
 
 Queen : There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook, 
 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. 
 There, with fantastic garlands did she come. 
 Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long-purples. 
 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name, 
 But our cold maids do dead men's fingers call them. 
 
32 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 There, on the pendent boughs, her coronet weeds 
 
 Clambering to hang — an envious sliver broke ; 
 
 When down her weedy trophies and herself 
 
 Fell in the weeping brook. Her clothes spread wide, 
 
 And mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up. 
 
 Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes, 
 
 As one incapable of her own distress. 
 
 Or like a creature native and indued 
 
 Unto that element. But long it could not be. 
 
 Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
 
 PuU'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay, 
 
 To muddy death. — Hamlet, iv., 7. 
 
 The tree particularly alluded to in this most beautiful 
 and tender description, is that well-known lovely orna- 
 ment of the river side — the white willow, Salix alba — a 
 species similar to the common S. fragilis, or "Crack 
 willow," but at once distinguished by the long and 
 narrow leaves being overspread with shining silvery hairs. 
 Enamoured of quiet streams such as Shakspere was 
 familiar with in Warwickshire, upon the Avon it still 
 accentuates many a reach, and to-day we may see it 
 reflected just as he did. When growing on the very 
 margin, and at a point where the current newly presses, 
 the trunk cannot help but lose its hold upon the soil, 
 which is undermined and worn away, so that at last it 
 quite leans over, the boughs then often forming a light 
 canopy, beneath which the little fishes play. Favourably 
 circumstanced, it attains a stature of thirty feet, and the 
 branches are then strong enough to bear the weight of 
 one who climbs them. Mark now the supreme art of 
 the master in telling us that the water was deep enough 
 
,r\'^j ■- "'-L^ >-v -"Lt.Iithc-trtw. 
 
 'S^^^ty CZnA^^-n-e^ 
 
The Willow. 33 
 
 for the drowning of the poor soul, without saying so 
 in express terms. Shallow streams, such as cannot 
 drown, are always more or less rippled. They cannot 
 possibly serve as mirrors; they do not reflect even the 
 stars; it is only for the deep and tranquil to be "glassy," 
 and to let objects such as the willow reappear. 
 
 There are other pictures to be contemplated. The 
 foliage of this beautiful tree, though like the silvery head 
 of a Nestor, it gleams in the ray of the sun, is wanting in 
 the peculiar sheen of the oleaster. Hence the epithet 
 "hoar," subdued or greyish-white, already immortalized 
 by Chaucer: — 
 
 Though I be hoar, I fare as doth a tree 
 That blosmeth ere the fruit y-woxen be ; 
 The blosmy tree is neither drie nor ded ; 
 I feel me nowhere hoar but on my hed ; 
 Mine harte and all my limmes ben as green 
 As laurel tlirough the year is for to seen. 
 
 Note also, "mermaid-like." "Mermaid" in Shakspere's 
 
 time was synonymous with "siren": — 
 
 O train me not, sweet mermaid, with thy note, 
 
 To drown me in thy sister's flood of tears. 
 
 Sing, siren, for thyself. — Comedy of Errors, iii., 2. 
 
 So in the splendid description of Cleopatra's barge : — 
 
 The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne, 
 Bum'd on the water : the poop was beaten gold ; 
 Purple the sails, and so perfumed, tliat 
 The winds were love-sick with them. 
 
 Her gentlewomen, like the Nereides, 
 
 So many mermaids, tended her i' the eyes. 
 
 And made their bends adornings. 
 
 Antony and Cleopatra, ii. , 2. 
 D 
 
34 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 So in Venus and Adonis, 
 
 Thy mermaid's voice hath done me double wrong. 
 
 So, too, when Oberon relates how once he heard a 
 mermaid, 
 
 On a dolphin's back, 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
 Tliat the rude sea grew civil at her song. 
 
 This last passage supplies clear proof of the identity of 
 
 meaning, since the mermaid of fable is in its lower half 
 
 like a fish, therefore incapable of taking such a position. 
 
 The sirens, on the other hand, held the complete human 
 
 form. 
 
 The death of Ophelia (represented in pictorial art by 
 
 Mr. Millais, in a work not less well known than truthful 
 
 to all that the highest poetry and the imagination can 
 
 desire,) has the further and most profoundly tender 
 
 interest to the student of Shakspere, which comes of its 
 
 being the only instance in the whole of his writings of 
 
 life lost by drowning. In all, he has about ninety 
 
 deaths, many of them violent and shocking. It was 
 
 fitting that one whose existence had been pure as a 
 
 snow-flake, and as easily dissolved, should pass away 
 
 when her mind was already gone, thus calmly and 
 
 silently, and by means so gentle. No struggle, no fear, 
 
 not even consciousness of what presently must ■ needs 
 
 happen, "incapable of her own distress,"* when her eyes 
 
 close it is like the shut at sundown of the water-lilies. 
 
 * Incapable = unconscious. " Distress," as when seamen talk of 
 "stress of weather. '■' 
 
The Willow. 35 
 
 "Ascaunt," it may be proper to say, is the reading in the 
 second, third, and fourth quarto editions of Hamlet, 
 1604, 1605, and 161 1, also in the fifth, undated, though 
 in the first folio, 1623, changed to "aslant" The two 
 words have precisely the same meaning, and which of 
 them shall be adopted is purely a matter of taste. 
 
 There is no other allusion in Shakspere to the willow 
 as an object of the landscape, not even to the common 
 fragilis; though we find several little references to the 
 smaller kinds of Salix known as osiers and withies, forms 
 of the vimtnalis, and which are still used by basket- 
 makers, as in the olden time for shields and coraJes. 
 Friar Lawrence's "willow-cage," in Romeo and Juliet: — 
 
 I must fill up this willow-cage of ours 
 
 "With baleful weeds and precious juiced flowers — 
 
 is to be understood as a little calathus, such as Perse- 
 phone carried. Cassio's "twiggen bottle," in Othello, 
 ii., 3, was one enveloped in wicker-work, something after 
 the fashion of a Florence flask. When Viola, talking 
 to Olivia, in Twelfth Night, i., 5, says Ah ! did it fall to 
 my lot to show devotedness, I would 
 
 Make me a willow-cabin at your gate, 
 
 she means that rather than be away from her love, she 
 would be content to live at his door with shelter no 
 better than that of a bird-cage. In Lov^s Labour's Lost, 
 the withy, being so pliable, is an emblem of weakness of 
 character : — 
 
 Those thoughts to me were oaks, to thee like osiers bowed. 
 
36 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 In As You Like It, iv., 2, the natural habitat of the 
 plant is mentioned : — 
 
 West of this place, do\vn in the neighbouring bottom, 
 The rank of osiers by the murmuring stream 
 Left on your right hand, brings you to the place. 
 
 So again in the Passionate Pilgrim: — - 
 
 When Cytherea all in love forlorn, 
 A longing tarriance for Adonis made 
 Under an osier growing by a brook. 
 
 In this last, however, "osier'' is probably used in the 
 sense of willow. 
 
 When introduced metaphorically, the willow appears 
 as in the Merchant of Venice, v., i : — 
 
 In such a night, 
 Stood Dido with a \^illow in her hand 
 Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love 
 To come again to Carthage. 
 
 Nay. The original tale represents her as too busy upon 
 her watch-tower, "beating her fair bosom with repeated 
 blows, and tearing her golden locks." 
 
 Terque quaterque manus pectus percussa decorum, 
 Florentesque abscissa comas. 
 
 Shakspere is right all the same. Whether she beat her 
 bosom or not, he simply employs in these beautiful lines, 
 in another form, the celebrated figure in the Psalms — 
 "By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down; yea, we 
 wept when we remembered Zion; we hanged our harps 
 upon the willows in the midst thereof," in the "midst" 
 meaning in the middle of the city. That no literal fact 
 
The Willow. 3 7 
 
 is intended by the Psalmist, any more than in the Dido 
 story, scarcely needs the saying. The captive Hebrews 
 no more suspended their harps upon willows or any 
 other trees, than the forests of Palestine "clapped their 
 hands/' or than the valleys, covered with corn, "shouted 
 for joy.'' The phrase is purely figurative, harmonizing 
 both in spirit and form, with a thousand others in the 
 inspired volume. To all appearance, "hanging up the 
 harps" was with the Hebrews a current sapng, adopted 
 probably from Job xxx., 31, "My harp is turned to 
 mourning, and my organ" — some kind of musical pipe — 
 "into the voice of them that weep." Happy the day 
 when in the presence of all such passages, secular as well 
 as sacred, people shall learn how to discriminate, before 
 they accept, between the "letter which killeth, and the 
 spirit which giveth life." 
 
 To get at the sense of the Shaksperean words, we 
 have thus to ascertain, first, the sense of those contained 
 in the psalm, and this demands as the' earliest step, 
 the determination of what is really meant by "willow." 
 The current idea is that both Shakspere's willow and the 
 scriptural one are the common " weeping willow," Salix 
 Babylonka. But this is a native of China; it was not 
 carried westward until a comparatively recent period, and 
 received its specific Latin name in error. The Hebrews 
 knew no more of the Salix Bdbylonica than Shakspere 
 did, and to him it was quite a stranger, not arriving in 
 this country until many years after his death. The 
 original Hebrew word (usually transliterated ^arabhim) 
 
38 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 was, like many other Old Testament Hebrew botanical 
 terms, one of collective signification. It included the 
 Populus Euphratica; probably that charming shrub, the 
 silver elaeagnus; probably also the agnus-castus and the 
 oleander, and not impossibly, a genuine Salix. But it 
 certainly did not mean willows only. The willow, 
 strictly so called, had moreover, with the Hebrews, a 
 distinct appellation of its own, tsaphtsaphah, the word 
 employed in Ezekiel xvii., 5. The 'arabhim are mentioned 
 in the Hebrew upon five different occasions. In two 
 instances the associations are distinctly joyous.* In one 
 there is nothing sorrowful ;t in the fourth the word is 
 simply part of a geographical name; J the fifth, the verse 
 in the psalm, is wthout any legitimate reason, by the 
 Septuagint translated trtatc, the word used by old 
 Homer for osiers or withies, and which also have 
 their own proper Hebrew name, yetharim, as in 
 Judges xvi., 7. The translators of the Vulgate followed 
 suit, and put salices in all the passages. Wiclif, 
 translating from the Vulgate, has in his earlier version, 
 "In withies in the myddes of it, wee heengen vp oure 
 instrumens;" and in the later one, "In salewis in the 
 myddil thereof, we hangiden vp oure organs." Coverdale 
 (1536), and Tyndall (1549), return to the indefinite 
 expression "upon the trees." "Willows" appears first in 
 the Geneva edition, 1560 (the first in which the 
 chapters were divided into verses), and as this was the 
 
 * Levit., xxiii., 40. Isaiah, xliv., 4. tjob, xl., 22. 
 + Isaiah, xv. , 7. 
 
The Willow. 39 
 
 edition chiefly used in private houses and families during 
 the reign of Elizabeth, and up to 16 11, in all likelihood 
 it was the form of the Bible in which Shakspere was so 
 well read. It is the Geneva, at all events, which we are 
 to regard as the parent-source, after the Septuagint, of 
 the association now under review. Nature, as we have 
 seen, is "coloured by the spirit." Haunting the calm 
 and silent pathway by the stream, which in invitation to 
 the unhappy is so like the "shadowy desert:" — more or 
 less inclined to droop or "weep;" having leaves so long, 
 narrow, and acutely pointed, that when the rain falls on 
 them, trickling gently, it drips from the extremities like 
 tears — no wonder that these elegant trees, the 'arabhim, 
 in their various kinds, seemed to the sad-hearted 
 Hebrews representative of their own feelings. To 
 describe unhappiness under the exquisite figure of hang- 
 ing their harps upon the branches, was but another little 
 step. Orientals could hardly do otherwise. At last, 
 almost imperceptibly, the phrase transmutes, as we have 
 just seen, into hanging them upon "willows." Language, 
 always ready to utilize and give permanence to a pretty 
 image, thenceforwards makes the willow the symbol of 
 grief in general, and especially of the grief of disappointed 
 love; and so at last we have the willow which Dido 
 waft in vain, cut from no tree in nature, yet quite as 
 true and real to the imagination. No allusion to the 
 willow as an emblem of sorrow occurs in any one of the 
 Greek or Latin poets, showing that the origin of the 
 usage is supplied purely by the Septuagint. Observe 
 
40 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 also, before we leave her, that the tale of unhappy 
 Dido is accepted by Shakspere as told by Virgil, which 
 is untruthfully. Dido, in reality, never saw ^neas. 
 She lived two hundred years before the time of the 
 famous Trojan, and not upon her was it that he bestowed 
 either his caresses or Helen's robe. Never mind. Virgil 
 must answer for himself, though one regrets that he 
 should have so wantonly sullied the memory of a noble 
 lady: whatever the historical facts, the poetry remains 
 intact, and it is in this for us to rejoice. It was no new 
 event either for even Virgil to describe. The pictures in 
 the great poets are contemporaneous with all ages. If 
 one "bonnie Doun" has been sung of, a thousand others 
 unrecorded have helped to give a .summer-evening 
 paradise, to end after the same fashion as hers who 
 plucked the "rose." As long as the world endures 
 CEnone will point to her lettered poplar, and the willow 
 be waft anew upon "wild sea-banks." 
 
 We are never at liberty, under any circumstances, to 
 put anything into Sha.kspere of our own. To take care, 
 at the same moment, that we miss nothing; to seek at 
 all times to elicit the charms of his undertones, is still 
 quite legitimate, perhaps our bounden duty. The 
 Ophelia passage itself seems another utterance of the 
 above idea. She might have died on land, and in any 
 other way, but the willow "ascaunt the brook" gives the 
 event a tenfold pathos to the imagination. 
 
 In Othello Shakspere gives us a varied rendering of 
 the celebrated old ballad printed in the Roxburghe 
 
The Willow. 41 
 
 collection (L, 171), "The complaint of a lover forsaken 
 by his love." He adapts it, quite legitimately, so as to 
 suit the new character, that of Desdemona the ill-fated : — 
 
 My mother had a maid called Barbara ; 
 She was in love; and he, she loved, proved mad,* 
 And did forsake her : she had a song of willow, 
 An old thing 'twas, but it express'd her fortune. 
 And she died singing it. That song, to-night, 
 Will not go firom my mind ; I have much to do 
 But to go hang my head all at one side. 
 And sing it like poor Barbara. 
 
 Then comes the song itself, with its sorrowful refrain, 
 "willow, willow, willow." By and by, after other 
 troubles, a line or two of it comes from the lips also of 
 dying Emilia, sustaining the tender imagery to the 
 end: — 
 
 I will play the swan. 
 And die in music, "Willow, willow, willow ! " 
 
 Even when hope is gone, says Victor Hugo, and 
 despair comes, Song remains. 
 
 One other serious reference to the willow in this 
 
 connection occurs in Shakspere, 3rd King Henry the 
 
 Sixth, iii., 3, repeated in iv., i : — 
 
 Tell him, in hope he'll prove a widower shortly, 
 I'll wear a willow garland for his sake. 
 
 And lastly, we have it introduced jocularly, when in 
 Much Ado, ii., i, Benedick, laughing in his sleeve at 
 Claudio, proposes to go to the "next" or nearest willow, 
 for a garland, "as being forsaken." These are all the 
 
 * Wild, inconstant, heartless. 
 
42 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Shaksperean allusions, but it would be easy to cite others 
 from contemporary authors, as when Spenser gives the 
 willow to the "forlorne paramour," and when Montanus, 
 in Lodge, at last about to wed Phoebe, throws away his 
 "garland of willow." Chaucer had already used it in the 
 construction of the funeral pyre in Palamon and Arcite. 
 
 THE YEW (Taxus baccata). 
 
 That Shakspere was well acquainted with the yew there 
 can be no doubt. Though not so common as the oak 
 or the beech, no part of our island is unpossessed of this 
 famous tree. A genuine ancient Briton, it occurs in the 
 secluded parts of all old forests. More than any other — 
 excepting, perhaps, the mountain-ash — it is noted for 
 its love of loneliness. Wild and desolate places are 
 enjoyed; rooted in the crevices, it clings even to vertical 
 rocks, where it can be touched by no other plant, and 
 will have no companions but the sunshine and the rain. 
 Compared with other British trees, it is the most massive 
 and imperturbable of all, knowing nothing of storm or 
 tempest, heat or cold. In early summer its perennial 
 darkness is relieved awhile by pretty sprays of new-born 
 verdure; and in late autumn the boughs are decked with 
 scarlet berries, which the birds soon take away. At all 
 other times the yew presents the ideas alone of antiquity 
 and imperishableness, and if we do not exactly admire 
 its ancient form, none can fail to recognize in it a 
 grandeur almost unique. 
 
The Yew. 43 
 
 The classical poets connected this tree with the mourn- 
 ful side of death. Silius Italicus, in his description of the 
 nether world, places a yew-tree in the midst (xiii. 595-6). 
 Claudian goes so far as to put torches made of the wood 
 in the hands of the furies (Rapt. Pros, iii., 386). 
 Christianity took the opposite view, finding in it the 
 symbol of Immortality — the cheerful side of death — or 
 that of which all Christians think primarily and with 
 most energy. In the olden times every village church in 
 our island would seem either to have been erected near 
 a yew, or to have had one planted alongside. The count- 
 less extant examples in rural graveyards bear witness to 
 the ancient practice, and to Shakspere the reverend 
 custom must have been no less familiar than to ourselves. 
 He knew the tree best, in all likelihood, as an inmate of 
 such enclosures. Hence the introduction of the yew in 
 Romeo attd Juliet: — 
 
 Under yon yew-trees lay thee all along. 
 Holding thine ear close to the hollow ground. 
 So shall no foot upon the churchyard tread 
 (Being loose, infirm, with digging up of graves). 
 But thou shalt hear it. — (v., 3.) 
 
 Balthasar, again, in a later part of the scene, says :— 
 
 As I did sleep under this yew-tree here, 
 I dreamt my master and another fought. 
 And that my master slew him. 
 
 Shakspere constantly assigns to other countries and ages 
 the customs and usages of his native land — of this, in 
 due course, we shall have many illustrations — that he 
 
44 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 should place yew-trees in a graveyard at Mantua would 
 thus be quite natural; but the practice above indicated 
 would seem to have been very generally followed in 
 Christian Europe during the Middle Ages, so that in the 
 present place, there is, at all events, no inconsistency. 
 
 Identified in this beautiful manner with the Christian 
 idea of futurity, it was natural, again, that sprigs of yew 
 should be employed in funeral ceremonies: — 
 
 My shroud of white, stuck all with yew, 
 O ! prepare it \—Twdflh Night, ii., 5. 
 
 Immortelles and "everlastings" were not grown in the 
 Elizabethan times. The first ever seen in England 
 arrived only during the reign of Charles I. Few of the 
 modem favourites have been known more than a century, 
 if so long. Wreaths made of these glossy flowers waited 
 for the rites of three hundred years later, or, instead 
 of "sprigs of yew," perchance we might have had 
 "amaranths." Contemplating the possibility, there is 
 new reason to be glad that Shakspere lived just when 
 he did, unoppressed by the lore of to-day, embosomed in 
 the simplicities. 
 
 Though the juice of the sweet and viscid berries is not 
 harmful, the seeds of the yew, and the leaves, are deadly 
 poison. Taken in connection with the sombre appear- 
 ance of the tree, and the profound shadow it casts, this, 
 we may be sure, accounts sufficiently for the unhappy 
 associations in which it is always found in ancient verse. 
 In any case it explains the allusion in Macbeth, where 
 the witches, in their gloomy cave, the cauldron boiling in 
 
The Yew. 45 
 
 the middle, prepare the mixture that is to give effect to 
 their accursed sorcery : — 
 
 Double, double toil and trouble, 
 Fire, bum, and cauldron bubble. 
 
 Eye of newt, and toe of frog. 
 Wool of bat, and tongue of dog. 
 Adder's fork, and blind-worm's sting. 
 Lizard's leg, and owlet's wing. 
 
 Liver of blaspheming Jew, 
 
 Gall of goat, and slips of yew. — (iv., I.) 
 
 The very specially interesting identification of the yew 
 with the idea of venom comes to the front, however, in 
 that fearful scene in Hamlet where the spirit of the 
 murdered king describes the circumstances of his death. 
 Note here that Shakspere's way of dealing with the great 
 truth of the spiritual body of man forms one of the most 
 striking adjuncts of his philosophy. Shakspere's belief 
 is one in which the yns>t. and good of all ages have 
 concurred, and is set aside neither by ridicule nor incre- 
 dulity. Men whose opinion is worth having never at 
 any time deny even the simplest proposition till they 
 are prepared with positive evidence to the contrary. 
 "Hamlet," says the murdered monarch, addressing his 
 son — 
 
 'Tis given out that sleeping in mine orchard, 
 
 A serpent stung me ; so the whole ear of Denmark, 
 
 Is by a forged process of my death 
 
 Rankly abused ; but know, thou noble youth. 
 
 The serpent that did sting thy father's life 
 
 Now wears his crown ! 
 
46 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Sleeping within mine orchard, 
 My custom always of the afternoon, 
 Upon my secure hour thy uncle stole. 
 With juice of cursed hebetion in a vial. 
 And in the porches of mine eare did pour 
 The leperous distilment 
 
 Thus was I, sleeping, by a brother's hand, 
 
 Of life, of crown, of queen, at once despatched. 
 
 No reckoning made, but sent to my account. 
 With all my imperfections on my head. — (i., 5.) 
 
 What kind of liquid poison Shakspere intended by 
 "hebenon" has been a subject of much conjecture, 
 opinions oscillating chiefly between "henbane" and 
 poisons in general, those who hold the latter view over- 
 looking the minute description of the symptoms and 
 pathological results. The word in question is a varied 
 form, not of "henbane," or, as some suppose, of "ebony," 
 but of the name by which the yew is known in at least 
 five of the Gothic languages; the name which appears in 
 Marlowe, Spenser, and other writers of the Elizabethan 
 era as "hebon," 
 
 In few, the blood of Hydra Heme's bane. 
 The juide of hebon, and Cocytus' breath, 
 And all the poisons of the Stygian pool, 
 
 'jiTiV of Malta, iii. , 4, 
 
 and which in the first quarto itself is spelt hebona. 
 "The yew," says Lyte, translating Dodoens, "is called in 
 high Dutch ibenbaum, and accordingly, in base Almaigne, 
 ibenboom." "This tree," he goes on to say, "is 
 
The Yew. 47 
 
 altogether venomous, and against man's nature. . . . 
 Such as do but only sleepe under the shadowe thereof 
 become sicke, and sometimes they die" (Herbal, 1578). 
 The extract is used, he says further on, "by ignorant 
 apothecaries, to the great perile and danger of the poor 
 diseased people" (p. 768). From the latter sentence we 
 may gather how the murderer was enabled to possess 
 himself of the deadly juice, which he is not to be sup- 
 posed as preparing with his own hands, but as procuring 
 from one of the herb-doctors who kept it for sale. Why 
 Shakspere should say "hebenon" instead of "yew" does 
 not appear, nor does it signify. The scene being laid at 
 Elsinore, perhaps he was careful to employ a word 
 believed or known to be Danish.* 
 
 The ancient celebrity of the wood of the yew for 
 archers' bows needs no illustration. "Ityrseos," says 
 Virgil, "taxi torquentur in arcus;" — "the yews are bent 
 into Ityraean bows" (Georgic ii., 448). Englishmen need 
 think only of Agincourt and Cregy. In Richard the 
 Second it is adverted to in a very curious passage, the 
 idea of the mortal certainty of the well-aimed arrow 
 being adjoined to that of the action of the poison: — 
 
 The very beadsmen learn to bend their bows 
 Of double-fatal yew against thy state. — (iii. , 2. ) 
 
 * The above teaching as to the true sense of "hebenon" has been 
 before my pupils for at least twenty-five years. It was with great 
 pleasure that I saw my views confirmed in the report of a paper 
 read by the Rev. W. A. Harrison, before the London Shakspere 
 Society, May I2th, 18S2. 
 
48 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 In Titles Andro7iicus we have an echo of the old classical 
 imagery : — • 
 
 But straight they told me they would bind me here 
 Unto the body of a dismal yew. — (ii., 3.) 
 
 THE ASPEN. 
 The aspen, Populus tremula, though at the present day 
 in England by no means common, would seem to have 
 been, in the Plantagenet times, abundant. For, in the 
 fourth year of Henry V. (141 7) the employment of the 
 wood for purposes other than the manufacture of arrows 
 was forbidden by Act of Parliament. Spenser, in the 
 Faery Queetie, says it was "good for staves," whence, 
 perhaps, the repeal of the law under James the First. 
 Excelled by all our native foresters in length of 
 existence, the aspen is still one of the most beautiful 
 and interesting of British trees. The stature is incon- 
 siderable; the flowers are inconspicuous; but the foliage 
 is ample and refreshing. Individually the leaves are 
 nearly circular. They have very long stalks, which are 
 flattened laterally at the upper part, the blade quivering, 
 in consequence, with the lightest breath of wind. 
 Directly the wind stirs, see how delicate the ripple! — 
 with noise, as it were, of a gently falling shower, though 
 the branch, as a whole, does not stir. This charming 
 peculiarity is observable also in the nearly allied Popidus 
 nigra, the common or old English "Black poplar," which 
 latter tree is perhaps intended in certain references to 
 
The Aspen. 49 
 
 the aspen, and vice versa, or is at all events included 
 
 therein. No wonder that in all ages the poets have 
 
 made use of it when the subject for illustration has asked 
 
 for a sensitive plant. It appears in Scripture in the 
 
 memorable narrative in 2 Sam., v., 23, "When thou 
 
 hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the bekha'im" 
 
 (in the A. V. most unfortunately mistranslated "mulberry 
 
 trees"), illustrating how the least of the phenomena of 
 
 nature are no less immediately under the Di^-ine control 
 
 than the greatest and grandest, and recalling the other 
 
 and equally suggestive picture of the "still small voice.'' 
 
 Old Homer uses the flutter, not a leaf standing idle, as 
 
 an image of the ceaseless whirling of the spindles by 
 
 Alcinous' handmaidens (Od. vii., 106). Hypermnestra, 
 
 in Ovid, tells us that just like this was the anxious 
 
 beating of her heart (Hyp. Lytic. 40). Chaucer adopts 
 
 that beautiful line almost verbatim. 
 
 Shakspere knew the tree well. "Feel, master, how I 
 
 shake! . . . Yea, in very truth do I, as 'twere an 
 
 aspen leaf" (2nd Henry the Fourth, ii., 4). So in Titus 
 
 Andronicus, ii., 5: — 
 
 O, had the monster seen those lily hands 
 Tremble, like aspen leaves, upon the lute. 
 
 The proper and actual name of the tree is simply 
 "aspe," Anglo-Saxon sspe, as in Chaucer: — 
 
 "As oak, fir, birch, aspe, alder, holm, poplere." 
 
 Palemon and Arcite. 
 
 Aspen is the adjectival form, "tree" or "timber" being 
 
 understood. 
 
 E 
 
5° 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Though inconspicuous, the flowers of the aspen, as of 
 all the other poplars, are remarkably pretty in structure. 
 They are produced in the shape of catkins, long before 
 the leaves expand, in the earliest of the Easter times, 
 
 When winter, slumbering in the open air. 
 Wears on his softened looks a dream of spring, — 
 
 differing, however, from most other catkins, in possession 
 
 of abundance of a peculiar soft grey wooUiness. For an 
 
 amiable mind, that loves the little as well as the large, 
 
 there is not a pleasure more thorough and unwearying 
 
 than the examination of our British tree-flowers, so 
 
 curious and delicate is the formatioa 
 
 
 ' ^•^'Sv-^^" n U^ 
 
€)jETpUx ^antth. 
 
 THE LINDEN. 
 
 In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell. 
 
 Tempest, v., i. 
 
 HAKSPERE'S "line" is the beautiful tree 
 which at present, though only since about 
 1700, is wrongfully called the "lime,'' 
 which latter name belongs to an Indian 
 Citrus, long celebrated for its fruit, and 
 nearly related to the lemon. "Line" itself is not the 
 original, being a shortened form of the Anglo-Saxon 
 lind, which is connected in turn with hntus, pliant, 
 and evidently refers to the usefulness of the inner 
 bark as a material for string and cordage, very 
 anciently recognized, and adverted to by Horace, 
 who for some unknown reason prefers the Greek 
 name of the tree to the Latin — displicait nexcs 
 
52 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 philyra coronm, "chaplets woven with the rind of the 
 line" CCarm. 1., 38). The Shaksperean spelling, which 
 some have thought to amend by alteration to the modern 
 corrupted one, is \'indicated in all the old herbals, and 
 more than once in early verse, where it rhymes to thine — 
 
 Now tell me thy name, good fellow, said lie, 
 Under the leaves of lyne. 
 
 "Linden" is the adjectival form of the word, "tree," 
 being understood, thus corresponding with "aspen." 
 
 Less robust than the forest monarch, inferior in dignity 
 to the elm, the linden is still entitled to count with the 
 most delightful of English trees. It is the vegetable 
 analogue of that happy condition of body which the 
 ancient Greeks denominated euaapKoc, neither fat nor 
 lean, but gracefully intermediate. It is one of the trees 
 which go with the acacia and the birch in their repre- 
 sentative character, conveying a certain elegant idea 
 of feminine contour and attributes, as distinguished from 
 the stalwart though less amiable masculine chestnut. 
 Growing wild plentifully in woods in the form called by 
 botanists Tilia parvifolia, in the improved one called 
 Europaa, it has been from time immemorial a chosen 
 ornament of parks and pleasure-grounds, and being often 
 planted in avenues, has given new enrichment even to 
 nature. The peculiarly good qualities consist, it is 
 hardly necessary to add, in the symmetry of the outline, 
 the lower branches often bending to the earth, so as 
 to form a natural tent; in the remarkable ease and 
 lightness of air and habit, this coming of the long stalks 
 
The Linden. 53 
 
 of the thin broad leaves; and in the abundance, in high 
 summer, of the honeyed and fragrant bloom. 
 
 What other tree should Shakspere select to give 
 shelter to the home of Prospero and Miranda? "The 
 cell of Prospero," it has been remarked, "with its 
 adjoining grove, is one of the most distinct and pleasing 
 conceptions of natural scenery to be found in his works." 
 Nestling undei: the lindens which "weather-fend" it, in 
 this quiet island home we have not only seclusion and 
 repose, the boughs disturbed only at times by the "light 
 pinions of Ariel;" but that which gives to the Tempest — 
 one of the only two of the romantic comedies produced 
 by Shakspere which owes its plot to no previous author — 
 its very marked and specially attractive interest, namely, 
 the disclosure it affords of the -miter's own personality. 
 Everywhere else, Shakspere though present, is veiled; in 
 Prospero we have him, not only beside us, but as the 
 real and living man. Prospero is acquainted with all 
 the secrets of nature; he penetrates men's minds and 
 discerns their purposes. He has all the wise prevision, 
 the authority and the gentleness of genuine power. He 
 calls up magnificent visions; at his bidding "the air is 
 filled with sweet music," or with the sounds of hound 
 and horn; he raises or quells the storm; he commands, 
 and a splendid banquet is spread.* Add to this the 
 
 immortal words. 
 
 My library 
 Was dukedom large enough, 
 
 *Rev. J. Hunter. New Illustrations of Shakspere, L, 180. 
 
54 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 and his infinite capacity for pourtraying the purest and 
 sweetest forms of human love — Miranda, gentle, affec- 
 tionate, retiring, quite feminine Miranda, standing forth 
 as one of his most exquisite creations, and Shakspere 
 himself is veritably here — ^his powers, his temperament, 
 his genius, in perfect portrait. How sweet, too, the idea 
 of those beautiful trees in their supply of arbours and 
 shady alcoves ! How often were they sought as shelter 
 from the noonday sunshine by the dear girl who, 
 when most enamoured, still "remembered" her "father's 
 precepts." 
 
 The honey of the flowers is not forgotten : — 
 Where the bee sucks, there suck I, 
 for surely tliis is the intent of the passage, quite spoiled 
 by the suggested change of the word to "lurk." Ariel, 
 when he has finished his tasks, desires nothing more 
 than to command it; — 
 
 Merrily, merrily, shall I live now, 
 
 Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. — (v., i.) 
 
 In benevolence to the bees no tree wild in Europe 
 excels the linden. Were we not sure that Shakspere, 
 standing beneath, had many a time listened to their 
 drowsy murmur, we might think he had been lately 
 reading the story of the good old man in Virgil who so 
 loved his garden: — "Here planting among the shrubs, 
 white lilies, verv'ain, and esculent poppies, he equalled 
 in his contented mind, the wealth of kings. The first 
 was he to pluck the rose of spring, and the first to gather 
 the fruits of autumn; and even when sad winter split the 
 
The Linden. 55 
 
 rocks with frost, and bridled the current of the streams 
 with ice, yes, in that very season was he cropping the 
 locks of the soft acanthus. Lindens had he, and pines, in 
 great abundance; he, therefore, was the first to abound 
 with prolific bees, and to strain the frothy honey from 
 the well-pressed combs." — (Georgia iv., 131-141.) 
 
 One of the constituent trees of Prospero's grove 
 appears to be spoken of in an earlier scene, when to 
 be used for the display of the "glistening apparel" 
 designed as a "stale" or bait for Caliban and his thievish 
 companions. But the intent of the word is disputed, 
 some of the best critics understanding it to denote a 
 "clothes line," such as is used in washerwomen's drying- 
 yards. Mr. Halliwell is of this opinion (voL L, p. 39). 
 It is supported also by Knight (Comedies ii., 440). But 
 Shakspere would hardly mix up with poetry so beautiful 
 as the picture of Prospero's home an idea so prosaic. 
 If we are to think at all of the purpose of laundresses' 
 clothes lines, it is quite as satisfactory, and incomparably 
 more agreeable, as well as congenial to the time and 
 place, to remember country-folks' employment of the 
 hedgerow and the grass-plat Further on, in the same 
 scene, this particular "line," whatever it may be, is 
 referred to, upon two occasions, jocularly. 
 
 THE HAWTHORN. 
 The "milk-white thorn" that in early summer dapples 
 the hedgerows with its fragrant bloom — the sweet " May" 
 that literally "scents the evening gale"-— is, like the 
 
56 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 linden, a genuine British plant, and when unmolested by 
 man, one of the most distinct and beautiful our island 
 possesses. It occurs in every part of Europe, and 
 extends even into Asia, but nowhere presents a lovelier 
 spectacle than -with ourselves, the climate of England 
 being peculiarly favourable to its nature. The charms 
 increase, as with many other trees, with lapse of years; 
 the hold upon life is also remarkable — thorns count, 
 in truth, with the longsevals, so that, however old, they 
 never look antiquated. When standing alone, as upon 
 the greensward of some ancient park, how beautiful the 
 large round head, the bright green of the opening leaves, 
 the snow of the innumerable blossoms, and in the fall, 
 when the foliage reddens, the emulation of the ruddy, 
 fruit Unequalled, in England, for "quick-set" fences, 
 the natural habit of the plant is in these, by much use of 
 the shears, entirely effaced. Hedges composed of it 
 have been in vogue from the earliest ages of civilization ; 
 the name of "hawthorn" itself is a testimony thereto, 
 "haw" being no more than a modem shape of the 
 Anglo-Saxon word for a hedge : to Shakspere they were 
 as familiar as to ourselves; — almost always, when he 
 invites us to thought of this delightful old • plant, it is 
 with reference, however, to the hawthorn as an unspoiled 
 Tree. First, we have the cool and pleasant shadow, 
 always cast upon grass, the hawthorn, in the wild or 
 natural state, never hindering the growth of turf: — 
 
 All ! what a life were this ! How sweet, how lovely! 
 
The Hawthorn. 57 
 
 Gives not the hawthorn-bush a sweeter shade 
 
 To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep, 
 
 Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy 
 
 To kings that fear their subjects' treachery ? 
 
 O yes, it doth, a thousand times it doth. 
 
 And to conclude. The shepherd's homely ciu?ds, 
 
 His cold thin drink out of his leathern bottle, 
 
 His wonted sleep under a fresh tree's shade, 
 
 All which serene and sweetly he enjoys. 
 
 Is far beyond a prince's delicates, 
 
 His \-iands sparkling in a golden cup, 
 
 His body couched in a curious bed 
 
 When care, mistrust, and treason wait on him. 
 
 3rd HenTy the Sixth, ii., 5- 
 
 In the Midsummer Night's Dream the hawthorn helps 
 to give that charming picture of the delicious season 
 marked not more by itself than by the anemones : — 
 
 Your tongue's sweet air, 
 More tunable than lark to shepherd's ear, 
 When wheat is green, when hawthorn-buds appear. 
 
 (I, I.) 
 
 In this beautiful fairy-tale it supplies shelter also to the 
 would-be players : — 
 
 Bottom : Are we all met ? 
 
 Quince : Pat, pat ; and here's a marvellous convenient place for 
 our rehearsal This green plot shall be our stage, this hawthorn- 
 brake our tyring-house. 
 
 How admirable, again, the indication of the season, 
 \\-ithout naming it, in King Lear: — 
 
 Through the sharp hawthorn blows the cold wind. 
 
 (iii., 4.) 
 
 For in winter, the hawthorn, being a deciduous tree, 
 
58 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 affords shelter no longer; and this not only because of its 
 having cast its leaves — the under-structure is singularly 
 thin and scanty; through the hawthorn, more than 
 through any other tree of its kind, the wnd whistles 
 "to-and-fro conflicting," and there is not one that, when 
 leafless, affords less shelter from the "pelting" of the 
 "pitiless storm." The features in question are especially 
 well marked in aged and wind-beaten trees upon bleak 
 and desolate heaths and commons, thus giving the 
 hawthorn a place incomparably just and true in the 
 piteous scene in which we find it — the foremost figure the 
 poor broken-hearted old man who has proved so bitterly 
 
 How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is 
 To have a thankless child ! 
 
 Rosalind, as usual, brightens everything: — "There's a 
 man haimts the forest, that abuses our young plants with 
 cutting 'Rosalind' upon their barks; hangs odes upon 
 hawthorns, and elegies upon brambles." Ah, for a 
 glimpse of the heart-sunshine upon her countenance as 
 she plucks them off' — the light of her steadfast eyes as 
 she peruses ! The boughs are not sno\vy now, but aglow 
 with berries, for it is autumn. "I found him," says 
 Celia, a minute before, "under a tree, like a dropped 
 acorn," her comparison suggested by the last object she 
 has noticed on her sylvan way. In the entire drama 
 there is not the slightest allusion to spring, spring pro- 
 ductions, or spring phenomena. Everything mentioned 
 has the scent and hue of ripe October. Rosalind's 
 hawthorns, like the oaks, are heavy with fruit. 
 
n1 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 V3,^ 
 
The Hawthorn. 59 
 
 In one instance the citation of the hawthorn is meta- 
 phorical, and like Benedick's of the willow, in Much 
 Ado, upon the lines of the facetious. Coming from 
 lively old Sir John, it could hardly be anything else: 
 "I cannot cog, and say this and that, like a many of 
 these lisping hawthorn buds that come like women in 
 man's apparel, and smell like Bucklersbury in simple 
 time." — Merry Wives, iii., 3. The picture of the 
 "Verdant Greens" of the day, their mincing and affected 
 talk, and their overdone self-perfumery, is perfect. 
 Bucklersbury, a famous old London street, was in 
 Shakspere's time noted for the number of its druggists, 
 dealers, at that period, chiefly in odoriferous dried 
 herbs — "simples," in the popular vocabulary. Why the 
 knight should select "hawthorn-buds" rather than any 
 other kind, as good for his scented foplings, does not, 
 however, appear. It is a little singular, to say the least, 
 that one of the old English names for these buds, when 
 just expanding, is "Ladies' meat" 
 
 Mention of the hawthorn is scarcely ever made by the 
 ancient or classical poets, and then only in reference to 
 its supposed efficacy in averting the evil effects of unkind 
 encliantments, intimidating demons, and healing snake- 
 bites. Of the first -named superstition we have an 
 instance in the Fasti, where a wand made of the wood is 
 bestowed with a view to the protection of the sleeping 
 infant from the red-jawed harpies (vi., 129, 165). 
 
 Chaucer makes amends in a well-known beautiful 
 passage. Most indeed of the old English poets have 
 
6o The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 something to say about the hawthorn, and this, generally 
 
 in connection with the season of its bloom. 
 Amongst the many buds proclaiming May, 
 Decking the fields in holiday array, 
 Striving who shall surpass in braverie, 
 Marke the fair blooming of the hawthorn tree. 
 Who finely cloathed in a robe of white, 
 Fills full the wanton eye with May's delight 
 
 Remember, while reading these and all similar old 
 English verses, that the year, in the time of Chaucer, 
 Spenser, Shakspere, and onwards up to 1752, reckoned 
 from twelve days later than at present, "May-day" being 
 then what with ourselves is May 13 th. All descriptions 
 of spring and of the vernal charms of nature apply to 
 a corresponding or twelve days' later period. 
 
 THE BOX-TREE. 
 
 Concerning other aboriginal British trees, Shakspere 
 has very little to say, and the allusions, when they occur, 
 have reference almost exclusively, to the economic uses. 
 To introduce natural objects for purposes beyond simple 
 illustration, or the giving of elegance to a picture, was 
 no part, as already observed, of his design. There is no 
 ground for surprise, accordingly, that what remains is of 
 trifling amount. The box-tree, for example (if this be 
 really British), being an evergreen, and extremely dense 
 in foliage, becomes in Twelfth Night, ii., 5, a good 
 hiding-place, — "Get ye all three into the box-tree." We 
 must not think of it from the diminutive variety employed 
 
The Box-tree. 6i 
 
 in gardens as a fence or "edging" for flower-borders, nor 
 even from the bushy character attained in shrubberies. 
 When the circumstances of its long life are fairly congenial, 
 the box-tree is capable of attaining very considerable 
 dimensions. At Clifton Lodge, near ShefTord, Bedford- 
 shire, there is one (unless since destroyed,) which, when 
 measured in 1865, was found to be close on twenty-two 
 feet high; the general spread of the branches was 
 twenty-six feet; and the trunk at a yard above the 
 ground, was fifteen inches in diameter. How much the 
 box was esteemed by the ancients as an ornamental 
 evergreen, hardly needs saying. Ovid refers to it in his 
 pirpetiioque virens buxus (Met. x., 97). In another place 
 he well characterizes the abundant and close-set foliage, 
 densafoliis (A. A., iii., 691). Virgil speaks of the same 
 in that beautiful passage where he describes the hills as 
 undans, "waving," the epithet, which properly belongs to 
 the branches of the trees, being transferred from the 
 living thing to the inanimate one. When introduced into 
 the intensely artificial gardens of the ancient Romans, 
 this patient tree was subjected, like the yew, to that 
 odious clipping into grotesque and unnatural forms, 
 which in the Shaksperean age had become fashionable in 
 England, and of which there are memorials still extant. 
 The practice was consistent with the manners and 
 customs of a people who loved barbarities and the blood 
 of gladiators; but it is one from which all genuine and 
 cultured taste recoils, and with Shakspere, we may be 
 sure, it found no favour. Fine examples of the box in 
 
62 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 its unmolested state, were in all likelihood, in the 
 Shaksperean age, abundant in this country. The number 
 of ornamental evergreens introduced at that early horti- 
 cultural period was so limited, that they might be 
 told upon the fingers. The laurels, the Mahonias, the 
 rhododendrons of to-day, were quite unknown. In their 
 absence the box would be esteemed to a degree we can 
 now hardly imagine, and commensurate pride be taken 
 in the spectacle of its green perfection. Chaucer takes 
 up the Scriptural idea of the tree, or that which presents 
 it to us as the emblem of Christian fortitude, but 
 secularizes it into the simply imperturbable: — 
 
 He like was to behold 
 The box-tree, or the aspis dead and cold. 
 
 The Knight's Tale. 
 
 THE HOLLY. 
 
 So with that supreme evergreen, old England's indomi- 
 table holly, the only wild one that shines — Shakspere, 
 every Christmas-tide, admired its coral bracelets just 
 as to-day we do ourselves. Branches of holly were 
 employed in the Elizabethan period, by old usage, as the 
 fitting symbol of radiant victory, life triumphing over 
 death, glossy leaves and scarlet berries defeating frost 
 and snow; thus of the great Advent which Christmas 
 commemorates. Still he makes mention of it only once, 
 in the little song in As You Like It, ii., 7. But who is 
 the singer, and where is it sung? In Arden, by Amiens, 
 
The Birch. 63 
 
 who received his inspiration from its beautiful " green," 
 and found in the presence of nature's wild holly 
 abounding satisfaction. 
 
 THE BIRCH. 
 
 Notwithstanding its incomparable grace of figure, the 
 
 delicate and unique whiteness of the stem, and the 
 
 lightsomeness of the depending tresses — features which 
 
 render it "the lady of the woods," Shakspere again 
 
 speaks of the birch only once, and even then only for 
 
 what it supplies. "I have not red," says old Turner, "of 
 
 any virtue the birch hath in physic. Howbeit it serveth 
 
 for many good uses, and for none better than for betynge 
 
 of stubborn boys, that either bye, or will not learn." — 
 
 (Herbal, 1551;. 
 
 Fond fathers, 
 Having bound up the threatening twigs of birch, 
 Only to stick it in their children's sight 
 For terror, not to use ; in time the rod 
 Becomes more mock'd than fear'd. 
 
 Measure for Measure, i., 4. 
 
 In attempting to mend obviously incorrect Shaksperean 
 
 readings, we must take very particular care not to go yet 
 
 further astray. It may be permitted, however, to ask. 
 
 Is it possible that the birch can be the tree intended in 
 
 the very perplexing passage in the Tempest ? — 
 
 And thy broom groves, 
 Whose shadow the dismissed bachelor loves. 
 Being lass-lorn. — (iv., i.) 
 
64 Tlie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Birch-twigs are used for the manufacture of besoms 
 and "brooms" as well as for the stimulation of boys such 
 as old Turner's, and Shakspere may have called the tree, 
 in conformity with a very common custom of language, 
 after the implement manufactured from it Are we sure 
 that he really wTOte "broom"? In any case, that he 
 meant the Spartium Scoparium, cannot for a moment be 
 supposed. The capacities of the Spartium, and its 
 dimensions, even when at the largest, forbid the idea. 
 The birch, on the other hand, would serve the purpose 
 perfectly. Slim in composition, offering the fewest 
 impediments to free movement of any trees accustomed 
 to grow in company, a more suitable retreatthan a grove 
 of birches could hardly be offered to a purposeless, 
 forlorn, and sauntering lover. "Shadow" does not 
 necessarily imply a darkened covert. It is enough to 
 understand, in the present instance, a place of seclusion, 
 similar to Valentine's, 
 
 This shadowy desert, unfrequented wood, 
 I better love than flourishing, peopled towns. 
 Here can I sit alone, unseen of any, 
 And to the nightingale's complaining notes 
 Tune my distresses, and record my woes. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, v., 4. 
 
 THE ASH. 
 
 The ash, reno-mied, like the birch, for the singular 
 beauty of its habit and profile, is also passed over 
 by Shakspere, except in reference to the strength of 
 spear-shafts made from the wood :— 
 
The Elm. 65 
 
 O let me twine 
 Mine arms about that body, where against 
 My grained ash a thousand times hath broke. 
 
 Coriolanus, iv., 5. 
 
 No figure of speech is more common in language (as 
 
 illustrated just above in the probable meaning of 
 
 "broom"), and in that curious verse in Nahum, "The 
 
 fir-trees shall be terribly sliaken'' (iL, 3), the sense being 
 
 as here in Shakspere, the spear-shafts, which in the 
 
 dreadful day foretold, are to be brandished aloft 
 
 THE ELM. 
 
 The elm holds an agreeable place in Shakspere by 
 reason of the beautiful image in the Midsumtner Night's 
 Dream; — 
 
 Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. 
 So doth the woodbine — the sweet honeysuckle — 
 Gently entwist — the female ivy so 
 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. — (iv., I.) 
 
 "Just as the woodbine and the ivy clasp and encircle the 
 tree; so, my love," Titania means, will I, dtuing thy 
 slumbers, embrace thee." In 2Hd Henry the Fourth 
 (ii., 4) a "dead elm" furnishes an odd kind of satirical 
 metaphor; and in the Comedy of Errors, ii., 2, we have 
 an allusion to the practice of the vine-cultivators of 
 ancient Italy, who were accustomed to train their plants 
 to young elm-trees, as many times spoken of in old 
 Roman literature. The passage again represents the 
 elm as masculine, — 
 
 F 
 
66 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine, 
 Whose weakness, married to thy stronger state, 
 Malves me with thy strength to communicate, 
 
 with the addition of a most delicately beautiful setting 
 forth of one of the loveliest instincts of woman, — that 
 one, which arising upon the strength and tenacity of her 
 affections, leads her always to cling to her mate, whose 
 own great pride is to render support. No one ever 
 preserved more thoroughly than Shakspere in pictures of 
 the relation of the sexes, the perfect and healthy balance 
 of manhood and womanhood which it pleased God to 
 design in the beginning. 
 
 THE ELDER. 
 
 The homely, old-fashioned elder of the hedgerow, and 
 of hillsides othenvise untenanted by an arborescent 
 plant, would become familiar to Shakspere in his boy- 
 hood, for is it not this to which every lad brought up in 
 the country resorts for toys and pop-guns? One can 
 easily imagine the recollection of the sports of his school- 
 days that would suggest the image in Henry the Fifth, — 
 "That's a perilous shot out of an elder-gun, that a poor 
 and private displeasure can do against a monarch" 
 (iv., i); and that other in the Merry Wives, where the 
 pith, so light and compressible, so easily forced out, 
 stands for the reverse of "heart-of-oak," — "what says my 
 .^sculapius, my Galen, my heart of elder?" (ii., 3). The 
 copious, creamy bloom of the tree, precisely concurrent 
 
The Sycamore. 67 
 
 with midsummer, is somewhat honey-scented; the rich 
 black-purple clusters of fruit recommend themselves for a 
 kind of wine or cordial; — in such company we do not 
 look for unpleasing scent of foliage; so much the more 
 remarkable therefore the contrasted character adverted 
 to in Cymbdine, where the tree supplies a metaphor quite 
 seasonable : — 
 
 And let the stinking elder, grief, entwine. 
 
 His perishing root with the increasing vine. — (iv., 2.) 
 
 In Lovis Labour's Lost the poet shows his acquaintance 
 with the old tradition preserved by Sir John Mandeville, 
 playing at the same time, upon the twofold meaning of 
 the word; 
 
 HOLOFERNES : Begin, sir, you are my elder. 
 
 BiRON : Well followed : Judas was hanged on an elder. 
 
 (v., 2.) 
 
 Lastly, in Titus Andronkus, the play one would gladly see 
 dismissed altogether from the Shaksperean brotherhood, 
 an elder marks the scene of a tragic incident; 
 
 Look for thy reward 
 Among the nettles at the elder-tree. 
 
 This is the pit, and this the elder-tree. — (ii., 4.) 
 
 THE SYCAMORE. 
 
 The sycamore holds a place intermediate between the 
 trees, wild in our o\vn island, of which Shakspere had 
 distinct personal knowledge, and those which like the 
 
68 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 cedar, the cypress, and the myrtle, he talks of only from 
 hearsay. Now universally diffused, and so thoroughly 
 naturalized as to be included in the catalogues of 
 indigenous British plants, in Shakspere's time the syca- 
 more had been quite recently introduced from the 
 mountainous parts of central Europe; and although he 
 may have seen it in one of the " walks and places of 
 pleasure of noblemen," where, according to Gerard, 
 1596, it was "specially planted for the shadow's sake,'' 
 the probabilities are that he used the name purely by 
 adoption. Every one has enjoyed the coolness given in 
 summer by the abundant vine-like leaves, recalling, while 
 in their green shade, the beautiful picture in the .^Eneid, 
 
 ' Piiiea silva mihi multos dilecta per annos, 
 Lucus in arce fuit summa, quo sacra ferebant, 
 Nigranti picea, trabibusque obscurus acernis.* 
 
 Every one is prepared thereby for the corresponding 
 
 picture in Lovers Labour's Lost, 
 
 Under the cool shade of a sj'camore 
 
 I thought to close muie eyes for half an hour — (v. ,2), 
 
 and can appreciate, in equal measure, the preference 
 felt for this charming tree by Juliet's lover; — 
 
 Underneath the grove of sycamore 
 
 That westward roveth from the city's side, 
 
 So earl}' walking did I see your soil 
 
 Komeo and yuliet, i., i. 
 
 * "Upon a lofty mountain stood a piny wood, by me through 
 many years beloved, embowered with dark-hued firs, and the shady 
 boughs of the sycamore, wliither they brought me sacred offerings. " 
 (ix., 85-S7.) 
 
The Sycamore. 69 
 
 There is a trifle of lingering doubt, after all, whether 
 while reading these two passages it would not be better 
 to think of the Plane, the tree of immemorial honour 
 with the ancients in respect of the delightfulness of the 
 shade it offers, and certain to have been known to 
 Shakspere by repute. To this day the sycamore has for 
 its appellation with the scientific, "Pseudo-platanus," or 
 "the mock plane." "Sycamore" itself denoted several 
 different things — the scriptural one, a species of fig; — 
 in Matthiolus, the melia; in Chaucer, in the Flower 
 and the Leaf, some kind of scandent shrub, probably the 
 honeysuckle. There is no reason however to doubt that 
 with Shakspere, if, just possibly, not the Acer Pseudo- 
 platanus, it would unquestionably be the yet nobler tree, 
 Platanus orientalis. No tree, in its general character, is 
 more imposing than the plane. There are loftier trees, 
 and greener ones, and more flowery ones, but few present 
 so large an aggregate of excellent qualities, these latter 
 including a certain air of gentleness and repose, and a 
 capacity for affording a peculiarly agreeable shelter from 
 the heat of the sun, though no tree produces fewer leaves 
 in proportion to the general plenitude of the foliage. 
 The height is ordinarily about seventy feet; the boughs 
 spread widety, but not in disproportion to the altitude ; 
 the leaves, individually, resemble those of the vine, but 
 the clefts are much deeper, and the points are remarkably 
 acute. The flowers are borne in globular clusters, these 
 becoming spheres of brown seed, which dangle through- 
 out the winter from the bare branches, as if ready and 
 
70 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 waiting to drop to the ground, and present a singular 
 spectacle, the only one of its kind among forest trees. 
 The original species — the Platanus oricntalis — appears 
 to have been introduced into this country by Lord 
 Chancellor Verulam. Shakspere may have seen it. In 
 any case the genuine sycamore has no greater claim 
 upon the poets. Mention of the latter is made also in 
 Barbara's "song of willow" (Othello, iv., 3). 
 
THE WILD-FLOWERS. 
 
 Honi soil qui mal y pense, write 
 In emerald tufts, flowers purple, blue, and white, 
 Like sapphire, pearl, and rich embroidery. 
 
 Merry V/ives, v., 5- 
 
 S Shakspere's favourite trees were those of 
 the woods in which as a boy he was 
 accustomed to wander, absorbing "sweet 
 influence," so are his wild-flowers those of 
 the Warwickshire meadows, trodden, we 
 may be sure, with equal delight. The green fields 
 around his native village, the quiet lanes, the borders of 
 the pretty streamlets carrying bubbles to the Avon, were 
 their homes. Here it was that he first plucked the 
 "pale primrose," the freckled cowslip and the early 
 daffodih To people who love him it is a source of 
 perennial enjoyment that in these sweet old sanctuaries 
 
72 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 of natural beauty, Shakspere's chosen wild-flowers still 
 abound, their original and simple loveUness unchanged. 
 Time, that deals so hardly with many stouter things, 
 is merciful to the fragile field-flower; everything that 
 Shakspere talks of abides in the old haunts, renewing 
 itself in beautiful annual flow. No part of our island is 
 richer than Warwickshire in genuine wild-flowers, so that 
 again it is a matter of thankfulness that Shakspere lived 
 not only when he did, but in his youthful days just where 
 he did; not only in the country, but in the very heart of 
 "merrie England," and in a region of peculiarly pleasing 
 self-adornment. He does not speak, as already said, 
 of any considerable number of different species. Inclu- 
 ding the two or three hedgerow flowering shrubs which 
 count, by a kind of prescriptive right, with the factors of 
 the wild garland, the honeysuckle to wit, and the 
 sweet-brier; including also some half-dozen of the inhabi- 
 tants of the border-land between weed and wild-flower 
 of which he makes mention, fiirze and heather for 
 example, the total is still barely a score. More, in truth, 
 are not wanted. The bouquet, as we have it, is unique, 
 and for perfection asks none besides. The charm of a 
 great poet's flower-scenery consists not in the abundance 
 or the variety of the objects mentioned, but in the 
 touches bestowed on a few, especially when those few 
 belong to the ranks of the "common." One of the most 
 trustworthy tests, perhaps the final test, of the great poet, 
 is that he makes the old-fashioned seem new, and the 
 unpretentious rare and golden; showing us, as he moves 
 
The Wild-flowers. 73 
 
 along, that the most ordinary things of God's bestowal 
 are solar centres; giving life to the inanimate, and voice, 
 and even song, to that which previously was silent 
 When this is done supremely, as by Shakspere, wise men 
 are content. There is a very remarkable difference also 
 in the degree of frequency with which he mentions these 
 twenty or so of different species. Of allusions to the 
 violet there are no fewer than eighteen examples; the 
 cowslip is noticed on six occasions; the orchis, the 
 harebell, the Lady-smock, and the dead-nettle appear, on 
 the other hand, but once — z. matter, it may be, after all, 
 for congratulation, since when the instance stands alone, 
 the mind dwells upon it with so much the more interest 
 and curiosity. In one or two cases the application is 
 not clear. What "crow-flowers" are, and "cuckoo- 
 flowers," is still unproven ; probably they are not 
 intended to be taken as special names, but as generic 
 terms. Three considerations are always of great value 
 when there is uncertainty. Is the plant we believe to be 
 intended, one that grows naturally in Warwickshire, and 
 that Shakspere may in all likelihood have been familiar 
 with? Secondly, what light can we obtain from the old 
 herbalists, and from contemporary literature? And 
 lastly, as Shakspere never confuses the flowers of 
 different seasons, what company is it found in? That 
 "oxlip" and "wild thyme" stand side-by-side in a well- 
 known charming song is no objection, since we are not 
 required to suppose that the "bank" referred to was 
 made lovely by both at once. Shakspere's flowers 
 
74 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 are in almost every instance those of the spring, 
 though his weeds belong almost exclusively to summer 
 and autumn. 
 
 THE VIOLET. 
 
 Over this immemorial and delicious little flower, the 
 Viola odorata, so far as regards Shakspere, happily there 
 can never be any demur. We have to thank him, note 
 at the outset, not only for incomparable allusions to it, 
 but for giving the name a fixity it never before possessed. 
 Prior to the time of Shakspere, "violet" was one of the 
 appellations borne by a dozen different flowers, some of 
 which still retain it, as in the case of the "water violet," 
 Sottonia palustris, the Dames' or "Damascus violet," 
 Hesperis matrotialis, and the Calathian violet, GeTttiana 
 PneumonantJu. Fuchsius, in 1542, figures the snow- 
 drop as "Viola alba:" Lobel describes the plant 
 now called Honesty — that beautiful crucifer Avith the 
 large oval silvery shields, so much valued, when diy, 
 for parlour decoration, as Viola Lunaria major; the Can- 
 terbury-bell was then Viola Mariana, the sweet-williams, 
 Viola barbata. This wide diversity of application was 
 by inheritance from the Romans, with whom viola was 
 very seldom special; and more remotely, by inheritance 
 from the ancient Greeks, whose 'lov, though it may have 
 included the Shaksperean flower, most certainly meant 
 many things besides, though the idea of purple seems to 
 have been paramount, as when little Evadne, in Pindar, 
 
The Violet. 75 
 
 is said to be "ion-haired,"* having tresses, that is, of an 
 impurpled raven-black Is it nothing, then, to be glad 
 of that the wanderer of nearly three thousand years at 
 last should find a resting-place, and this the gift of 
 Shakspere ? What he would have done with the other 
 "violets," had they called for mention, does not signify. 
 Enough is it that he has fastened the name to the best of 
 all. Shakspere, in so doing, further rendered the violet 
 truly his own. When will language be as quick to thank 
 the poets, who gave anchorage to names, as it is to 
 honour the inventors of new arts and implements? Thus 
 to commeir.orate Galvani, and Vernier, and Daguerre is 
 most right and proper. Objects of natural beauty over 
 which genius has cast her spell, are quite as worthy of 
 appellations that shall remind us, whenever used, of the 
 great and wise of past ages — the men who taught us how 
 to see them, and how to appreciate their loveliness and 
 significance. The day may yet arrive when instead of 
 "the common daisy" it will be "Chaucer's daisy," and 
 when people shall say, gratefully, not "the common 
 violet," but " Shakspere' s," perchance even "Perdita's." 
 Shakspere was no stranger to the ancient celebrity of the 
 name. The most charming of all the allusions to the 
 flower he loved so well is that one in which he connects 
 it with classical fable : — 
 
 O Proserpina, / 
 
 For the flowers now, that frighted, thou let'st fall 
 
 From Dis's wagon ! 
 
 * Ufii<iTfux<i%, Olympic, vi., 30. 
 
76 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Violets dim, 
 But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes, 
 Or Cytherea's breath ! 
 
 What the myth intended, we do not know. Ovid, who 
 relates it, says they were violets and lilies — 
 
 Quo dum Proserpina luco 
 Ludit, et aut violas, aut Candida lilia carpit. 
 
 Met., v., 391-2. 
 
 Neither did Shakspere know. To him it was enough 
 that it gave him a chance to dart at once into our souls, 
 embedding old England's choicest -nild-flower in the 
 most romantic of primaeval fairy tales. Shakspere never 
 imitates or copies for the mere sake of imitatioiL One 
 of the most delightful of his characteristics is that, 
 without being a scholar, certainly without being up to 
 the highest level of the scholarly age in which he lived, 
 he still knew enough of the power and splendour of 
 classical verse and classical story to have his own fancy 
 enriched and stimulated by it. When Shakspere copies 
 or borrows, if either term can be justly applied to the use 
 he makes of his predecessors, he repays a hundredfold in 
 the method of the use. Reading in ancient dress the 
 wild old poetic fable to which he adverts, he takes just 
 so much of it as will allow of rejuvenescence in the 
 brimming founts of his own imagination. Perdita's are 
 not Ovid's flowers, for those may be anything we like 
 to fancy: hers are old England's violet, and nothing 
 besides. These it is which Shakspere gives us; illustra- 
 ting once again that other grand quality of the work of 
 
The Violet. yj 
 
 the master whereby we feel when in his presence that we 
 do not so much hear about things, or read about them, 
 as possess them. 
 
 Whether Shakspere was master enough of Latin to go 
 to the original for this and other tales it must be admitted 
 is an open question. In any case he would find the story 
 in one of the many reprints of Arthur Gelding's transla- 
 tion of the Metamorphoses, originally published in 1567. 
 Ovid, very naturally, was one of the earliest of the old 
 classical authors to receive translation, several besides 
 Golding tiying their hands. But what does it matter, 
 even could it be demonstrated that he was wholly 
 ignorant of any language except his own ? That which 
 is precious in Shakspere, and of incomparably greater 
 importance to us, is the outcome of his o^vn genius, the 
 honey of his own teachings. 
 
 Similar, one cannot but think, is the Shaksperean 
 indebtedness, which yet is no debt, in regard to that 
 most sweet and tender passage in the Fasti, where the 
 poet enjoins us to pay kindly respect to the tombs of the 
 departed by strewing flowers upon them. "They ask,'' 
 he says, "but humble offerings. To them is affection 
 more pleasing than a costly gift. Enough for them are 
 chaplets . . . and plucked violets" (iL, 539). For 
 almost like an echo of these lovely words are the lines 
 in Pericles, where Marina enters with her basketful of 
 mourning tribute : — 
 
 No, no, I will rob Tellus of her weeds. 
 
 To strew thy grave with flowers : the yellows, blues. 
 
78 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The purple violets, and marigolds, 
 Shall, as a chaplet, hang above thy grave 
 While summer days do last. — ^(iv., i.) 
 
 The resemblance to the immortal passage in Cy7nbeline — 
 
 While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
 I'll sweeten thy sad grave, 
 
 may be accepted as a proof that, however little else 
 there may be of Shakspere's in Pericles — a play not 
 included in the first folio — Shakspere is at all events 
 present here. In any case the violets are again English 
 ones, violets definitely, because Shaksperean. 
 An emendation seems to be needed in the line, 
 
 Shall, as a cJiaplet, hang above thy grave, 
 
 for although chaplets of the kind so called to-day, were 
 undoubtedly used in Shakspere's time, in funeral cere- 
 monies, as illustrated in Hamlet, v., 2, 
 
 Yet here she is allowed her virgin crants. 
 
 Her maiden strewments, and the bringing home 
 
 Of bell and burial, 
 
 the sense is that which elsewhere in Shakspere is 
 expressed by "carpet" "Carpet," in all likelihood, was 
 the word originally written. Carpets, in the modern 
 sense of the word had not, in the Shaksperean times, 
 come into use. Their place was held by rushes; and 
 "carpet" was then the name of a richly embroidered 
 table-cloth, as in the Taming of tlie Shrew, iv., i : — 
 " Is supper ready, the house trimmed, rushes strewed ? 
 Be . . the carpets laid, and everything in order?" 
 
 A beautiful "carpet" of this character, and not a 
 
The Violet. 79 
 
 "chaplet," is what Marina proposes to place upon the 
 grave, the green grass of which is inlaid by her with the 
 flowers. This is the view taken of the passage by Mr. 
 Chas. Knight.* Dr. Schmidt, in the Shakspere lexicon, 
 also approves it, placing the passage alphabetically, not 
 under "chaplet," but under "carpet." That Dionyza, a 
 minute afterwards, says to Marina, "Give me yoxa wreath 
 of flowers," in no degree sustains the "chaplet" hypo- 
 thesis. The wreath would be brought, as in Hamlet, not 
 as the sole and exclusive offering, but as supplementing 
 the "strewments." The established practice in the 
 Shaksperean times was plainly to scatter flowers, as from 
 a basket, as illustrated in King Henry the Eighth, 
 
 When I am dead, good wench, 
 Let me be used mth honour ; strew me o'er 
 With maiden flowers, that all the world may know, 
 I was a chaste wife to my grave. — (iv., 2.) 
 
 Again in Cymbeline, iv., 2, and again in Romeo and Juliet; 
 
 Sweet flower, with flowers I strew thy bridal bed. 
 Sweet tomb, that in thy circuit dost contain 
 The perfect model of eternity. — (v., 3.) 
 
 * '^Carpet. So the old copies. The modem reading is <:^a//i^. 
 But it is evident that the poet was thinking of the green mound that 
 marks the last resting-place of the humble, and not of the sculptured 
 tomb to be adorned with wreaths. Upon the grassy grave Marina 
 will hang a carpet of flowers — she will strew flowers, she has before 
 said. The carpet of Shakspere's time was a piece of tapestry, 
 or embroidery, spread upon tables ; and the real flowers with which 
 Marina will cover the grave of her friend might have been, in her 
 imagination, so intertwined as to resemble a carpet, usually bright 
 with flowers of the needle. " 
 
8o The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 "He came," says the little page, giving an account of all 
 that happened that mournful night, 
 
 He came with flowers to strew his lady's grave. 
 
 " Grants," a word found nowhere else in English litera- 
 ture, is a varied spelling of the German and Danish 
 "cranz," a garland. That it should occur in the same 
 play as hebenon, is at least a curious coincidence. 
 
 Similar yet again, one carmot but think, is the echo o f 
 classical verse when Laertes says in Hamlet, 
 
 V 
 
 'Lay her in the earth. 
 And from her fair and unpolluted flesh 
 May violets spring. I tell thee, churlish priest, 
 A minist'ring angel shall my sister be. 
 When thou liest howling. — (v., I.) 
 
 For Persius, speaking of a deceased poet, says: — 
 
 Nunc non cinis ille poetae 
 Felix ? non levior cippus nunc imprimit ossa ? 
 Laudunt convivse : nunc non e manibus illis. 
 Nunc non e tumulo fortunataque favilla 
 Nascentur violjE ? — (i. , 36-40. ) 
 
 We must be careful, at all times, never to over-estimate 
 Shakspere's particular knowledge, whether of nature, of 
 science, or of books — we must be quite as careful also 
 never to confound simple coincidences with adaptations. 
 Persius may have been read by Shakspere; many 
 editions of the famous satirist had already been published; 
 the volume, in an age so literary as the Elizabethan, was 
 unquestionably within his reach; Ben Jonson distinctly 
 quotes from the prologue in the Poetaster; it is quite 
 
The Violet. 8i 
 
 possible, therefore, that the Hamlet imagery may have 
 been suggested by the Roman: — ^note, however, how 
 much we gain once more through Shakspere having 
 made the appellation specific. Persius employed viola in 
 the same broad, collective, indefinite sense which it holds 
 in Ovid, as proved by a later passage (v., 182). In 
 Shakspere we have the violet tpsissima, and the lines 
 before us, by its introduction, acquire all the freshness 
 and the fragrance of the morning. 
 
 The inmost sense of Laertes' words is that the 
 pure and chaste, though it may be veiled awhile, is 
 inextinguishable. The violet is introduced as their 
 offspring, because the emblem, in the middle ages, and 
 probably ever since the time of the Troubadours and the 
 Crusaders, of faithfulness, constancy, loyalty, everything 
 summed up in that beautiful old Greek word eharadeia — 
 
 Violet is for faithfulnesse. 
 
 Which in me shall abide ; 
 Hoping likewise that from your heart 
 
 You will not let it slide. 
 And will continue in the same. 
 
 As you have nowe begunne ; 
 And then for ever to abide. 
 
 Then you my heart have wonne.* 
 
 * A Handefull of Pleasant Delites, 1584. One of the popular 
 song books of the first half of the reign of Elizabeth, originally 
 published in 1566. The present stanza is the seventh of fifteen con- 
 stituting "A Nosfgaie alwaies sweet, for Louers to send for Tokens 
 of loue, at Newyeres tide, or for fairings, as they in their minds 
 shall be disposed to write." Shakspere was certainly acquainted 
 with it. 
 
82 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Ophelia herself has adverted to it in that intensely 
 mournful utterance, while distributing her flowers among 
 the company around — "I would give you some violets, 
 but they withered all when my father died" (iv., 5). 
 The poet's highest function, as we all know, is not so 
 much to describe nature as to insoul it. How supremely 
 beautiful in the present instance the imparting to the 
 little wild-flower the deepest and saddest of human 
 emotions; it perishes overwhelmed by grief and dismay. 
 
 But we have not yet done with Perdita. Why "violets 
 dim?" Why "sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes?" 
 and yet again, than "Cytherea's breath?" The eyes are 
 the acknowledged "windows of the soul." Shakspere 
 transfers the name, by permitted meton)Tny, to the lids, 
 a favourite usage with him, for we have it in Romeo and 
 Juliet: — 
 
 The roses in thy lips and cheeks shall fade 
 
 To paly ashes ; thine eyes' windows fall 
 
 Like death, when he shuts up tlie day of life. — (iv., i.) 
 
 In Venus and Adonis: — 
 
 Her two blue windows faintly she upheaveth. 
 
 And again in Cymbeline, ii., 2 : — 
 
 Under these windows, white and azure-laced 
 With blue of heaven's own tinct,* 
 
 in which last exquisite picture we are reminded that 
 
 when the skin is exceptionally white and translucent, the 
 
 * Often wrongly punctuated, "white and azure, laced," etc. 
 Azure, instead of being followed by a comma, is part of the obvious 
 compound azure-laced. 
 
The Violet. 83 
 
 veins show like a delicate faint blue net-work. The 
 larger and rounder the eye, the more beautiful, of 
 necessity, the azure lace. Eyes and eyelids of exactly 
 this description were possessed by the most celebrated 
 woman of Shakspere's own period — not of royal birth — 
 Elizabeth Hardwicke, Countess of Shrewsbury, the irre- 
 sistible though unloveable lady whose fourth husband 
 ■was custodian, during many years, of the ill-fated Mary 
 "Elizabeth Hardwicke,'' says her biographer,* "had one 
 of those delicate complexions through the transparency 
 of which the violet veins gleam beneath the skin in 
 tender waving threads, giving a peculiarly beautiful tint to 
 the forehead and eyelids." Mark the word "tint," Shak- 
 spere's own. Network produced by some deeper hue, 
 absolute network, is reserved for the henbane and the 
 pencilled geranium. This he does not mean. It never 
 occurs in the violet, which in the white variety, so 
 elegantly pointed to in the epithet "dim,"t is, neverthe- 
 less often suffused with blue. Whatever the prevailing 
 colour of the petals, the streaks which spring from the 
 centre show plainly, as referred to particularly in Venus 
 and Adonis: — 
 
 These blue-veined violets whereon we lean. 
 Never can blab, nor know not what we mean. 
 
 Elizabeth Hardwicke's countenance was very possibly 
 not unknown to him, and before his mind. In any case 
 
 *Miss Costello, Memoirs of Eminent Englishwomen, vol. i., p. lo. 
 + Is it possible that Shakspere here gives new life to the 
 "pallentes violas" of Virgil, Eel. ii., 47 ? 
 
84 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 he knew that Juno, queen of heaven, was not only 
 
 majestic in figure and stature, but distinguished for the 
 
 beauty and the prominence of her great eyes, the lids of 
 
 which must have been ample indeed. Homer calls 
 
 her /SowTTie, "ox-eyed," an epithet not altogether pretty 
 
 perhaps, in prosaic view; enviable, nevertheless, and 
 
 varied into the name of a celebrated radiant flower — 
 
 the ancient Buphthalmum, the modem "ox-eye daisy." 
 
 "Well," says Leigh Hunt, "does it suit the eyes of that 
 
 goddess, since she may be supposed, with all her beauty, 
 
 to want a certain humanity. Her large eyes look at you 
 
 with a royal indifference — Shakspere has kissed them, 
 
 and made them human, shutting up their pride."* 
 
 Every man knows of a voice that is sweeter than all 
 
 music; yea, of a footfall that is melody; he knows, too, 
 
 where to find fragrance sweeter than flowers can jaeld : — 
 
 The forward violet thus did I chide : 
 
 Sweet thief, whence did thou steal thy sweet that smells. 
 
 If not from my love's breath ? — Sonnet, xcix. 
 
 So in Cymbeline: — 
 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander. 
 Out-sweetened not thy breath. 
 
 What the lover finds in his betrothed, the ancients 
 
 thought of their goddesses : — 
 
 Non Beroe vobis, non h^c Rhoeteia, matres. 
 Est Dorycli conjux : dirina signa decoris, 
 Ardentesque notate oculos : qui spiritus illi. 
 Qui vultus, vocisve sonus, vel gressus eunti ! 
 
 ^tieid, v., 646. 
 
 *JIen, Women, and Books, p. 149. 
 
The Violet. 85 
 
 Iris is spoken of here, but the same attributes were given 
 to Venus, many times in the ^neid called Cytherea, 
 since it was near the island of Cythera, adjacent to the 
 Peloponnesus, that, according to the ancient fable, she 
 rose out of the smiling sea; — on two other occasions so 
 called also by Shakspere, 
 
 And Cytherea, all in sedges hid, 
 
 Which seem to move and wanton with her breath. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, Induction. 
 
 Cytherea ! 
 How bravely thou becom'st thy bed, fresh lily ! 
 
 Cymhdim, ii., 2. 
 
 By "C3^herea's breath" we are thus to understand the 
 choicest imaginable of odours, surpassed in sweetness, 
 nevertheless, by the breath of old England's little wild- 
 flower. 
 
 Allusions to the perfume of the violet occur in several 
 admired passages : — 
 
 Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp, 
 To guard* a title that was rich before, 
 
 * " To guard," used m a sense now obsolete, though many times 
 met with in Shakspere, the sense being first to protect the edge of 
 anything, as the garrison does the castle-wall; then, as defence is 
 always ornamental, to adorn the edges of articles of dress with lace 
 or other decorative material; then, metaphorically, to glorify a 
 man's reputation, character, or "title." Thus, in Hie Merchant of 
 Venice, iL, 2. : — 
 
 Give him a livery 
 More guarded than his fellows. 
 
 So in King Hairy VIII., Prologue: — 
 
86 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 
 
 To throw a perfume on the violet ; 
 
 To smooth the ice, or add another hue 
 
 Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 
 
 To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish. 
 
 Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess. — King John, iv., 2. 
 
 That strain again ! It had a dying fall ; 
 O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south 
 That breathes upon a bank of violets, |/ 
 
 Stealing and giving odour. — Twelfth Night, i., 1. 
 
 The sweet south, in the Twelfth Night verses, though 
 
 very generally accepted, is one of the doubtful phrases 
 
 still in dispute. In all the early editions of Shakspere 
 
 the words are printed " like the sweet sound" the 
 
 emendation having been made by Pope. Those who 
 
 contend that in the manuscript it must have been 
 
 " sound," point to other passages in which Shakspere 
 
 represents the south wind as the very contrary of 
 
 "sweet." In As You Like It, for instance — - 
 
 You foolish shepherd, wherefore do you follow her. 
 Like foggy south, puffing with wind and rain ? — (iii., 5.) 
 
 It is further contended that if he really wrote "south,'' 
 it would not be as signifying the south wind, but in the ■ 
 sense of " sough,'' used provincially to denote the " soft 
 susumis of the breeze." Pope's proposed correction is 
 thought to be sustained by a passage in the Arcadia of 
 
 A fellow 
 In a long motley coat, guarded with yellow. 
 When in Much Ado, i. , 2, Benedick says to the Prince of Arragon, 
 " The body of your discourse is sometimes guarded witli fragments," 
 he means that the royal conversation is sometimes frivolous. 
 
The Violet. Zj 
 
 Shakspere's contemporary. Sir Philip Sidney: — "Her 
 breath is more sweet than a gentle south-west wind 
 which comes sweeping over flowery fields and shadowed 
 waters." Perhaps Shakspere may have had in his mind 
 that beautiful verse in the Song of Solomon — " Come, 
 thou south wind; blow upon my garden, that the odours 
 thereof may flow out" (iv., i6). "South," rather than 
 "sound" is acceptable also from its bringing the passage 
 into agreeable harmony with another in Cymbeline, quite 
 as familiar: — 
 
 O thou goddess, 
 Thou divine Nature, how thyself thou blazon'st 
 In these two princely boys ! They are as gentle 
 As zephyrs, blowing beneath the violet, 
 Not waging his sweet head ; and yet as rough, 
 Their royal blood unchaf 'd, as the rudest wind 
 That by the top doth take the mountain pine, 
 And make him stoop to the vale. — (iv., 2.) 
 
 In two places the violet is employed metaphorically: — 
 
 Welcome, my son ! Who are the violets now. 
 That strew the green lap of the new-come spring ? 
 
 Richard tlu Sec07id, v. , 2. 
 
 "Who are the courtiers, that is, who attend on Boling- 
 broke, now in the spring-time of his reign?" The 
 other instance is in that profoundly moving scene, in 
 pathos and deUcacy of finish unsurpassed an3rwhere in 
 Shakspere, where poor dove-like Ophelia, most spiritudle 
 of all his conceptions of feminine grace, stainless as the 
 pearl of the deep sea, fragile as the blue flax blossom, 
 capable herself only of innocence and celestial trustful- 
 
BB The Shaksper6 Flora, 
 
 ness, and who never told her love, is warned by her 
 brother not to believe too confidently : — 
 
 For Hamlet, and the trifling of his favour, 
 Hold it a fashion, and a toy in blood ; 
 A violet in the youth of primy nature. 
 Forward, not permanent, sweet, not lasting, 
 The perfume and suppliance of a minute — 
 No more ! 
 
 Ophelia : No more but so ? 
 
 Laertes : Think it no more I 
 
 Still she is unconvinced ; woman's faith, where the heart 
 has once gone over, is impregnable; her father himself 
 scarcely makes deeper impression : — 
 
 Ophelia : My lord, he hath importun'd me with love 
 
 In honourable fashion. 
 PoLONius : Ay, fashion you may call it. Go to ; go to. 
 Ophelia : And hath given countenance to his speech, my lord. 
 
 With almost all the holy vows of heaven. 
 POLONIUS : Ay, springes to catch woodcocks. 
 
 The end we all know. There is no need to go further 
 towards it at present. Compare, rather, the tender hnes 
 in Sonnet xii. : — 
 
 When I behold the violet past prime. 
 And sable curls all silver'd o'er with wliite. 
 
 Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
 Tliat thou among the wastes of time must go. 
 Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake, 
 And die as fast as they see others grow. 
 
 "Prime" and "primy,"' in the above passages, signify 
 of or belonging to the Spring, as again in Sonnet xcvi. : — 
 
The Violet. 89 
 
 The teeming autumn, big with rich increase, 
 Bearing the wanton burden of the prime. 
 
 " Forward," in turn, means " early," as in Sonnet xcix., 
 above quoted "Favour" means appearance or com- 
 plexion, thence the countenance, as in many other 
 places. 
 
 My life upon't, young though thou art, thine eye 
 Hath stay'd upon some favour that it loves. 
 
 Twelfth Night, iL, 4. 
 So in As You Like It : — 
 
 The boy is fair. 
 Of female favour, and bestows himself 
 Like a ripe sister. — (iv., 3.) 
 
 And in Pericles : — 
 
 Ah, how your favour's changed ! — (iv. i.) 
 
 The remaining allusions to the violet, making the total 
 of eighteen, occur in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, 
 iL, 2, in Oberon's little song, "I know a bank," upon 
 which, in its season. 
 
 The nodding violet grows ; 
 in CymbeliTie, L, 6, 
 
 The violets, cowslips, and the primroses. 
 Bear to my closet ; 
 
 in King He/iry the Fifth, iv., i, "I think the king is but 
 a man as I am; the violet smells to him as it doth to 
 me;" in Measure for Measure, iL, z. 
 
 It is I, 
 That lying by the violet, in the sun. 
 Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, 
 Comipt with virtuous season ; 
 
90 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 in Lovis Labour's Lost, v., 2, 
 
 When daisies pied, and violets blue. 
 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 
 And Lady-smocks, all silver-white. 
 Do paint the meadows with delight, 
 
 where, as violets, definitely so called, never grow in the 
 open "meadows," we are to understand, by the latter 
 word, in regard to these flowers, the country in general; 
 and, on a second occasion. In Venus and Adonis, 
 
 Who, when he lived, his breath and beauty set 
 Gloss on the rose, smeU to the violet 
 
THE PANSY. 
 
 My crown is in my heart, not on my head ; 
 Nor decked with diamonds and Indian stones, 
 Nor to be seen : — my crown is called Content. 
 
 ^rd Hairy the Sixth, iii., i. 
 
 HE pansy, Viola tricolor, is, like the violet, 
 a genuine English wild-flower, coining 
 up abundantly in dry waste places, 
 especially where the soil has been 
 ploughed, and blooming freely from 
 April till October. There can be no doubt that 
 it was one of the first to be brought into the garden, 
 where the form and colours would soon improve. 
 All the early botanists make mention of it as a well- 
 known plant, some giving rude woodcut representations, 
 as Matthiolus, in the very curious Epitome de Plantis, 
 printed at Florence in 1586, in which volume it is called 
 
92 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Flos Trinitaiis. The author adds that the French name 
 is "pens^," whence, very obviously, the Shaksperean 
 one, though when first employed in our own country 
 there is no evidence to show. That continental names 
 should accompany flowers brought as exotics across the 
 Channel, as in the case of the sweet-william, originally 
 the sweet oeillet (of which latter word " william " is a 
 corruption), would be next to a matter of course. It is 
 curious, however, that an indigenous flower, named 
 already by the Anglo-Saxons, should receive, as in the 
 present instance, a new one of foreign birth. Why called 
 by a name so poetical is likewise unknown, the tradition 
 not having come do^vn, though it may reasonably be 
 supposed to have been extant in the Elizabethan age. 
 The derivation, as of so many other picturesque names, 
 belongs to that beautiful department, not of our powers, 
 but of our inability, which is concerned with the best 
 and most precious knowledge. To find reasons for the 
 prosaic feelings and actions of life, to understand low 
 and vulgar things, is easy enough : ask the heart, on the 
 other hand, why it loves, why a dozen years of absence 
 make no difference to an inmost affection, and it is 
 mute ; — it knows only that faithfulness is a kind of 
 sunshine, and, like mercy, " tmce blessed," 
 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes. 
 
 Just so with the richest part of language ; there is a 
 romance in it to which the dictionary gives no index. 
 That some sweet and pretty superstition or fabled 
 
The Pansy. 93 
 
 attribute lies within the old French name, derived, it 
 would seem, etymologically, from pensare, to weigh (in 
 the mind), whence also " pensive,'' we may be sure, in 
 truth, from the use made of it in Hamlet; for Shakspere, 
 though fond of a verbal conceit, would never place one 
 upon the lips of poor distracted Ophelia. The passage 
 again counts with the most touching in his works. The 
 king, the queen, Laertes, and various nobles are in con- 
 versation ; suddenly she enters, " dressed fantastically 
 with straws and flowers," present in all her loveliness of 
 
 form and feature, but her mind ? 
 
 Laertes : O heat, dry up my brain ! Teai-s seven times salt. 
 
 Bum out the sense and virtue of mine eye ! 
 
 By heaven, thy madness shall be paid by weight. 
 
 Till our scale turn the weight O rose of May ! 
 
 Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia ! 
 
 O heavens ! is't possible, a young maid's wits 
 
 Should be as mortal as an old man's life ? 
 
 Nature is fine in love, and while 'tis fine. 
 
 It sends some precious instance of itself 
 
 After the thing it loves. 
 
 Ophelia sings; she utters she knows not what; then 
 looking round, with a gleam of returning intellect, 
 distributes her little gifts. Her soul is with Hamlet, far 
 away, for whom she possibly mistakes Laertes, and she 
 begins with talking to him. " There's rosemary, that's 
 for remembrance; pray you, love, remember." Rosemary 
 was one of the plants always carried at weddings ; the 
 dream of her own bridal is uppermost, but how exquisite 
 the reference without mention of the word ! Then 
 comes the soft, sweet feminine adjuration — look at her 
 
94 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 eyes — "I pray you, love, remember;" followed by "and 
 there is pansies, that's for thoughts.'' " Thoughts? " 
 Here one is constrained to pause, wondering if the 
 pleasant fable can be pointed to in any other of the half- 
 dozen old-fashioned appellations alive still in country 
 places, such as " kiss me," most of which seem to refer, 
 like the violet, in its emblematic character, to the idea of 
 fond attachment, the very root and pivot of which is 
 pensez a moi. Probably in the middle ages the pansy 
 and the violet, flowers of extremely near botanical 
 affinity, would be at times confounded or interchanged. 
 There is no evidence as to the origin of the association, 
 and we have simply to accept it as it stands. Laertes' 
 expression, "Nature is^«if in love," rests upon the curious 
 lateral signification of the word, — in colloquial usage 
 more familiar in the derivative finesse, meaning subtilty 
 of contrivance, great "nicety," of artifice. In All's 
 Well, v., 3, the king says to Parolles, "But thou art too 
 fine in thy evidence; therefore stand aside." In Bacon's 
 Apophthegms, it is used in the complimentary sense — 
 "Your Majesty was too fine for my Lord Burghley." 
 
 The pansy is mentioned many times by the writers of 
 the Shaksperean age, but scarcely two of them agree as 
 to the shape of the word. Spenser, the last minstrel of 
 chivalry, calls it, in the Shepherd's Calendar, the " pretie 
 pawnee." Ben Jonson has 
 
 I pray, what flowere are these ? 
 
 The panzie this ; 
 
 O, that's for lovers' thoughts. 
 
The Pansy. 95 
 
 In William Webbe's Discourse of English Poetrie, 1586, 
 in the course of his translation of Virgil's second eclogue, 
 we have " pancyes." Still another form occurs in Lyte. 
 " The pances or hartes ease,"* he tells us, is also called 
 " love in idleness." 
 
 These various spellings of a name so familiar in the 
 Elizabethan age, show how little stress is ever to be 
 laid upon any spelling of the period. A standard of 
 orthography did not then exist. Authors spelt very 
 much as they liked, and frequently by mere guess. Con- 
 formity was scarcely attainable even by the learned, and 
 when a manuscript was placed in the hands of the 
 compositors, if it did not find them ignorant and incom- 
 petent, it was sure of their carelessness. The men who 
 set the types of the early editions of the Shaksperean plays 
 were not only negligent themselves to a degree which in 
 modem times is astounding; but had no "reader" to 
 set them right before the printing was commenced. It 
 would not be difficult to find examples of several 
 different spellings often in a single play. So far as 
 regards " pansy," the consideration is of no importance. 
 It acquires great weight, however, when the question is 
 raised as to what spelling should we employ to-day when 
 reprinting. For philological purposes, the old is doubt- 
 
 * The name of " heartsease," it may be remarked (not occurring 
 in Shakspere), pertained originally to the wallflower, as may be 
 seen in Turner, ii., 163, and became transferred as an alias to the 
 pansy through an odd misunderstanding, explained at length by 
 Dr. Prior. 
 
96 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 less veiy serviceable; but people in general go to 
 Shakspere for his poetry, his art, his pathos, his infinite 
 humour, his inexhaustible humanity, and these they 
 gather best from the spelling they are used to. Webbe, 
 it may be added, places the pansy in Virgil without 
 authority in the original. No distinct allusion to it occurs 
 in the classical poets, the flower mentioned in the sixth 
 Olympian, 55, thought by some to be the Viola tricolor, 
 being far more probably, as shown by the context, the 
 yellow water-flag. Iris Pseud-acortis, the petals of which, 
 as the author says, are purple-streaked. Pansies would 
 never so mix with waterside reeds as to supply a place of 
 concealment for a little child. The " lutese violae " 
 of Catullus, xLx., 12, cannot be adduced with any greater 
 show of reason. 
 
 On two occasions out of the three on which Shakspere 
 refers to the pansy he calls it by the other old name, just 
 quoted from Ljrte, " love-in-idleness," one which points 
 anew to some unrecorded myth or superstition. The 
 name is considered by the etymologists to be an elonga- 
 tion of " love-in-idle," loving, that is to say, fruitlessly, 
 to no purpose, in vain, these having been the primitive 
 senses of the term, as in Kitig Lear, iv., 4 : — 
 
 Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 
 In our sustaining corn, — 
 
 and very distinctly, many times, in the early versions of 
 Scripture. He prefers it now because the occasion is 
 mirthful, as when Lucentio says, in the Taming of the 
 Shrew, thinking about Bianca : — 
 
The Pansy. 97 
 
 But see, while idly I looked on, 
 
 I found the effect of love-in-idleness. — (i., i.) 
 
 What that effect was is told in the Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, almost the whole of the entertaining 
 circumstances of which intensely poetical drama, unique 
 of its kind, are brought about by the magical virtues of 
 the juice. But do not let us go too fast. First there is 
 the beautiful allegory which, leading up so gently to the 
 little flower, and before we have any idea of what is to 
 come, gives it an interest almost royal. Oberon, king of 
 the fairies, calls to his private and confidential page : — 
 
 My gentle Puck, come hither : Thou remember'st 
 
 Since once I sat upon a promontory, 
 
 And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back. 
 
 Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath. 
 
 That the rude sea gi-ew civil at her song. 
 
 And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
 
 To hear the sea-maid's music ? 
 
 Puck : I remember. 
 
 Oberon : That very time I saw (but thou could'st not). 
 Flying between the cold moon and the earth, 
 Cupid all arm'd : a certain aim he took 
 At a fair vestal, throned by the west, 
 And loos'd his love-shaft smartly from his bow. 
 As it should pierce a hundred thousand hearts : 
 But I might see young Cupid's fiery shaft 
 . Quench'd in the chaste beams of the watery moon. 
 And the imperial votaress passed on, 
 In maiden meditation, fancy free. 
 
 So far the charming introduction, designed, as every one 
 knows, to fix the thoughts upon Queen Elizabeth, the 
 maiden monarch, whose love of elegant compliment, yea, 
 
gS The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 even of flattery, not to say adulation, Shakspere knew 
 full well; and, skilful courtier as he was, lost no oppor- 
 tutdty of gratifying; and who yet, if history be true, was 
 not at all times "fancy free." For we are not to interpret 
 this beautiful phrase by the meaning of " fancy " current 
 to-day — ^some spwrtive conception of the mind, not 
 alwajrs reasonable, more often whimsical, and often con- 
 nected with something ignoble. In the Shaksperean age 
 "fency" was synonymous with "love," and perhaps 
 not imad\-isedly, since the preferences felt by men and 
 women for one another admit of no explanation, and 
 belong purely to the realm of Taste. Compare, for 
 example, in iv., i, of the same play, 
 
 Fair Helena, infancy following me. 
 
 So, in As You Like It, iiL, 5, where Silvius presses his 
 love-suit upon the miwiUing shepherdess ; — 
 
 Sweet Phoebe, do not scorn me ; do not, Phcebe : 
 Say that you love me not, but say not so 
 In bitterness. 
 
 O dear Phoebe, 
 If ever (as that ever may be near). 
 You meet in some fiesh cheek the power of fency. 
 Then shall you know the wounds invisible 
 That love's keen arrows make. 
 
 Little, he means, as you may to-day conceive of the 
 force of love, you will learn aU when it comes to vour 
 own turn to be smitten by a countenance that is song 
 and sunshine. Juliet's attention is first attracted towards 
 
The Pansy. 99 
 
 Romeo by seeing him " fancy sick and pale of cheer " 
 for love of a cold beauty. In the Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream Hermione calls wishes and tears "poor fancy's 
 followers." In As You Like It, again, reflecting idly 
 upon love, is 
 
 Chening the food of sweet and bitter fancy. — (iv., 3.) 
 
 Lastly, to cite no more of twenty instances, in Troilus and 
 Cressida, v., 2, the word is used as a verb : — 
 
 Never did young man fancy 
 With so eternal and so fixed a soul. 
 
 The introduction concluded, then comes, like a new and 
 glorious wave of the fast-flowing tide upon the beach, 
 the picture even more beautiful : — 
 
 Yet marked I where the bolt of Cupid fell : 
 
 It fell upon a little western flower, — 
 
 Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, 
 
 And maidens call it "love-in-idleness:'' 
 
 Fetch me that flower. The herb I show'd thee once. 
 
 The juice of it on sleeping eyelids laid, 
 
 Will make a man or woman madly dote 
 
 Upon the next live creature that it sees. 
 
 Fetch me this herb, and be thou here again. 
 
 Ere the leviathan ran swim a league. 
 
 Puck : I'll put a girdle round about the earth 
 In forty minutes. — (ii., 2.) 
 
 The scene of the play being laid in Athens and a 
 neighbouring wood, it is allowable to regard the latter as 
 Oberon's home. We breathe, in truth, while reading it, 
 the atmosphere of Arcadia, sweetened by the mild waft, 
 never ceasing, from the blue .^gean; for Shakspere's 
 
lOO The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 " fairies " are no other than the wood-nymphs of classic 
 fable, the old, old story in varied recital The " fairies," 
 in truth, beloved of the innocent fancy, are the same all 
 the world over, and in every age. The scene being 
 Athenian, hence, in turn, come the beauty and grace of 
 the little epithet "western," which, taken in connection 
 Avith the reference to Elizabeth, at once transports the 
 mind to Old England. 
 
 It is by delicate touches such as these that the great 
 poet is declared. Like the true artist, in his details he 
 is always a mathematician, as strong in the simplest 
 particulars as in the weightiest; and the word that seems 
 the most trivial not uncommonly carries as much mean- 
 ing as all the others put together. Shakspere, it has 
 been well said, never plays in the shallows, but goes 
 down into the depths, speaking not only to our know- 
 ledge, but to our spirits. To Greece the little pansy of 
 England is emphatically a "western" flower. Saying 
 so, we are refreshed, in the most charming manner, by a 
 reminder of Home. 
 
 How elegant, too, the added fiction of the change of 
 colour, an ancient fable newly told. A\T:en in company 
 with Titania, and in fain-land, we must not insist 
 upon a too literal exactitude as to facts. That one of 
 the wld forms of the F/o/a tricolor, called by botanists 
 the Viola arvensis, has flowers white in every part except- 
 ing the golden recess in the middle, streaked with purple, 
 is quite true ; it is true also that the petals are capable 
 of becoming purjDle under cultivation. Shakspere does 
 
The Pansy. lOi 
 
 not refer to this. He transfers to the pansy what in 
 Ovid he had read about the mulberry, white as snow up 
 to the moment when " in such a night " — 
 
 Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew. 
 And saw the lion's shadow ere himself. 
 And ran, dismayed, away, 
 
 but presently, and ever afterwards, the colour of the 
 blood-stained veil. 
 
 The efficiency of the juice, need it be said, is amply 
 proved, and in twofold case. The fun is supreme ; it is 
 a relief, nevertheless, to find that Oberon knows of 
 " another herb," an antidote that will " take the charm 
 from off her sight," and that Titania, with all her married 
 wilfulness, is not to be punished indefinitely : — 
 
 Be as thou wast wont to be ; 
 
 See as thou wast wont to see ; 
 
 Dian's bud o'er Cupid's flower 
 
 Hath such force and blessed power. — (iv. I.) 
 
 What plant is intended does not appear. We have no 
 right, as said before, to assign to Shakspere an)^hing of 
 our own. In a case like the present, when it is plain that 
 he must have had some definite image before his mind 
 it is quite permissible, nevertheless, to conjecture. The 
 allusion may be to wormwood, the famous Artemisia of 
 the olden time, of which the name " Dian's herb " would 
 be as nearly as possible a translation.. Not impossibly 
 he was thinking of the Agnus castus, famous in the 
 middle ages as "a singular medicine for such as would 
 
I02 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 live chaste," thus fittingly dedicated to the crescent- 
 crested goddess of the virgins, 
 
 Queen and huntress chaste and feir, 
 of Ben Jonson's beautiful h)rmn. The Agnus castus is a 
 pretty little shrub, some five or six feet high, indigenoiis 
 to Greece, Syria, and Asia Minor, where it grows upon 
 the banks of rivers, and whence it was first brought to 
 England in 1570. The shoots are long and pliant; the 
 rather large leaves are opposite and digitate; the leaflets 
 narrow lanceolate. The flowers, small and white, or 
 with a purplish tinge, grow in loose terminal clusters, 
 and are produced in September. 
 
 THE PRIMROSE. 
 
 The primrose, like the violet and the pansy — a truly 
 aboriginal British plant — ^is said to be more plentiful in 
 our own island than in any other part of Europe of equal 
 extent. Upon the Continent it is less widely diffused 
 than either of the above-named ; the southern localities 
 lie chiefly among the mountains, so that by those who 
 travel towards the Mediterranean the pleasant sight of it 
 is gradually lost, whence also, very plainly, the infrequent 
 notice of this beautiful wild-flower by authors of earlier 
 date than the fifteenth century. Even the name, in the 
 original shape, is not by birthright its very own, the germ 
 being found in the old Italian appellation of the common 
 field daisy, which in the time of Dante, Petrarch, and 
 
The Primrose. 103 
 
 Boccaccio, was fiore di frima vera, " the flower of the 
 early spring." Subsequently this name was passed on to 
 the cowslip, which retained it, abreast of the daisy, till 
 as late as the time of Matthiolus, in whose curious old 
 Epitome, pp. 653, 655, and 883, there are capital wood- 
 cut representations both of the daisy and the cowslip, 
 though the primrose is not even mentioned. Fiore di 
 prima vera became, by contraction, primaverola. This, 
 moving northwards, was changed, by the French, into 
 primeverole. Then, passing into England, and to the 
 flower before us, it became primerolle, as in Chaucer, in 
 the Miller's Tale, 82, and in Lydgate, who began to write 
 before the death of Chaucer, producing innumerable 
 little pieces, many of which are fashioned after the 
 manner of his great predecessor, but who again slightly 
 changed the spelling — 
 
 The honysoucle, the froisshe prymeroUys, 
 Ther levys splaye at Phebus up-iysing.* 
 
 From primerolles the transition to "primrose" was quite 
 easy, though there is no evidence as to when it took 
 place. For a long time, moreover, the application of the 
 name was indefinite, one of the plants originally called 
 primrose being the common privet It was Shakspere 
 who, as in the case of the sweet violet, gave the name its 
 final anchorage. When he talks of the primrose we know 
 exactly what is meant ; and never since his time has the 
 
 * In that charming little poem, " Lydgate's Testament." — Percy 
 Society's "Early English Poetry," vol. ii., p. 242. 
 
104 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 name borne, in its pure and simple form, any other 
 signification than the cherished one. Can we be other- 
 wise than grateful once again ? 
 
 Including the line in Venus and Adonis, 
 
 Witness this primrose-bank whereon I lie ; 
 
 including also the pretty reference in the Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, L, i, 
 
 In the wood where often you and I 
 
 Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie, 
 
 mention of it is made by Shakspere upon eight distinct 
 occasions. The characteristics which naturally most 
 impressed him, being those upon which a poet would 
 first alight, were its very early development, and the 
 peculiarly soft and delicate hue of the petals, so different 
 from that of the pilewort, or " lesser celandine," Ficaria 
 verna, the constant companion of the primrose, and 
 which shines, from first to last, with golden lustre.* 
 Hence the favourite Shaksperean epithet of "pale": — - 
 
 I would be blind with weeping, sick with groans, 
 Look pale as primrose, witli blood-drinking sighs, 
 And all to have the noble duke alive. 
 
 _znd Heiiry the Sixth, iii., 2. 
 
 * The pilewort, if we press for minute accuracy in the associa- 
 tion, is much more emphatically the herald of spring than either the 
 daisy or the cowslip. The former blooms more or less all the year 
 round, and the latter often in the autumn, whereas the pilewort 
 iiever opens until that sweet season when the trees, though there 
 are leaves upon them, give no shade. 
 
The Primrose. 105 
 
 Again in that most lovely passage where Imogen (FidHe), 
 
 lying in a trance, is believed by Arviragus to be dead: — 
 
 With fairest flowers, 
 Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
 I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack 
 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
 The azur'd harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander, 
 Outsweeten'd not thy breath. — Cymbdint, iv., 2. 
 
 And once more, in the supreme lines in the Winter's 
 Tale — we know them already — which, though quoted a 
 thousand times, are for ever new and fragrant. Perdita, 
 receiving her father's guests at the rustic festival, bids 
 them welcome, looking first at the elders, and with 
 courtesy so respectful and refined, so amiable withal, so 
 unhesitating, and yet so maidenly, that none but 
 Shakspere could have depicted it: — 
 
 Give me those flowers there, Dorcas — Reverend Sirs, 
 For you there's rosemary and rue : these keep 
 Seeming and savour all the winter long. 
 Grace and remembrance be to you both. 
 And welcome to our shearing ! 
 
 Then comes the modest talk with Polixenes anent the 
 carnations: then, turning to Florizel, yearning for spring 
 flowers, the incomparable outpour, 
 
 O Proserpina, 
 For the flowers now that frighted, thou lett'st fall 
 From Dis's wagon ! Daffodils, 
 That come before the swallow dares, and take 
 The winds of March with beauty. 
 
 Pale primroses. 
 That die unmarried, ere they can behold 
 
io6 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 
 Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips, and 
 The crown-imperial ; lilies of all kinds. 
 The flower-de-luce being one ! O these I lack 
 To make you garlands of; and my sweet friend. 
 To strew him o'er and o'er. 
 
 Florizel. —What ! Like a corse? 
 
 Perdita. — No, like a bank for love to lie and play on. 
 
 Perdita, child of fortune, has for her distinguishing trait, 
 that most charming of all the womanly virtues, love of 
 truthfulness. Full of all sweet and tender emotions, 
 confiding, and in her own warm heart incomparably 
 faithful, her zeal in friendship is never chequered by a 
 thought that it can be mistaken; without any pretension 
 to power, void of all love for vehement outbursts, she is 
 always, as truthful women always are, natural, graceful, 
 and easy; whoever else may be insincere, it is hers to be 
 frank as the sunshine. Hence, without a pause, the 
 beautiful rejoinder, continuing : — 
 
 Not like a corse ; or if — not to be buried. 
 
 But quick, and in mine arms. Come, take your flowers. 
 
 Methinks I play as I have seen them do 
 
 In Whitsun pastorals : sure this robe of mine 
 
 Doth change my disposition. 
 
 Florizel may well make his enraptured reply: — 
 
 What you do. 
 Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 
 I'd have you do it ever : when you sing, 
 I'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms : 
 Pray so ; ^nd, for the ordering your affairs. 
 To sing them too. When you do dance, I wish you 
 A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
 
The Primrose. 107 
 
 Nothing but that; move still, still so, and own 
 
 No other function. Each your doing, 
 
 So singular in each particular. 
 
 Crowns what you are doing in the present deeds, 
 
 That all your acts are queens. 
 
 Perditais the most accomplished of Shakspere's women. 
 To her unassailable purity, her infinite sensibility, she 
 adjoins aptitude for all sprightly feminine pastimes and 
 recreations; though she may not play chess, like Miranda, 
 she can sing, she can dance, she is pious, alive to the inner 
 beauty of wild nature, rejoicing in the spectacle of the 
 daffodils and the swallows, and of boundless resource in 
 regard to the mental acquirements that bespeak culture. 
 Hence she stands full front as the very type and model 
 of perfect womanliness, which consists not alone in being 
 loveable, but perennially companionable. Appearing 
 upon the scene so late, and remaining with us for so 
 short a time, it is somewhat remarkable that her delicious 
 character should be so perfectly delineated. 
 
 The primroses she wishes for die, she says, "unmarried." 
 Had the words been spoken to-day, the idea might have 
 seemed Linnaean. Not so is it -vvith Perdita. Phoebus 
 is the sun. To the flowers he is as a bridegroom. They 
 wait his arrival; their wedding-day is when his beams fall 
 bright and warm into their tinted cups : — the primroses, 
 they come all too soon; like maidens who die in their 
 teens, they just glance at him, then fade away. 
 
 Two of the allusions are curiously metaphorical. That 
 so pleasing a flower should be used as an image of 
 personal comeliness, as often happens in the literature 
 
io8 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 of the middle ages, is not surprising. Chaucer thus uses 
 it in the Miller's Tale above quoted; Spenser also in 
 Colin Clout: — 
 
 A fairer nymph yet never saw mine eye, 
 She is the pride and primrose of the rest. 
 
 Roger Ascham, in 1570, applies it to well-favoured youths, 
 those "two noble primroses of nobilitie, the young duke 
 of Suffolke and Lord Henry Matravers."* Dr. Prior 
 quotes from an old ^vriter, in reference to Thomas \ 
 Becket, that he "would sumtyme for his pleasure make a 
 journey of pylgrymage to the prymerose peerlesse of 
 Stafforde." Who the lady was the historian does not 
 say. The pretty phrase he thought her worthy of became 
 the appellation of the wild English narcissus, the Nar- 
 cissus biflorus of the botanists, which bears it to this day 
 in country gardens. Somewhat singular is it, then, that 
 Shakspere, in his metaphorical use, employs the word 
 not thus, but as a preacher might: — 
 
 But good my brother, 
 Do not, as some ungracious pastors do, 
 Show me the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
 Whilst like a pufTd and reckless libertine 
 Himself the primrose-path of dalliance treads, 
 And recks not his own rede. — Hamlet, i. 3. 
 
 So again in the porter's exclamation in Macbeth, "I had 
 thought to have let in some of the professions that go 
 the primrose-way to everlasting fire" (ii. 3). In each 
 instance the words are virtually a repetition of what is 
 said by the honest old clown in All's Well that Ends 
 *The Scholemaster, ed. 1571, p. 241. 
 
The Primrose. 109 
 
 Well, iv., 5 — "I am for the house with the narrow gate, 
 which I take to be too little for pomp to enter. Some, 
 that humble themselves, may; but the many will be too 
 chill and tender; and they'll be for the flowery way, that 
 leads to the broad gate and the great fire." "Recks not 
 (lis own rede," in the Hamlet verse, means, it hardly 
 needs the pointing out, "does not abide by or act up to 
 his own doctrine." 
 
 The three passages, taken together, may be accepted 
 as a faithful disclosure of Shakspere's own private and 
 personal views of the essence of Christianity. No man 
 ever stood up more energetically than he, for the sum 
 and substance of scripture teaching, which is that men 
 are saved, or the reverse, not according to what they 
 think, but according to what they do, — "Their works do 
 follow them." Sliakspere, though we have no clue to 
 what in these days would be called his " denomination," 
 was a soundly religious man. That in his prose we meet 
 at times with indelicacy and grossness of speech that 
 stands in very painful contrast mth his accustomed 
 chaste nobleness, is unhappily quite true; but this, as 
 said before, belongs to the colloquial coarseness of the 
 age in which he lived, and not to himself In Shakspere 
 there is never any deliberate and flippant irreverence; 
 there is none of the artfully disguised profanity, none of 
 the vicious suggestion, and sapping of good morals, 
 which in the modem novel is often so harmful. A man 
 cannot be void of religion when his writings teem -with 
 thoughtful and affectionate reverence of Christian well- 
 
no The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 doing and of womanly worth, and who never fails in 
 gentle enforcement of the divine beauty of peace and 
 mercy, justice and an upright life. Very interesting is 
 it to observe, also, how very slight is the reflex in 
 Shakspere of any particular theological system. Dante 
 is full of the deep colouring of the theology of the age 
 in which he lived; and among Shakspere's successors, 
 not one is more conspicuous in this respect than the 
 author of Paradise Lost. In the main, both Dante and 
 Milton were no doubt in advance of and superior to the 
 current theology of their time, but neither of them was 
 wholly free from the influence of doctrines which in 
 the grasp they took of inferior minds often became 
 terrible, but which in Shakspere find little expression. 
 Shakspere's large perception of the first principles of 
 Christianity is disclosed, we may here remember, in a 
 very striking manner, in the history of the experience of 
 Macbeth — "If human nature," it has been well observed, 
 " even in its worst hours, had merely to struggle with 
 itself, the problem of responsibility would be far easier 
 of solution." Shakspere, in Macbeth, illustrates the more 
 fearful unseen element in human temptation, under the 
 figure of the three witclies. The place they hold in 
 the drama is not given them for simple theatrical effect. 
 It is needful to the consistency of the life and crime of 
 the principal actor. Shakspere's intimate acquaintance 
 with Holy Scripture has many times been illustrated. 
 Dr. Wordsworth (Bishop of St. Andrews) pronounces 
 the simple truth: — "Take the entire range of English 
 
The Cowslip. 1 1 1 
 
 literature; put together our best authors who have written 
 upon subjects not professedly religious or theological, 
 and we shall not find, I believe, in them all united, so 
 much evidence of the Bible having been read and used 
 as we have found in Shakspere alone." 
 
 The one remaining allusion to the flower under notice 
 is the other in Cymbdine, where the Queen, who has 
 previously commanded — 
 
 While the dew's on the ground, gather those flowers ; 
 Make haste, who has the note of them ? 
 
 now says :- 
 
 So, so, well done, well done : 
 
 The violets, cowslips, and the primroses 
 
 Bear to my doset. 
 
 THE COWSLIP. 
 
 The cowslip, diffused in England quite as widely as 
 the primrose, though usually preferring to dwell in the 
 open meadows, where the flowers can mingle Sweetly 
 with the rising grass, is in the south of Europe very 
 conspicuous. Hence, as regards the primulas in general, 
 it holds the place of honour with the pre-Shaksperean 
 draughtsmen. Old Brunfels (1532) figures it under the 
 name of Herba Paralysis. In Fuchsius (1542) it is 
 represented as Verbasailum odoratum; in Lobel (1576) 
 as Primula fratetisis. To Shakspere the flower must 
 have been very dear, familiar as the violet, and no flower 
 would he pluck more frequently, a circumstance that 
 
112 Tlie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 makes -one wonder so much the more that over the 
 cowslip he should have made the one solitary slip in 
 exactitude of description, which shows in contrast so 
 striking to his otherwise strict accuracy. We have dealt 
 with the matter already; it will be enough, accordingl)', 
 for completeness' sake, to quote the passage anew : — 
 
 On her left breast, 
 A mole, cinque-spotted, like the crimson drops 
 I' the bottom of a cowslip, 
 
 and to repeat that wise people, when in the presence of 
 nature and of supreme art, never allow themselves to 
 waste their time in more than a glance at errors and 
 blemishes, seeing that the longest life is still too short for 
 grasp even of a tithe of the true and glorious. Before 
 you begin to look for flaws and defects, much more 
 before you begin to censure, assuming to be an arbiter 
 before you have learned how to be a student, be sure 
 that you appreciate all the worth. It is to be remem- 
 bered also, in regard to art, that the exercise of it by a 
 master by no means forbids an ennobled representation 
 of the thing it seeks to pourtray, as distinguished from a 
 mechanically precise copy. The profoundest and most 
 enduring emotions of pleasure are not by any means only 
 those which arise upon the contemplation of absolute 
 fidelity on the part of the artist. It is well to learn how 
 to be fair enough to allow him, at times, to sacrifice 
 some little of accuracy in order that he may touch our 
 hearts with larger imaginings of beauty. We are not 
 deceived by what he does, any more than by the sweet 
 
The Cowslip. 113 
 
 legend of the Graces. Shakspere never misled any one 
 
 by sa)dng that the dots in the cowslip flower are 
 
 "crimson." 
 
 The allusions he makes to the cowslip amount 
 
 altogether to six, though found in only four separate 
 
 plays — Cymbeline, as already indicated, i., 6, and ii., 2; 
 
 the Tempest, in Ariel's little song, 
 
 Where the bee sucks, there suck I, 
 In a cowslip's bell I lie (v., i); 
 
 the Midsummer Night's Dream, in two places; and 
 King Hairy the Fifth, once. The Henry -the -Fifth 
 mention occurs in the very beautifiil, though mournful 
 picture of the ruin and desolation induced by the 
 calamities of war. A royal and brilliant company is 
 gathered together. The kings of the rival countries, 
 Gloster, Warwick, and Burgundy, all are present; the 
 salutations proper to the time and splendid scene are 
 duly exchanged; then comes the duke's appeal on behalf 
 of Peace, the most pathetic of its kind known to litera- 
 ture : — 
 
 My duty to you both, an equal love, 
 Great kings of France and England ! 
 
 Extending to forty-five lines, it is too long to quote just 
 for the sake of the elegant little phrase in the heart of it, 
 "the freckled cowslip." Like the "lovely song of one 
 who playeth well upon an instrument," it does not allow 
 either of division or curtailing; but it is easy to find, and 
 there need be no distrust as to the certainty of the 
 reward. 
 
114 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The allusions in the Midsummer Night's Dream are 
 found, one, facetiously, in the masque (the story of 
 Pyramus and Thisbe burlesqued) which even in rehearsal 
 had already moved the spectators to " merry tears," 
 
 These lily brows, 
 This cherry nose, 
 These yellow cowslip cheeks ; — 
 
 the other in that charming flow of poetry wherewith the 
 
 fairy first announces herself: — 
 
 Over hill, over dale. 
 
 Thorough bush, thorough brier. 
 Over park, over pale, 
 
 Thorough flood, thorough fire, 
 I do wander everywhere. 
 
 Swifter than the moonfe sphere. 
 And I serve the Fairy queen. 
 To dew her orbs upon the green. 
 The cowslips tall her pensioners be ; 
 In their gold coats spots you see ; 
 These be rubies, Fairy favours. 
 In those freckles live their savours : 
 I must go seek some dewdrops here. 
 And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear. — (ii., i.) 
 
 As in the story of the "love-in-idleness," Shakspere here 
 again most elegantly lures the imagination to thought of 
 his royal mistress Queen Elizabeth : — 
 
 The cowslips tall her pensioners be. 
 To-day we think of pensioners as no more than depen- 
 dents, usually poor and disabled, upon the special 
 generosity of the rich. The "pensioners" of Elizabeth's 
 court and retinue consisted of a band of fifty of the 
 handsomest and the tallest men, still in the pride of 
 
The Cowslip. 115 
 
 youth, it was possible to select from the best families in 
 the realm. Their dress was of extraordinary splendour, 
 overlaid so heavily with gold embroidery, that it seemed 
 to consist of little else than gold; jewels, Shakspere's 
 "rubies," adding sparkle. So high did these gentlemen 
 stand in the popular regard, that Dame Quickly, in the 
 Merry Wives of Windsor, reckoning up all the gay and 
 noble visitors she can think of, concludes with "And 
 there has been earls — nay, which is more — pensioners" 
 (ii. 2), unless, indeed, poor good-natured and generous, 
 though ignorant woman, she is simply dazzled by their 
 splendid apparel, and fancies that dress and gold con- 
 stitute nobleness. Shakspere, there can be little doubt, 
 had personal knowledge of their appearance, as the pen- 
 sioners would form part of the royal train at the time 
 of the queen's famous visit to the Earl of Leicester at 
 Kenilworth, in 1575, ten or eleven years before the 
 poet went up to London, where again he would have 
 opportunities of seeing them. 
 
 "Tall" carries a twofold meaning. It preserves the 
 idea of the distinguished stature of the pensioners; it is 
 appropriate also to the idea of the tiny creatures who, 
 with Titania for their own particular mistress, could, 
 when alarmed, "creep into acorn cups." Drayton, in 
 the Nymphidia, gives to the latter a very pretty echo : — 
 
 At midnight, the appointed hower; 
 
 And for the queene a fitting bower, 
 (Quoth he), is that tall cowslip flower, 
 
 On Hipcut hill that groweth- 
 
1 1 6 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The five rubies, the "spots," are the gift of the Fairy 
 queen. Properly therefore, the line should be printed 
 "These be rubies, Fairy favours." 
 
 The derivation of the name is obscure. All that is 
 certain is its origin with the Anglo-Saxons, with whom 
 it was the cii-slyppe or cii-sloppe. Ben Jonson, un- 
 luckily, is quite astray when thinking he has the sense, 
 he speaks of "Bright dayes-eyes and the lippes of 
 Cowes." 
 
 THE OXLIP. 
 The oxlip, scattered, like the cowslip and primrose, 
 all over England, though nowhere an abundant plant, 
 is, botanically, more interesting perhaps than either, 
 since it combines the characters of both. These two 
 plants appear, in truth, to be divergent expressions of a 
 single type, the cowslip being a contracted or concen- 
 trated form of primrose, the sulphur-yellow exalted into 
 golden yellow, and the five tawny watery rays of the 
 latter brightened into well-defined orange spots. In 
 the oxlip these characters anastomose; and precisely 
 after the same manner, the geographical predominance is 
 where the two plants most distinctly rningle and overlap, 
 as in old England. The name rests obviously upon a 
 mistaken understanding of Ben Jonson's etymology of 
 "cowslip," meaning the flower which to the cowslip is 
 in dimensions what the ox is to the cow. Fuchsius 
 gives a drawing of it under the name of Verbascum 7ion 
 odoratum. Lobel, also, as Primula pratensis inodora. 
 
TJie Oxlip. 117 
 
 Shakspere mentions it in the celebrated song in the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, "I know a bank," and 
 again in the Winter's Tale, iv., 3, where Perdita so 
 excellently distinguishes this flower under the epithet of 
 "bold." 
 
 Shakspere was fortunate in not being troubled with 
 botanical uncertainties. "Oxlip" has long since become 
 the name of two or three different things, the precise 
 relationship of which, one to the other, is a problem. 
 The rich old Elizabethan flower — that one which seems 
 to oscillate between cowslip and primrose — is now con- 
 sidered to be an oxlip only by courtesy. Another plant 
 has put in claims to be considered the genuine oxlip; 
 and if the name is admitted to be the rightful property 
 of whichever of the two may seem best entitled to the 
 rank of "species," then the Shaksperean flower must 
 give way. The second kind of oxlip is the plant called 
 in books. Primula elatior and Primula Jacquinii. Though 
 occurring in several parts of continental Europe, it was 
 discovered to be British only in 1842, when Mr. Double- 
 day noticed it in one or two of the eastern counties. 
 The flowers of the -elatior, instead of being erect, or 
 nearly so, as in Perdita's oxlip, are inclined to be 
 pendulous. They are paler in colour, not so flat, and 
 deficient in the five beautiful bosses so conspicuously 
 surrounding the orifice in the centre of the corolla, alike 
 in the Shaksperean plant, and in the cowslip and the 
 primrose. The scent also is different, not being prim- 
 rose-like, as in Perdita's flower, but somewhat similar 
 
ii8 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 to the less inviting odour of the grape-hyacinth. A very 
 marked technical distinction is observable also in the 
 seed-capsules, which in the elatior are narrow-oblong, 
 and of the same length as the calyx. Solve the problem 
 as science may, one thing, happily, is changeless, the 
 reality to our hearts of the flower as it is in Shakspere. 
 
Cljapt^r ^tbentlj. 
 
 THE DAISY. 
 
 He says he loves my daughter, 
 I think so too ; for never gazed the moon 
 Upon the water, as he'll stand and read, 
 As 'twere, my daughter's eyes; and, to be plain, 
 I think there is not half a kiss to choose 
 Who loves another best. — Winter's Tale, iv., 3. 
 
 HE daisy — the original Jiore di prima 
 vera — appears in Shakspere upon five 
 occasions. It is one of the flowers 
 gathered by Ophelia, appearing first when 
 she enters the royal presence distracted, 
 then in the "fantastic garlands" she sought to hang 
 upon the willow "aslant the brook." Next we have it 
 in Cymbdiru, iv., 2, when Lucius and his soldiers, moved 
 to sympathy by weeping Fidele, prepare to inter the 
 headless corpse of Cloten: — 
 
 The boy hath taught us manly duties : Let us 
 Find out the prettiest daisied plot we can. 
 And make him with our pikes and partizans 
 A grave. 
 
I20 TJu Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The quiet beauty of the " pearled Arcturi of the earth " 
 
 as they dot the greensward before it shoots, is adverted 
 
 to in the Rape of Lucrece : — 
 
 Without the bed her other fair hand was 
 On the green coverlet, whose perfect white 
 Showed like an April daisy on the grass. 
 
 Lastly, wth the neatest of little epithets, it leads off the 
 song at the end of Lovis Labour's Lost: — 
 
 When daisies pied, and violets blue. 
 And Lady-smocks all silver-white. 
 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue. 
 Do paint the meadows with delight 
 
 " Pied " literally means " painted," or many-coloured, as 
 when Caliban says of Trinculo, in the Tempest, iii., 2, the 
 usual dress of a jester being motley, "What a pied 
 ninny's this ! " As used also so picturesquely in Sonnet 
 xcviii. : — 
 
 From you I have been absent in the spring, 
 When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim, 
 Had put a spirit of youth in everytlung — 
 
 lines which recall that other charming passage in Romeo 
 and Juliet, the play that teems, more than any other, with 
 the vivacities of youth : — 
 
 When well apparell'd April on the heel 
 Of limping winter treads. — (i., 2.) 
 
 Applied to the field daisy, it felicitously describes the 
 mound of gold, set round with milk-white rays, the latter 
 very generally tipped with rosy crimson — whence the 
 "crimson-circled star," — which gained for this innocent 
 
The Daffodil. 121 
 
 little plant its earliest known name, Bellis, or the " pretty 
 one." Under this still current appellation — a rare circum- 
 stance in botany — the daisy has mention as far back 
 as the time of Pliny, who speaks of it as a flower of 
 the meadows, useful in medicine. The etymology of the 
 English name, as fairly indicated by the spelling, is found 
 in the Anglo-Saxon dxges-eage, "the eye of day.'' The 
 daisy, says Chaucer, 
 
 That well by reason men may call it may 
 The deisie or els the eye of the day. 
 
 THE DAFFODIL. 
 
 The daffodil — the flower of all others most intimately 
 associated with the name of Perdita — is, like the pile- 
 wort, peculiar to early spring. Coming " before the 
 swallow dares," taking "the winds of March with 
 beauty," it counts with the genuine harbingers of the 
 approaching season, and well deserves its pretty old 
 synonym of Lent-lily, or the spring-tide flower, " Lent " 
 signifying, primarily, the time when the severity of winter 
 passes away and the days begin to lengthen and grow 
 milder. The application of the term to a particular 
 ecclesiastical period has no further significance than such 
 as arose upon the contemporaneousness of the religious 
 observance with the cheerful onward and upward spring 
 movement of living nature, declared as it is by nothing 
 more conspicuously than the welcome dafibdil. In 
 another part of the same play we find it mentioned for 
 
122 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 the same reason, though by a personage very different 
 from the gentle lady of old Sicilia : — 
 
 When daffodils begin to peer — 
 
 With, heigh ! the doxy over the dale ; 
 
 Why then comes in the sweet o' the year. 
 For the red blood reigns in the winter's pale. 
 
 Autolycus, the singer, as of the verses which succeed, 
 including that charming line — 
 
 The lark her tirra-lirra chants, — 
 is generously allowed to be poet as well as rogue, for no 
 man ever knew better than Shakspere that wayward 
 nature now and then unites contraries; and, as the 
 illustrator of all things, he was bound to introduce at 
 least one example. " Peer " gives a poetical picture 
 which of its kind stands alone in language: — the "sweet 
 of the year" is the choicest portion, just as in 2nd Henry 
 the Fourth, v., 3, we have the "sweet o' the night:" — the 
 sense of the concluding word is found in heraldry, a 
 subject in which Shakspere was no poor scholar; the line 
 as a whole placing before the mind in the liveliest manner 
 how beautiful the energy of the vernal sap as opposed to 
 the dormant and colourless juices of frost and icicle. 
 Though it may be somewhat homely, this cheerful old 
 flower, the daffodil, has a very striking individuality. 
 The tall and shapely vase in the centre, so elegantly 
 waved and plaited, is unique among British plants. So 
 is the very peculiar pre-Raphaelite look of the plant, 
 derived from its attitude, when we see it growing upon 
 the opposite side of a little stream. When in crowds 
 
The Daffodil. 
 
 mong the grass, there is not one, after the scarlet com- 
 oppy, that in brilliant effect successfully rivals it. 
 Scattered not only all over England, but particularly 
 bundant in south-western continental Europe, and 
 iffusing the meadows with golden bloom at the time 
 f year when the mind is drawn most powerfully to the 
 nipendous theme of the Resurrection, no wonder that 
 le daffodil received its name. For daffodil is only 
 Q altered form of "asphodel," the Homeric name |/ 
 f the consecrated flower which the ancient Greeks 
 ssociated with their Elysium, or the future state of the 
 lessed. The picture, as drcwn by Homer, is no doubt 
 omewhat gloomy. The flower is there, nevertheless, 
 rowing in "meadows," the antetype, nearly three 
 lousand years ago, of the " sweet fields " of the modern 
 ymn, and in which the departed are represented as 
 njoying themselves in congenial ways. "After him I 
 eheld vast Orion, hunting wild beasts, and the swift- 
 )oted son of .(Eacus . . joyful because I had said that 
 is son (still upon earth) was very illustrious." (Odyssey, 
 L and xxiv.) What particular flower Homer intended is 
 ndiscoverable. It may have been the "poets' narcissus," 
 'hich grows wild in Greece; or the polyanthus-narcissus, 
 'hich extends, in a thin vein of distribution, all the way 
 om Portugal to Japan; but it could not be the daffodil 
 self, since this does not occur in Homer's country, 
 "here is no proof even that it was a yellow flower, 
 Ithough the conjectural "asphodelus" of the botanists 
 ! one of that colour. Pindar, it is true, with whom 
 
124 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Paradise becomes insular, talks of the " flowers of gold " 
 that pertain to it, but some of them, he says, grow 
 on " resplendent trees,'' while " the water feeds others,'' 
 so that, as elsewhere in the famous old Theban, "golden'' 
 plainly means no more than supremely beautiful. It is 
 enough, however, that the bright hue of the daffodil, and 
 the period of its arrival, when " the time of the singing 
 of birds is come, and the voice of the turtle is heard in 
 the land," recommended it as fit inheritor of the name, 
 which, changing first into affodyl and affodile, at last 
 became " daffodil." The origin of the initial d is 
 undetermined. Prof. Skeat says that it may either be a 
 survivor of the French d'affrodille or a prefix correspond- 
 ing to the T in Ted, the short for Edward. 
 
 To "take the winds of March with beauty" signifies to 
 charm or captivate them, just as in the Tempest, v., i, 
 Alonso says to Prospero, 
 
 I long 
 To hear the stoiy of your life, which must 
 Take the ear strangely. 
 
 The expression was common in the age, as illustrated in 
 Pro v., vi., 25, "Lust not after her beauty in thine heart; 
 neither let her take thee with her eyelids." 
 
 THE HAREBELL. 
 
 "The azur'd harebell, like thy veins," in Cymbelim, 
 iv., 2, is the wild English or sylvan hyacinth, Scilla 
 nutans, by the elder botanists called Myacinthus non- 
 
TIte Harebell. 125 
 
 ^criptus, or the "unlettered," in reference to the romantic 
 3ld myth that the original or oriental hyacinth bore upon 
 ts petals the AI, AI, alas! alas! of the lamenting 
 jod. To-day, by unfortunate confiision of names, this 
 ivell-known wild-flower is very generally miscalled the 
 ■'blue-bell," the latter appellation belonging properly 
 to the Campanula rotundifolia, the blue-bell of Scotland.' 
 Never arriving until July, and lingering till dark Novem- 
 ber, "a silent spirit of the solitude," the season of bloom 
 is quite sufficient to distinguish the genuine blue-bell. 
 For that Shakspere intends the scilla, and not the cam- 
 panula, is plain from his putting it beside the primrose. 
 The scilla is also distinguished as the harebell in 
 contemporary botanical literature. In Warwickshire, as 
 in many other parts of England, the harebell floods the 
 apen spaces of green woods with the inexpressibly soft 
 blue which, looking at a bed of these flowers from a little 
 distance, always makes it seem as if they were bathed in 
 izure mist Shakspere doubtless knew, as well as we do, 
 ;hat they never look lovelier than early on a fine May 
 Horning, when the sun shines tinder the young leaves of 
 ;he trees above; thus, between the blue and green, illumi- 
 lating both. " Azured," his matchless epithet, is one of 
 :he thousand illustrations in Shakspere that, as some 
 luthor has well said, " poetry, like science, has its final 
 precision," and can no more be re-written than the elements 
 Df geometry. "Blue" means many different things, and 
 nvariably requires some explanatory adjunct, as " light," 
 )r " dark." Azure denotes the colour of the sylvan 
 
126 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 hyacinth and nothing besides. " Try as men will, they 
 have simply to recur to such epithets, and confess that it 
 has been done, once for all." It is by minute fidelity 
 to such details, seemingly xmimportant, having nothing 
 to do with the play itself, and which might be omitted 
 without affecting the sense or action, that the presence of 
 the great poet is confirmed. Should he fail to inspire 
 us, we are wooed, and, failing this, we are still regaled. 
 
 The resemblance of the colour to that of the veins, 
 and the epithet, recall the lines in the Rape of Liicrece: — 
 
 With more than admiration he admired 
 
 Her azure veins, her alabaster skin, 
 
 Her coral lips, her snow-white dimpled chin. 
 
 OPHELIA'S "CROW-FLOWER." 
 
 That a little uncertainty attaches to two or three of the 
 Shaksperean botanical names has already been mentioned. 
 One of them, "crow-flower," occurs in the imperishable 
 Hamlet scene above cited in connection with Ophelia 
 and the willow — s. scene so beautiful in its entirety that 
 no apology is needed for giving the whole of the context 
 over again. It is wanted, in truth, for a right under- 
 standing of the flower-lines: — 
 
 There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook. 
 
 That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream. 
 
 There, with fantastic garlands, did she come. 
 
 Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long-purples. 
 
 That liberal shepherds give a grosser name. 
 
 But our cold maids do dead men's finders caU them. 
 
Ophelias " CroW'fiower" 127 
 
 There, on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds 
 Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke ; 
 When down her weedy trophies and herself 
 Fell in the weeping brook — ^her clothes spread wide, 
 And, mermaid-like, awhile they bore her up ; 
 Which time she chanted snatches of old tunes. 
 As one incapable of her own distress, 
 Or like a creature native and indued 
 Unto that element. But long it could not be. 
 Till that her garments, heavy with their drink, 
 PuU'd the poor wretch from her melodious lay 
 To muddy death. 
 
 Gerard gives crow-flower as the equivalent of Lychnis Flos- 
 •nuuli, and upon his authority the latter is very generally 
 accepted. But the lychnis does not come into bloom 
 till a month after the nettles and the long-purples have 
 passed away, and the places of its natural growth are 
 quite different, being in low and marshy ground, often 
 among rushes on the borders of ponds ; while the nettle 
 is emphatically sylvan, and the long-purples love the 
 company of cowslips, though these also occur sometimes 
 in moist woodlands. Shakspere was probably thinking 
 of names current in his time very similar to "crow- 
 flower," and no fewer than three of which were synonyms 
 of harebell. " Hyacinthus," says Turner, the father of 
 English botan}', "is also common in England, though it 
 be not of the beste, and it is called crow-toes, crow-fote, 
 and crow-tees" (vol. 2, p. 18, 1562). Lyte also calls 
 the harebells " crow-toes," adding that " these be not the 
 hyacinths wherein the mourning marks are printed " 
 (p. 206). The probabilities thus seem to point to the 
 
128 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Scilla nutans, and assuredly a more elegant idea could 
 not be asked for than of a chaplet presenting the three- 
 fold chord of colour — blue, yellow, and red, flecked with 
 the white stars of the daisy. " Crow-flower" is cited by 
 Britten and Holland as a name still employed in the 
 north for the Scilla nutans. The " crow-bell" it may be 
 added, was, in Shakspere's time, the daffodil. 
 
 OPHELIA'S "NETTLE." 
 
 Ophelia's " nettle " is that beautiful deep rich yellow- 
 flowered labiaie, to-day commonly called the yellow 
 dead-nettle, or yellow archangel, and by the scientific, 
 Galeobdolon luteum. Abundant in shady places, such as 
 are haunted by the harebell, and particularly partial to 
 banks of streams that are steep and shaded, Ophelia 
 could not miss it. She would delight in the flowers, 
 for these make little verandahs round the stem, a ring 
 of them to every pair of leaves, thus forming a most 
 exquisite foil to the harebell both in hue and figure. 
 The name, given because of the resemblance of the 
 leaves to those of the original or stinging nettle, and 
 which covered also the Lamiutn album, was in use long 
 before the time of Shakspere. Turner describes the 
 Lamium as "a kynde of nettel . . . havyng leaves 
 that byte not." Lyte also says " there be two kinds of 
 nettels.'' The stinging nettle is scarcely developed when 
 the long-purples are in bloom, and the insignificant 
 flowers are not produced before July. 
 
TJie Long-Purples. 129 
 
 THE LONG-PURPLES. 
 
 Long-purples are, without question, the flowers of the 
 crimson meadow orchis. Orchis mascula, the beautiful 
 plant so well distinguished from everything else growing 
 wild in England by its hyacinthine general figure, spotted 
 leaves, and richly-dyed petals. The circumstances of its 
 time and place are precisely such as the context requires, 
 and Shakspere himself contributes a very interesting con- 
 clusive proof of the identity, not only in referring to the 
 "grosser name," preserved in the old Herbals, and which 
 in his manly delicacy he withholds from the lips of the 
 queen, but in citing the yet other name, "dead men's 
 fingers." This last was given originally to the Orchis 
 maculata and the Orchis conopsea, because of the strange 
 similitude found in the palmate and cadaverous tubers, 
 then passed on to the mascula as the orchis /^zr excellence. 
 Slightly varied, it occurs in the pathetic old ballad 
 that tells of the troubles of "The Deceased Maiden 
 Lover": — 
 
 Then round the meddowes did she walke. 
 Catching each flower by the stalke. 
 Such as within the meddowes grew, 
 As dead man's thumb and harebell blew; 
 And as she pluckt them, still cried she, 
 Alas ! there's none e'er loved like me. 
 
 Certain modem writers have tried to prove that by long- 
 purples Shakspere intends either the Arum maculatum 
 or the Lythrutn Salicaria. That the Orchis viasada is 
 K 
 
130 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 meant was shown as far back as 1777 by that admirable 
 old Shaksperean, Dr. Lightfoot, in the Flora Scotica, 
 vol. i., p. 515. 
 
 "Liberal," in this pathetic Ophelia scene, is employed 
 in the primitive sense of unrestrained, thence licentious 
 and rude, as in Much Ado, iv. i, "a liberal villain;" in 
 Othello, i., 2, "a most profane and liberal counsellor," 
 "counsellor" here meaning "adviser;" and in that 
 excellent passage in the Merchant of Venice, where we 
 are cautioned as to language in the presence of strangers : 
 
 Gratiano, 
 Thou art too wild, too rude, and bold of voice ; 
 Parts that become thee happily enough. 
 And in such eyes as ours appear no faults ; 
 But where thou art not known, why there they show 
 Something too liberal. — (ii., 2.) 
 
 In Othello, again, it is applied in the sense of "rude'' to 
 the north wind : — 
 
 No, I will speak as liberal as the north. — (v., 2.) 
 
 " Cold," the quality of snow and of sculptors' marble, 
 means, after the same manner, modest, decorous, in- 
 corrupt in speech, the idea which Shakspere invariably 
 connects wth genuine womanliness, for Celia, when she 
 once forgets herself, may be considered to be the victim 
 of her boy's clothes. The expression occurs also in the 
 Tempest, iv., i, where the flowers of April serve to make 
 
 Cold nymphs chaste crowns. 
 
 Before leaving this celebrated passage, it may be well to 
 
Tlie Lady-smock. 131 
 
 point out the error in some editions, in the printing of 
 the third line, 
 
 Therewith fantastic garlands did she come, 
 and then, in order to preserve consistency, wantonly- 
 changing "come" into "make." "Therewith" implies 
 that the garlands were manufactured from the willow, 
 which is absurd. The sense of the "there" is obviously 
 thither, to that place, the foot of the tree. 
 
 THE LADY-SMOCK. 
 
 Shakspere's reference to this delicate and thrice-familiar 
 field-flower — the only one in which he indulges himself — 
 was commented upon with explanation, in our opening 
 chapter. Here we have only to speak of the meaning 
 of the name, which like almost all others beginning with 
 Lady, dates from the early middle ages, and is intended 
 to imply some sort of association with the idea of Notre 
 Dame, the Virgin Mary, her appearance, her attire, or 
 her virtues, and occasionally, perhaps, some kind of con- 
 secration. Lady's tresses, Lad/s mantle. Lady's fingers, 
 Lady's signet, are all well known. The beautifiil green 
 md white ribbon-like leaves of the digraphis were in 
 Shakspere's time, Lady-laces; the primrose is still in 
 Germany, our Lady's key, being the flower with which 
 she unlocks the spring. The history of the original use 
 Df some of these names is doubtless to be looked for in 
 classical mythology, in connection with Venus; others 
 seem to have been derived from the ancient Scandi- 
 
132 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 navian mythology, wherein they relate to the goddess 
 Freyja, the "frau" or mother-queen. In any case the 
 final settlement was upon the idea of the Virgin — upon 
 lier to whom belongs " Lady-day," March 25th, in the 
 ecclesiastical calendar, and the Lady-chapel in the Gothic 
 cathedral; and none, accordingly, of these names should 
 be written, as sometimes wrongfully, in the plural, or as 
 if the allusion were to ladies in general. The application 
 of the name of Lady-smock to the Cardamine praiaisis, 
 the flower intended in Shakspere, seems to have been 
 suggested by the peculiarly soft and translucent character 
 of the petals, " silver-white," with faint lilac tinge, and 
 network scarcely visible, all in harmony with ideas of the 
 inmost clothing of purity, such as the mind naturally 
 associates with thought of the Virgin, and which are 
 heightened by the sweet spectacle when these pretty 
 flowers, diffused abundantly, help to "paint the meadows 
 with delight." Lest while contemplating the particular 
 flowers we overlook the singular beauty of the conclusion, 
 it may be well to quote the passage again, and in its 
 entirety : — 
 
 When daisies pied, and violets blue. 
 And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue, 
 And Lady-smocks all silver-white. 
 Do paint the meadows with delight. 
 
 For to "paint " does not mean, as in ordinary converse, 
 simply to add colour, though this is perfectly compatible 
 with the general idea, but to enrich or adorn, the use of 
 the word found as far back as 200 B.a, and with precisely 
 
Cuckoo-JtowerS. 133 
 
 he same application, in the celebrated Roman dramatist, 
 Plautus. Chaucer also has it in the Franklin's Tale, 
 
 '■2,S-— 
 
 A garden full of leaves and of flowers, 
 
 Which May had painted with her softe showers. 
 
 [t is in the same sense again that it appears in the 
 massage in King John, — 
 
 To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, — 
 vhere no reference is intended to such of its race as the 
 scarlet martagon, Shakspere thinking, probably, when he 
 ivrote the words, of Solomon, who, in " all his glory,' 
 ivas still not arrayed like one of these. The four lines, 
 •' When daisies pied," &Cj seem to enumerate the flowers 
 intended by Iris in that charming little interlude in the 
 Temfest, when she points to the neat finish given by 
 the industrious farmer to the meadow-borders : — 
 
 Thy banks with pionM and twilled brims. 
 Which spongy April at thy hest betrims. 
 
 Some would have the words to be " peonied and lilied." 
 But peonies do not arrive until Whitsuntide, and then 
 only in gardens; and were the ground already dressed 
 with flowers so splendid, it certainly would need no 
 betrimming. "Pioned" and "twilled" are old words 
 denoting use of the spade and mattock. 
 
 CUCKOO-FLOWERS. 
 "Cuckoo-flower," with the old herbalists, was a synonym 
 of "Lady-smock." The former name covered, how- 
 ever, many other plants, and to fix what it denotes in 
 
134 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 particular instances is often impossible. Such is the case 
 with the solitary Shaksperean mention, which occurs in 
 Cordelia's description of distracted Lear: — 
 
 Alack, 'tis he : why, he was met even now. 
 As mad as the vex'd sea; singing aloud; 
 Crown'd with rank fumiter and furrow weeds, 
 With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, 
 Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow 
 In our sustaining com. — (iv., 4.) 
 
 None of the plants ordinarily called "cuckoo-flowers" 
 are associates of cornfield weeds, nor do any of them 
 bloom at the same period. All are spring or early 
 summer flowers. Very possibly Shakspere may here not 
 have intended anything definite; for we must not shut 
 our eyes to the unquestionable fact that the poets univer- 
 sally, at times, introduce names and words for the sake 
 purely of rhyme, or euphony, or to balance the metre. 
 
 There are some similar old wild-flower names, however, 
 with " cuckoo " for their first portion, which, provincially, 
 but rather inconsistently, denote plants of late summer 
 and autumn, and it is just possible that Shakspere may 
 have had one or other of these in view. No plant has 
 ever been more closely identified with the " furrows " of 
 August than the beautiful sky-blue corn-flower or blue- 
 bottle, Centau?-ea Cyaniis, and according to Britten and 
 Holland, this identical plant is in some parts still called 
 " cuckoo-hood." One of its earliest middle age names 
 ■wnsflosfrumentori/m. Another name was "hurt-sickle," 
 " because," says Gerard, " it hindereth and annoj-eth the 
 
Cuckoo-buds. 135 
 
 reapers, by dulling and turning the edges of their sides 
 in reaping of come," a quality that would well entitle it 
 to the epithet of "idle." The cyanus, though now 
 infrequent, appears to have been very general in the 
 Shaksperean age, for "it groweth," Gerard adds, "among 
 wheat, lie, barley, and other graine." 
 
 CUCKOO-BUDS. 
 
 Shakspere's " cuckoo-buds," may safely be assumed to 
 be the same as the "buttercups" of to-day, especially 
 the Ranunculus acris, usually, after the great Lingua of 
 the waterside, the tallest of its race. For there are three 
 quite distinct species: — the acris, or common meadow 
 buttercup; the turnip-rooted, Ranunculus bulbosus; and 
 the creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens. All three 
 are extremely common, but only the two first-named are 
 apt to give a character to the meads, and although they 
 often grow intermingled, the curis is the most abundant 
 in spring and early simimer. 
 
 In gardens, from time immemorial, there has been 
 a variety with double flowers, the analogue of the 
 acotiitif alius, familiarly "Fair maids of France." This 
 double-blossomed form appears to be the rightful 
 owner of the very old floricultural name "Bachelors' 
 buttons." So, at least, it would appear from Lyte, 
 who on p. 422 gives it as a second appellation of 
 the double "gold-cup," the wild or single form of 
 which, he adds, is very prone to change to the 
 double state. If any pther plant went commonly by 
 
136 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 the same name in the Elizabethan age, it would be the 
 double form of the wild red campion, LycJmis sylvestris. 
 In any case, there can be little doubt that they were the 
 flowers of the same ranunculus, when double, which 
 under the contracted appellation of "buttons" were 
 supposed in the Elizabethan age to have some magical 
 influence upon the fortunes of lovers. A reference to 
 them occurs in the Merry Wives of Windsor, iii., 2, 
 "He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he ^\Tites 
 verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May: he 
 will carry it, he will carry it, 'tis in his buttons, he will 
 carry it." " He speaks holiday " means in good and 
 polished language, just as in King Henry the Fourth we 
 have " with many holiday and lady terms." " He smells 
 April and May" means like the flowers of those two 
 months. 
 
Otljajrttr ^igljtlr. 
 
 WILD-THYME. 
 
 Her voice was ever soft. 
 Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman. 
 
 King Lear, v., 3. 
 
 HAT dainty and fragrant little denizen of 
 sunny hedgebanks, the Thymus Serpyllum, 
 like the two or three preceding flowers, 
 is mentioned by Shakspere only once. 
 The lines in which the name occurs 
 liaving been set to music, are better known perhaps to 
 people in general than any others in his writings : — 
 
 I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows. 
 
 Midsiimnur Night's Dreatn, ii., 2. 
 
 How much it was prized in the Elizabethan age is 
 ihown by the allusion in Shakspere's great contem- 
 porary, Francis Bacon, Lord Vemlam, in whose essay 
 'On Gardens," originally published in 1597, we have 
 
138 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 the following: — "And because the breath of flowers is 
 far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the 
 warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing 
 is more fit for that delight than to know what be the 
 flowers and plants that do best perfume the air, . . . 
 and those which perfume the air most delightfully, not 
 passed by as the rest, but trodden upon and crushed, are 
 three, burnet, wild-thyme, and water-mint" Shakspere, 
 we may be sure, had often noticed this plant, alike as 
 successor of the oxlip and the violet, and when in 
 autumn it strewed its purple for him over the green 
 slopes of airy hills, swelling into those pretty little knolls 
 and bloomy cushions which show the lightness of the soil 
 beneath, or hanging in rosy curtains from the crevices 
 of jutting crags, after the sweet old fashion which in 
 England is so entirely and purely its own. 
 
 THE DOG-ROSE. 
 
 Shakspere was not unobservant of the dog-roses of the 
 hedge and wilderness, where the tremulous sprays and 
 arching wreaths, covered with little pink concaves, their 
 young hearts golden, toss themselves out -with the care- 
 less grace so characteristic of this beautiful wild-flower. 
 He speaks of the plant, or its produce, upon four distinct 
 occasions, though in no instance by the appellation of 
 to-day, employing, in t'lree instances, very curiously, the 
 name of the grub which often occupies the heart of 
 the flower-bud — the "canker" by which the petals are 
 
The Dog-rose. 139 
 
 consumed while still in embryo, and which furnishes him 
 with so many apt comparisons. Thus, — 
 
 As the most forward bud 
 Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, 
 Even so by love the young and tender wit 
 Is tum'd to folly; blasting in the bud, 
 Losing his verdure even in the prime, 
 And all the fair effects of future hopes. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, L, I. 
 
 So again from the lips of unhappy Constance, in King 
 lohn, iii., 4: — 
 
 But now will canker sorrow eat my bud. 
 And chase the native beauty from his cheek, 
 And so he'll die. 
 
 How it happened that the name of the grub was passed 
 on to the plant does not clearly appear. Mr. H. T. 
 Riley, in Notes and Queries (First Series, x., 153), says 
 there was a superstition that scratches inflicted by the 
 prickles were peculiarly harmful and difficult to heal, 
 causing, as it were, little cancers. Be this as it may, 
 canker is the name thrice employed by Shakspere: — 
 
 The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem, 
 For that sweet odour that doth in it live. 
 The canker blooms have full as deep a dye 
 As the perfumed tincture of the roses, 
 
 but they 
 Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ; 
 Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made. 
 
 Sonnet, liv. 
 
 Then in the beautiful passage in Much Ado, i., 3, " I 
 had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his 
 
14P The SJmkspere Flora. 
 
 grace," which means, "I would rather live in privacy 
 the simple and honest life of nature than be dependent 
 on the favours of a prince." Lastly, in metaphorical use, 
 in 1st Henry the Fourth, i., 3, we have — 
 
 To put down Richard, that sweet, lovely rose. 
 And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke. 
 
 The remaining allusion is to the fruit, so rich and glow- 
 ing in late October, when the fall of the leaf gives full 
 view of the innumerable little urns : — 
 
 The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips. 
 
 Timon of Athens, iv., 3. 
 
 "Briar" always signifies, primarily, the plant before us, 
 
 the common wild rose of the hedges. In two or three 
 
 Shaksperean lines it denotes the garden or cultivated 
 
 rose, as will be noticed in due course. Occurring in 
 
 nearly a dozen places besides, with one exception, it 
 
 points everywhere else, in part at least, to the Rosa 
 canina. 
 
 THE EGLANTINE. 
 
 In the instance referred to, "briar" denotes that delight- 
 ful species of Rosa which possesses, in addition to deep- 
 hued flowers, the excellent recommendation of scented 
 foliage, whence the familiar epithet of "sweet." In 
 respect of this union of characters, the sweet-briar or 
 eglantine (the latter name, through curious French 
 descent, from the Latin aculais, a prickle) has no rival 
 among its kindred, and scarcely anywhere in botanical 
 
The Eglantine. 141 
 
 nature. Being an indigenous plant, not rare in hedges 
 and thickets, Shakspere quite probably knew it as such, 
 though more commonly as an inmate of the garden, 
 where it always had a place. The old poets introduce 
 it constantly in their pictures of garden pleasures.* 
 Chaucer gives the name of eglantine to one of his ladies. 
 Twice in Shakspere himself, it comes in under the latter 
 appellation, helping, in the Midsummer JVight's Dream, 
 to "over-canopy" the bank "whereon the wild thyme 
 blows;" and serving in Cymbeline for the beautiful com- 
 parison already quoted, when with Cytherea and the 
 violet, here connected still more elegantly with Imogen — 
 
 Thou shalt not lack 
 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor 
 The azur'd harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander. 
 Out-sweetened not thy breath. 
 
 The simpler name occurs in All's Well that Ends Well, 
 
 that wonderful play which, if less abounding in sweet 
 
 and grand poetic imagery and description than the other 
 
 •Thus— 
 
 I would make cabinets for thee, my love — 
 Sweet-smelling arbours made of eglantine. 
 
 Barnfield. The Affectionate Shepherd. 
 Art, striving to compare 
 With Nature, did an arbour green dispread, 
 Framed of wanton Ivie, flow' ring faire, 
 Through whidi the fragrant Eglantine did spread 
 His prickling arms, entrayl'd with Roses red. 
 Which dainty odours round about them threw ; 
 And all within with flowers was garnished. 
 That, when mild Zephyrus amongst them blew, 
 Did breathe out bounteous smells, and painted colours shew, 
 
 Spenser. The Bower of Bliss. 
 
142 • TJie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 principal comedies, supplies one of the most striking 
 proofs given by any of the gay and cheerful ones, of 
 Shakspere's incomparable power of portraiture, la)dng 
 bare, as it does, the character of Helena: — 
 
 The time will bring on summer, 
 When briars shall have leaves as well as thorns, 
 And be as sweet as sharp. — (iv., 4.) 
 
 Coleridge calls Helena Shakspere's "loveliest character." 
 Mrs. Jameson, who is always right, says in regard to her, 
 " There never was a more beautiful picture of a woman's 
 love cherished in secret, not self-consuming in silent 
 languishment, not pining in thought — not passive and 
 'desponding over its idol,' — but patient and hopeful, 
 strong in its own intensity, and sustained by its own fond 
 faith. . . . The faith of her affection, combining 
 with the natural energy of her character, believing all 
 things possible, makes them so. It would say to the 
 mountain of pride which stands between her and her 
 hopes, 'Be thou removed!' and it is removed." This is 
 not all. Helena's love is of the kind that shrinks from 
 no exertion, retires before no repulse, resents no unkind- 
 ness, is incapable of dismay, lives, moves, and has its 
 being in the quenchless conviction that some day, let 
 it only be faithful, the reward shall come, and the heart 
 bathe itself in gladness. How exquisitely consistent, then, 
 that Helena, rather than any one else, should adduce this 
 charming eglantine image, impossible to quote too often 
 for one's own personal sustentation of spirit. Though 
 wintry to-day, never mind: hope on, hope ever: 
 
The Woodbine. 143 
 
 The time will bring on summer, 
 Wlien briars shall have leaves as well as thorns. 
 And be as sweet as sharp. 
 
 It is right that in the end she should triumph, and justify 
 the original second title of this inspiring story, " Love's 
 Labour Won." 
 
 THE WOODBINE. 
 
 By authors of earlier date than Shakspere the name of 
 woodbine was applied to various weak-stemmed climbers, 
 the sense being the encircler of trees, and very specially 
 to the wild clematis, or "Travellers' Joy." Turner 
 restricts it to the sprightly plant which, by common 
 consent, it has now for three centuries denoted in the 
 vernacular, saying, "periclymenon (the ancient Greek 
 appellation, found in Dioscorides) is named ... in 
 English woodbynde, and in some places of England 
 honysuckle." To Shakspere the double appellation was 
 familiar. In two places the names stand side by side; 
 in one instance only does woodbine occur alone; honey- 
 suckle never does so. The former enriches the picture 
 of the bank, "whereon the wild thyme blows;" this, in 
 addition to its garniture of eglantine, being 
 
 Quite over-canopied with lush woodbine, 
 
 while for the coupled names we turn to the Midsummer 
 Night's Dream and to Much Ado: — 
 
 TITANIA: Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms, 
 
 So doth the woodbine^the sweet honeysuckle — 
 
144 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Gently entwist — the female ivy so 
 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, iv., I. 
 
 Hero • Good Margaret, run thee in the parlour. 
 There shall thou find my cousin Beatrice 
 Proposing with the Prince and Claudio. 
 Whisper her ear, and tell her I and Ursula 
 Walk in the orchard, and our whole discourse 
 Is all of her. Say that thou overheard'st us ; 
 And bid her steal into the pleached bower. 
 Where honeysuckles, ripened by the sun. 
 Forbid the sun to enter, like favourites 
 Made proud by princes, that advance their pride 
 Against that power that bred it ; there will she hide her 
 To listen to our purpose. — Much Ado, iii., i. 
 
 Margaret plays her part well; Beatrice is enticed into the 
 
 garden; she thinks she is unobserved: — Hero resumes 
 
 with Ursula — 
 
 Now begin. 
 For look where Beatrice, like a lapwing, runs 
 Close by the ground, to hear our conference; 
 
 and then we listen once more to the beautiful imagery 
 so abounding in a play not more remarkable for its 
 brilliant wit and diverting humour than for the poetry : — 
 
 Ursula: The pleasant'st angling is to see the fish 
 
 Cut with her golden oars the silver stream. 
 And greedily devour the treach'rous bait ; 
 So angle we for Beatrice, who even now 
 Is couched in the woodbine coverture. 
 
 Were it for no more than that the mention of the wood- 
 bine brings us into the atmosphere breathed by Beatrice, 
 the occurrence of the name would be matter for rejoicing, 
 for the essential interest of Much Ado comes, as in 
 
The Woodbine. 145 
 
 several of the other plays, of the admirable conjunction 
 3f two separate themes. First, we have a dramatic life- 
 tiistory; then a profound chapter in philosophical 
 asychologyj yet the two are so blended as not to admit, 
 5ven for a moment, of severance. The dramatic evolu- 
 :ion of the tale is perfect. Interwoven with it we have 
 :he fine tissue of personal character which renders the 
 study of Beatrice inexhaustible; given at the same time 
 without any lengthy detail of description, therefore with 
 guarantee of the noblest intellectual pleasure, since this, 
 as in all consummate works of art, arises upon quiet 
 sense of brief and minute creative touches, which are 
 so subtle too that they never seem to be art at all. Ars 
 cdare artem. " Beatrice," as Mr. Furnival says, " is the 
 sauciest, most piquant, sparkling, madcap girl that Shak- 
 spere ever drew; and yet a loving, deep-natured true 
 woman, too." . . . Evidence, so-called ! Suspicion ! 
 What are these to her? She knows her friend's pure 
 heart, where no base thought ever has lodged: — 
 
 O, on my soul, my cousin is belied ! 
 
 Then when she is married, "we all know what it 
 means — the brightest, sunniest married life, comfort in 
 sorrow, doubling of joy." Hazlitt remarks somewhere 
 that the perfection of woman's nature consists in the 
 tenacity of her affections, resolving into a combination 
 of amiable strength with amiable weakness. Beatrice 
 supplies a perfect illustration. If men do not realise 
 her character, it is for the same reason, probably, that 
 
 L 
 
146 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 others do not realise Shakspere in the aggregate — " they 
 have not lived long enough for the reality to come home 
 to them." 
 
 But we must not forget the description of the bower 
 into which Hero decoys her. First, it is " pleached," or 
 formed of branches folded together, as in another line in 
 the same play, where Antonio speaks of the "thick- 
 pleached alley " in his "orchard" or garden. The same 
 word is used figuratively in Antony and Cleopatra, 
 iv., 12: — 
 
 And see 
 Thy master thus with pleach'd arms bending do1^^l. 
 
 The honeysuckles, in turn, are " ripened by the sun," or 
 so luxuriant in leaf and bloom as to form an impenetrable 
 screen, forbidding "the sun to enter." The phrases are 
 simple enough; they make no pretension; but they 
 illustrate, once again, in the most admirable manner, that 
 the perfection of power is to excel with the slightest 
 possible amount of material. 
 
 A word also upon the Midsummer Nig/it's Dream 
 passage. Some would have it printed and punctuated 
 so as to imply that the woodbine twists round the honey- 
 suckle : — 
 
 So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 
 Gently entwist. 
 
 But let "woodbine" signify what it may, clematis in- 
 cluded, weak things seeking support do not tmne round 
 other weak things, but round strong ones. In both 
 
The Woodbine. 147 
 
 :ases, no doubt, in actual nature, two or three of the 
 ong limp stems are occasionally found coiled together, 
 ike the strands of a rope or cable. But this is to be 
 •egarded only as an accident coming of near proximity; 
 :he exception, and not the rule of life; an occurrence of 
 the same nature as the reciprocal grip of the tendrils 
 Df peas and vetches when there is nothing exterior to 
 take hold of The original impulse of all twiners and 
 climbers; the impetus which prefigures instinct, just as 
 instinct prefigures reason, is to clasp something sub- 
 stantial and outside, ratlier than what is another part 
 only of self: — ^neither woodbine nor clematis ever per- 
 manently flourishes except by looking to something 
 stronger. With proper stops, the sense is clear enough. 
 "As the woodbine, otherwise called the honeysuckle, and 
 the female ivy, embrace the elm," Titania means, "so will 
 I, my love, encircle thee." Shakspere's intention in using 
 both names is to make quite plain what plant he refers 
 to. "Woodbine" having been applied to various plants, 
 he is wishfiil that there shall be no misapprehension, and 
 that the imagination shall be fixed at once upon the 
 Lonicera. One cannot but remember, in passing, that 
 pretty passage in William Bulleyn, the old botanist and 
 preacher, temp. Henry VIII., when, after describing the 
 sweet smell of the honeysuckle after a shower of rain, he 
 goes on to say " it spredeth forth his sweete lilies like 
 ladies' fingers among the thorns." 
 
 The common or great hedge bindweed. Convolvulus 
 sejiium, so distinguished -for the charm of its whitebell- 
 
148 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 flowers, so pure and lovely that Virgil employs them as 
 an image of the nymph Galatea, has been thought by 
 some to be the woodbine of the passage before us. But 
 as we see, there is no occasion to resort to any such 
 conjecture. The idea seems to have been derived from 
 Ben Jonson, who himself, however, makes a double mis- 
 take, since he intends the Solatium Dulcamara. — 
 
 So, the blue bindweed doth itself enfold 
 With honeysuckle ; and both these ent^\Tne 
 Themselves with briony and jessamine. 
 To cast a kind and odoriferous shade. 
 
 Vision ofDdight. 
 
€\japBt iatntlr. 
 
 THE GARDEN FLOWERS. 
 
 He hath songs for man or woman of all sizes. 
 
 iVinier's Tale, iv., 4. 
 
 EENLY alive to the charms of wild and 
 untrimmed nature, Shakspere could not 
 fail to love a well-furnished and well-kept 
 garden. How he delighted in the con- 
 templation of the little enclosures which 
 Taste, in all ages, has devoted to choice flowers and 
 fruits, is plain from the numberless allusions in the 
 dramas, not simply to gardens, but to gardeners and to 
 horticultural operations, the latter being generally used, 
 moreover, for some beautiful image or comparison, as in 
 the celebrated scene in King Richard the Second. The 
 subject of discourse is the forlorn condition of the country 
 induced by the misgovemment of the unfortunate king, 
 
150 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 already deposed, the head-gardener giving directions to 
 his subordinates: — 
 
 Go, bind thou up yon dangling apricocks. 
 Which, like unruly children, make their sire 
 Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight. 
 
 Assistant: 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 fairest flowers choked up. 
 Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges ruined. 
 Her knots disordered, and her wholesome fruits 
 Swarming with caterpillars? 
 
 Gardener : Hold thy peace : — 
 
 He that hath suffered this disordered spring, 
 
 Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf: 
 
 The weeds that his broad-spreading leaves did shelter. 
 
 That seemed, in eating him, to hold him up. 
 
 Are plucked up, root and all, by BoUngbroke. 
 
 I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green. 
 
 Assistant: What, are they dead? 
 
 Gardener : They are, and Bolingbroke 
 
 Hath seized the wasteful king. — Oh! what pity is it 
 That he had not so trimmed and dressed his land. 
 As we this garden ! We, at time of yeai- 
 Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit trees, 
 Lest, being over-proud with sap and blood. 
 With too much riches it confound itself. 
 Had he done so to great and growing men. 
 They might have lived to bear, and he to taste 
 Their fruits of duty. All superfluous branches 
 
 We lop away, tliat bearing boughs may live : 
 
 Had he done so, himself had borne tlie crown. 
 Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down. 
 
 (iii.,4.) 
 
Elizabethan Gardens. 151 
 
 The disordered "knots" are the flower-beds, which in 
 the gardens of the Elizabethan times were marked out 
 with mathematical precision of form and outline, so as to 
 produce in the aggregate, quaint patterns, the entire area 
 of the ground, which was always rectangular, being com- 
 pletely occupied. The idea seems to have been to lay 
 out the garden in some kind of accordance with the 
 domestic architecture of the period, which delighted in 
 straight lines, gables, long terraces, flights of broad stone 
 steps, and in the interior, in long galleries, with bay- 
 windows, and abundance of tracery. It was just such a 
 one as this which is adverted to in Lovers Labour's Lost, . 
 i., I.: — "It standeth north-north-east and by east, from 
 the west comer of thy curious-knotted garden." 
 
 In these elaborately-constructed gardens there was 
 never any lawiL The space was wholly devoted to 
 Bowers, with a few simple evergreen shrubs, such as box 
 and dwarf yew. Adjoining them were pleasant "alleys" 
 and shaded walks, and bovvers and arbours seem to have 
 been an essential feature. The flowers were of the kinds 
 cherished to-day as "old favourites," comprising many 
 brought in from the neighbouring woods and meadows, 
 I good number from continental Europe, and a sprinkling 
 3f choice rarities from the Levantine countries, Persia, 
 ind northern Africa. Seven-eighths of the contents of the 
 nodern English garden, it is almost needless to remark, 
 ivere quite unknown. Scarcely anything had arrived 
 Tom America, and not a single species from the Cape of 
 3^ood Hope, from eastern Asia, or from Australia, then 
 
152 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 undiscovered. The number of plants in cultivation was 
 still rather considerable, as appears from the old 
 herbalists, especially Gerard, whose massive volume 
 appeared in 1597. So far as it is possible to judge from 
 the allusions in Elizabethan literature, it would seem as 
 if in the Shaksperean age there was more real love for 
 the few flowers then possessed, than is compatible with 
 the emharras de richesse of the present day. The enor- 
 mous quantity now possessed, the incessant arrival of 
 novelties, alike forbid the quiet friendship which three 
 centuries ago there was so little to distract, though 
 there was plenty to sustain, and to invigorate in the 
 sweetest manner. 
 
 The catalogue of Shakspere's wild-flowers, as we have 
 seen, is very brief, yet the list of his garden flowers is 
 only half as long, extending to only eight or nine. He 
 had no occasion to mention any more; the great mass of 
 the references fall, as it is, upon only two, the lily and 
 the rose, these having been, from time immemorial, the 
 poets' metaphors for loveliness and purity, especially 
 feminine, and as shown in the feminine cheek, thus, in 
 truth, part of the established vocabulary of civilised man. 
 The shiishan and chabhatslseleth of the Hebrews, the 
 \eipiov and poSov of the Greeks, the lilium and rosa of the 
 Romans, are their antetypes; only that while the applica- 
 tion of the ancient names is indefinite, and the botanical 
 species intended are often indeterminable, the nearer we 
 draw to the Shaksperean times the more precise they 
 become, Chaucer leading the way in our own country, till, 
 
Rose and Lily. 153 
 
 at last, in Shakspere himself, as in the case of the violet, 
 we rest, and in thankfulness. The actual beginning of 
 the rose and lily usage, like the sources of great rivers, 
 is hidden among the mountains. It is as old, at all 
 events, as the time of Solomon, whose use of the words 
 above cited is only another way of sa3dng " My beloved 
 is white and ruddy," an infinite amount of grand signifi- 
 cance lying within. Shakspere reflects the latter when 
 Viola, in Twelfth Night, says to Olivia, — 
 
 'Tis beauty truly blent, whose red and white 
 
 Nature's own sweet and cunning hand laid on. — (ii., 4.) 
 
 The comparison comes to the front again in King 
 
 /bhn, — 
 
 Of Nature's gifts thou may'st with lilies boast. 
 And with the half-blown rose (iii., I), — 
 
 an allusion so much the more beautiful from the circum- 
 stance that the rose is the only flower which is quite as 
 lovely in the opening bud as when full blown. Theo- 
 critus so admired the rose when in this condition that he 
 calls the flowers simply calyces.* Shakspere never tires 
 of the twofold citation. See how exquisitely it reappears 
 in the Rape of Lucrece, the figure here partly founded 
 upon a later event of history : — 
 
 The silent war of lilies and of roses. 
 So again in Coriolanus: — 
 
 Ourveil'd dames 
 Commit the war of white and damask in 
 Their nicely-gauded cheeks to the wanton spoil 
 Of Phoebus' burning kisses (ii., i); 
 
 * Idyll, iii., 23. 
 
154 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 "Damask" is the colour of the damask or Damascus rose, 
 noted for its fine crimson hue, whence in Pliny the happy 
 epithet, ardentissitna. This species had also (as to the 
 present day) a white variety, and another that was parti- 
 coloured, which latter is referred to in As You Like It: — 
 
 There was a pretty redness in his lip ; 
 
 A little riper and more lusty red 
 
 Than that mixed in his cheek. 'Twas just the difference 
 
 Betwixt the constant red and mingled damask. — (iii., 5.) 
 
 "Constant" here means uniform or unbroken, as usual in 
 the petals of roses, very few presenting a mixture of 
 colours. Some think that the other allusion is to the 
 silken fabric called "damask,'' in which, by skilful 
 crossing of the threads, different shades are produced 
 according to the play of the light. This last is in any 
 case the intent of the word, most likely, in the famous 
 lines in Twelfth Night: — 
 
 She never told her love. 
 But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud. 
 Feed on her damask cheek. — (ii., 4.) 
 
 Apart from the poets' use of rose and ILly as names for 
 loveliness and perfection, it is very interesting to observe 
 that these two flowers are representative of the two great 
 sections into which all plants bearing flowers are divided 
 by botanists, namely the exogens and the endogens, or 
 the dicotyledons and the monocotyledons. Individual 
 species of each section attain greater dimensions, and 
 are of incomparably greater service to man in point of 
 economic utility; but the pentamerous perianth of the 
 
The Rose. 155 
 
 5ne, perfectly regular, the petals free, and the calyx and 
 :orolla quite distinct; and the remarkably symmetrical 
 md sex-partite or tri-partite perianth of the other, the 
 elements all congenerate in colour and substance, are 
 still in the front, super-eminently characteristic of the 
 respective plans of general structure. From rose and 
 lily we acquire our best ideas of what exogens and 
 endogens really are; the twofold realm of floral nature 
 universally acknowledges them the respective queens. 
 The place and period of the uprise of the two names, 
 rose and lily, is undetermined. All that can be said with 
 certainty is that they are of oriental and very ancient birth. 
 The roses cultivated in English gardens in the Shak- 
 sperean age appear to have been the centifolia, with its 
 variety, the Provincialis ; the above-named Damascena, 
 so called from the glorious old Syrian city, that one 
 which of all the ancient cities in the world has alone 
 remained unscathed; the moschaia, or musk-rose, and 
 the alba; and of these, it would seem, from the very 
 vague and scanty references to double roses, and the 
 frequent allusions to the beautiful yellow centre of the 
 rose in its natural state, the original or single forms alone 
 were general. The latter, conventionalised, was the rose 
 of heraldry, as shown by Mr. Boutell, plate xiii., fig. 385. 
 ■\Vlien it was that the earliest of the roses to arrive 
 in our country made its appearance no one can tell. 
 Possibly in the Roman times; more probably in the 
 early Norman, or during the period of the Crusades, the 
 enterprises which contributed so greatly to the new birth 
 
156 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 of civilisation in Europe, to the diffusion of the love 
 of art, and of the beautiful in all its forms. The story of 
 the Wars of the Roses, beginning a.d. 1455, shows that 
 the white flower was then cultivated as well as the red, 
 and that it was sufficiently- well known to carry signifi- 
 cance not inferior. We are apt to forget sometimes, in 
 our attention to prose history, how much Englishmen 
 owe' to Shakspere in respect of his dealing with those 
 wars. Shakspere has made them what the "Tale of 
 Troy" was to the Greeks, only that the narrator is greater 
 even than Homer. As a celebrated statesman lately 
 told us, "If you take the works of Shakspere from 
 Richard the Second to Richard the Third, inclusive, you 
 have the Wars of the Roses treated with a vigour and a 
 variety of conduct, and a multiplicity of incident which 
 the Iliad cannot excel, combined with a human interest 
 which no ancient work ever yet commanded." How 
 calmly the story opens : — 
 
 Plantagenet : Let him that is a true-born gentleman, 
 And stands upon the honour of his birth, 
 If he suppose tliat I have pleaded truth. 
 From off this briar pluck a white rose with me. 
 
 Somerset : Let him that is no coward, nor no flatterer. 
 But dare maintain the party of the truth, 
 Pluck a red rose from off this thorn with me. 
 
 The nobles take their respective sides; the contention 
 grows more and more angry as it proceeds; at last come 
 the words from Warwick, so terribly verified : — 
 
 And here I prophesy : This brawl to-day, 
 Grown to this faction, in the Temple Garden, 
 
The Rose. 157 
 
 Shall send, between the red rose and the white, 
 A thousand souls to death and deadly night. 
 
 1st King Henry the Sixth, ii., 4. 
 
 Without reckoning the repetitions in this famous scene, 
 
 which amount to nearly thirty; independently also of the 
 
 apothecary's "old cakes of roses," dried rose leaves, 
 
 Thinly scattered to make up a show, 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, iv., i, 
 
 and of the mention of rose-water in the Taming of the 
 
 Shrew, 
 
 Let one attend him with a silver basin, 
 
 Full of rose-water, and bestrewed with flowers, 
 
 there occur in Shakspere nearly sixty allusions to this 
 flower of incontestable queenliness. Including those 
 already cited, fully one-third of them touch it as an 
 object of nature: — 
 
 The seasons alter ; hoary-headed frosts 
 Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose. 
 
 Midsummer A^ight's Dream, ii., 2. 
 
 At Christmas I no more desire a rose 
 
 Than wish a snow in May's new-fangled shows, 
 
 But like of each tiling that in season grows. 
 
 Love's Labours Lost, i., 1. 
 
 What's in a name ? That which we call a rose. 
 By any other name would smell as sweet. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, ii., 4. 
 
 Caesario, by the roses of the spring. 
 
 By manhood, honour, truth, and everything, 
 
 I love thee so . Twelfth Night, ii. , 4. 
 
 The last-named seems to indicate the time of year of this 
 charming play, so well characterised as "a genuine 
 
158 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 comedy, a peq)etual fount of the gayest and sweetest 
 fancies;" for, laid as the scene is, in the graceful though 
 capricious lady Olivia's own garden, nothing would be 
 more natural than that she should make witnesses of the 
 flowers beside her. 
 
 Then we have the long succession of beautiful figurative 
 uses : — 
 
 How now, my love, why is your cheek so pale? 
 
 How chance the roses that do fade so fast ? 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, i., i. 
 
 Their lips were four red roses on one stalk. 
 Which in their summer beauty kissed each other. 
 
 Richard the Third, iv., 3. 
 
 Hail, virgin, if you be, as those cheek-roses 
 Proclaim you are no less. — Measure for Measure, i., 5. 
 But soft, but see — or rather do not see. 
 My fair rose wither. — Richard the Second, v., i. 
 
 Fair ladies masked are roses in their bud ; 
 Dismasked, their damask sweet commixture shown. 
 Are angels veiling clouds, or roses blown. 
 
 Love's Labour's Ijist, v., 2. 
 
 Sweet rose, fair flower, untimely pluck'd, soon vaded, 
 Pluck'd in the bud, and vaded in the spring. 
 
 The Passionate Pilgrim. 
 
 When Hamlet addresses Ophelia as 
 
 O rose of May ! 
 
 he does not mean the May of the calendar, intending 
 rather the early summer of woman's life, when her 
 cheeks, as well as her hopes, are clad in roseate. Would 
 that all our young ladies would receive the truth that 
 rose-colour is only oxygen in another shape, and that 
 
The Lily. 159 
 
 cheeks get it best where the flowers do — out of doors. 
 When, again, Hamlet says, 
 
 With two Provincial roses on my razed shoes (iiL, 2), 
 
 the reference is not at all to the flower /if/- se. He means 
 rose-like ornaments made of ribbon, very fashionable in 
 the Elizabethan times, and referred to also by Bottom, 
 in the Midsummer Night's Dream, iv., 2, "Get new 
 ribbons to your pumps.'' Romeo perhaps intends the 
 same when he remarks, "Why then is my pump well- 
 flowered" (ii., 4), though here the reference may be to 
 imitation pinks, or perhaps to its being elegantly pinked 
 or punched with some floral pattern. The musk-rose, 
 the ever welcome species from northern A&ica, its 
 long and rambling shoots too weak to stand erect with- 
 out the assistance of kindly neighbours, and which 
 exhales its delightful musky odour most decidedly in the 
 evening, is associated exclusively with Titania and 
 the fairies. — (Midsummer Night's Dream, ii., 2; u., 3 j 
 iv., I.) 
 
 THE LILY. 
 
 While the idea of the rose, from the earliest times, has 
 been of something rich and red, covering not only itself, 
 but the oleander and the pomegranate flower — the 
 poetical idea of the lily has been one of whiteness, 
 whiteness of a shining and dazzling kind, or such as 
 would be called lustrous, a whiteness very different from 
 that of milk, and giving the flower a peculiar fitness for 
 
i6o The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 use as an emblem. The ancients, because of this associa- 
 tion, gave the word various delightful uses. Homer 
 puts "lily- voiced" for sweet and pretty sounds, such as 
 the chirp of the cicala {Iliad, xiii., 880). Though, 
 prlmaevally, a name of very various application, the 
 lily par excellence of the ancients was most probably 
 that excellent species called by botanists the Lilium 
 candidum, the "common white lily" of the vernacular. 
 Indigenous to the southern parts of Europe, from Corsica 
 to Greece and Turkey, it could not fail to be known to 
 all who noticed flowers. The erect and leafy stems, a 
 yard high, the noble and well-balanced terminal cluster 
 of five or six pearly white and fragrant bells, the spotless 
 petals curving outwards, the swinging golden anthers, 
 and emerald stigma, would arrest the attention of the 
 most incurious. This one, at all events, it was which 
 pious emotion gave to the Virgin, whence the still-current 
 appellations of Madonna lily and Annunciation lily, not 
 to mention the thousand beautiful examples met with in 
 sacred and legendary art Shakspere's lily was unques- 
 tionably the same. He mentions it upon over twenty 
 distinct occasions, sometimes objectively, more frequently 
 in metaphor, or with a view to comparison, though not 
 always in reference to the lovely. Thus, — 
 
 O sweetest, fairest lily ! 
 My brother wears thee not one half so well 
 As when thou grewest thyself. — Cymbdine, iv., 2. 
 
 Now by my maiden honour, yet as pure 
 
 As the unsullied lily. — Lovers Labour's Lost, v., 2. 
 
The Lily. i6i 
 
 In Kins:; Senry the Eighth the lily is used, and in the most 
 beautiful manner, to represent the life-long maidenhood 
 of Queen Elizabeth. She is a babe at the christening 
 font Cranmer's benedictions remind one of the blessings 
 bestowed by the patriarchs of ancient Palestine, the last, 
 as should be, the flower and crown of all: — 
 
 Many days shall see her, 
 And yet no day without a deed to crown it. 
 Would I had known no more ! But she must die, 
 (She must, the saints must have her), yet a virgin ; 
 A most unspotted lily shall she pass 
 To the ground, and all the world shall mourn her. — (v., 4.) 
 
 In Troilus and Cressida, iii., 2, "lily" is put for Homer's 
 asphodel above mentioned : — 
 
 O, be thou my Charon, 
 And give me swift transportance to those fields. 
 Where I may wallow in the lily beds 
 Proposed for the deserver. 
 
 In an earlier scene of King Henry tJie Eighth there is an 
 
 incomparably touching allusion to the imagery in the 
 
 New Testament of the "lilies of the field," described 
 
 by the divine preacher, first as the produce of " the 
 
 grass of the field," then as " to morrow cast into the 
 
 oven :" — 
 
 Queen Katharine : Shipwreck'd upon a kingdom, where 
 no pity. 
 No friends, no hope ; no kindred weep for me ; 
 Almost no grave alloVd me : like the lily, 
 That once was mistress of the field, and flourished, 
 I'll hang my head, and perish. — (iii., I.) 
 
 The "lilies" of the New Testament, it is well known, 
 
 M 
 
1 62 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 are flowers in general, the word having been commonly 
 thus used in ancient times, or in the broad and general 
 sense of &vQoq and flos. Moschus, the ancient Sicilian 
 poet, represents Europa as gathering "fragrant lilies" 
 in the meads, plainly intending flowers in general.* 
 "Rose" was often applied in the same way, a very 
 picturesque example occurring in Pindar, t 
 
 On one occasion "lily" is used facetiously, being 
 introduced in the laughable mock-pathetic burlesque of 
 Pyramus and Thisbe, performed at the end of the 
 Midsummer Nighfs Dream : — 
 
 Asleep, my love ? 
 
 What, dead, my dove ? 
 
 O, Pyramus, arise. 
 
 Speak, speak. Quite dumb ? 
 Dead, dead, a tomb 
 Must cover thy sweet eyes. 
 
 These lily brows. 
 
 This cherry nose. 
 These yellosv cowslip cheeks, 
 
 Are gone, are gone ! 
 
 Lovers, make moan ! 
 His eyes were green as leeks. 
 
 O sisters three. 
 
 Come, come, to me ! 
 
 Personal beauty being always heightened by darkness of 
 the eyebrows, " lily brows " well match the cherry nose, 
 the green eyes, and the cowslip cheeks. A more 
 ludicrous combination it is impossible to imagine. 
 
 * Idyll, ii., 32. tIstK, iiL, 36. 
 
The Flower-de-luce. 163 
 
 THE FLOWER-DE-LUCE. 
 
 The flower-de-luce is one of those desired by Perdita : 
 
 Bold oxlips, and 
 The cro\vn-imperial; lilies of all kinds, 
 The flower-de-luce being one. O these I lack, 
 To make you garlands o£ 
 
 In Chaucer the fleur-de-lis, as we now call it, was the 
 Lilium candidum, just described: — 
 
 His nekke was whit as is the flour de lys. 
 
 But in the Shaksperean age, and long before, the name 
 was very evidently applied also to various species of 
 Iris — that extensive and charming genus, represented 
 abundantly in Europe, the members of which are 
 distinguished from all other liliaceous plants by their 
 three great outer pendulous petals, familiarly termed the 
 "falls;" — large, erect, and very handsome petaloid 
 stigmas; and the rich and endless diversity of their 
 colours, whence the name, to translate literally, of "rain- 
 bow-flower." Many of the exotic species were cultivated 
 in English gardens in Shakspere's time; he would 
 be acquainted also with that strikingly handsome 
 (vater-side -vvild-flower, the yellow water-flag, Iris pseud- 
 acorus, found everywhere upon the continent, and 
 reasonably supposed to have furnished the fleur-de-lis 
 of the French heraldic shield. What particular flower 
 he was thinking of when he -nTOte "flower-de-luce" there 
 still is no evidence to show. He could scarcely have 
 intended the Liliu7n candidum, since this does not come 
 
164 The Skakspere Flora. 
 
 into bloom till the oxlips are all gone. He knew well 
 enough, however, that the golden one belonged to the 
 insignia of France, applying the name in King Henry 
 the Fifth, v., 2, in graceful metaphor, to the French 
 princess — "my fair flower-de-luce;" and using it also 
 upon three occasions, heraldically, in King Henry the 
 Sixth: — 
 
 Cropp'd are the flower-de-luces in your arms. 
 
 Of England's coat one half is cast away. — Part ist, i., I. 
 
 I am prepared; here is my keen-edged sword, 
 
 Deck'd with five flower-de-luces on each side. — Ibid, i., 2. 
 
 A sceptre will I have, have I a soul, 
 
 On which I'll toss the flower-de-luce of France. 
 
 Part znd, v., i. 
 
 " Of England's coat one half is cast away " refers to 
 the beautiful shield of arms established by Edward the 
 Third for the English monarchy, by combining the three 
 Plantagenet lions with the lilies of France, thereby 
 asserting sovereignty over the latter country, as expressed 
 also in the royal title then assumed, " King of France and 
 England." "One half" of the coat being "cast away" 
 signified, heraldically, loss or forfeiture of dominion in 
 France. Few circumstances in history are more curious 
 of their kind than the retention of the fleur-de-lis in the 
 shield, and thus upon the gold and silver coinage of 
 Great Britain, up to the year 1801, or for two hundred 
 and forty-three years after the loss of Calais. The name 
 is spelt also, in old authors and in early editions, "floure 
 delice" and fleur-de-lys. 
 
The Crown Imperial. 165 
 
 THE CROWN IMPERIAL. 
 
 Nature produces few plants more remarkable than the 
 crown imperial, Fritillarla unperialis. The succulent 
 stem, two feet high, rises out of a tuft of narrow leaves 
 and terminates in a similar tuft, though bare interme- 
 diately. Immediately below the latter there is a ring 
 of large tulip-like flowers, of a rich golden yellow, and 
 pendulous. Looking into the flower, as into a bell, at 
 the base of every petal there is seen a white and concave 
 nectary, from which, when the bloom is in perfection, 
 depends a drop of honey. At the first glance it seems 
 to possess six great round eyes carved out of pearl. A 
 native of Persia, it was originally introduced into the 
 royal garden at Vienna about A-D. 1576, and shortly 
 afterwards arrived in England. Shakspere would see it, 
 in all likelihood, in some choice London gardea 
 
 THE MARIGOLD. 
 
 The marigold, Calendula officinalis, mentioned by 
 Shakspere upon five occasions, is, in its most engaging 
 use, still Perdita's: — 
 
 The marigold that goes to bed with the sun. 
 And with him rises, weeping. — (iv., 3.) 
 
 The flower she intends is the well known ancient inhabi- 
 tant of the garden — originally from southern Europe, — ■ 
 celebrated alike for its economic service, and for the 
 extreme sensitiveness of the flowers to the solar ray. 
 
1 66 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The last-named feature was noticed two thousand years 
 ago. It was into the calendula, it would seem, though 
 the description is somewhat loose, that love-sick Clytie 
 was transformed: — 
 
 Ilia suum, quamvis radice tenetur, 
 
 Vertitur ad Solem; mutataque servat amorem. 
 
 (She, though held fast by a root, still turns toward her 
 beloved Sun, and though changed in shape, forgets not 
 to be faithful. — Met. iv., 269-270.) 
 
 In the calendula, also, we have the original heliotropion, 
 in Latin solsequium, whence, with lapse of time, the 
 French souci. Sunflower and turnsole, though we now 
 apply the former name to an American plant with disk 
 and rays of sunlike splendour, were, in the first instance, 
 it would appear, appellations of the same. The literature 
 of the middle ages abounds with allusions to it " The 
 marygolde," says Lyte, "hath pleasant, bright, and 
 shining yellow floures, die which do close at the setting 
 downe of the sunne, and do spread and open againe at 
 the sunne rising" (Book II., chap, xiii., p. 163). "Some," 
 continues Lupton, " call it sponsa soils, the Spowse of the 
 Sunne, because it sleepes and is awakened with him." 
 In Prime's Consolations of David, applied to Queen 
 Elizabeth, in a sermon preached at Oxford, November 1 7, 
 1588, we have "David found it true that he should not 
 have been heretofore at any time, and therefore pro- 
 fesseth that for the time to come he would be no 
 marigold servant of God, to open with the sun, and shut 
 with the dewe." In writing the lines above quoted from 
 
The Marigold. 167 
 
 the Winter's Tale it is important to insert the comma, 
 Dften omitted, after '* rises," so that the stress may fall 
 upon the "weeping" — Cly tie's tears — the dew-drops 
 lehich give perfection to the picture. 
 
 The English appellation of this famous old flower is 
 not, rather singular to say, its own by birthright, nor has 
 it anything to do with the name of " Mary." If not the 
 literal translation, it is the etjrmological representative 
 and counterpart of the old Greek name of the flower 
 to-day called, by pleonasm, the "marsh-marigold" — 
 helichryson, as in Theocritus, ii., 78, literally the 
 golden-flower-of-the-marshes. How it came to be trans- 
 ferred from the Caltha palustris to the calendula does 
 not appear. 
 
 The other Shaksperean allusions occur in Sonnet xxv. : 
 
 Great princes' favourites their fair leaves spread 
 But as the marigolds at the sun's eye. 
 
 In the Rape of Lucrea, 
 
 Her eyes, like marigolds, had sheathed their light. 
 And canopied in darkness sweetly lay. 
 Till they might open to adorn the day. 
 
 In Pericles, iv., i.. 
 
 The purple violets and marigolds 
 Shall, as a chaplet, hang upon thy grave, 
 While summer days do last. 
 
 And with slight variation of the name, in Cymbeli/u, ii, 3, 
 
 And drinking marybuds begin 
 To ope their golden eyes. 
 
1 68 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 THE CARNATION AND THE GILLIFLOWER. 
 These two, yet again, are Perdita's own : — 
 
 The fairest flowers o' the season 
 Are our carnations, and streaked gilliflowei-s, 
 Which some call nature's bastards ; of that kind 
 Our rustic garden's barren, and I care not 
 To get slips of them. 
 
 Over the carnation there is no doubt. Introduced from 
 the continent, probably in the time of the Normans, it 
 took at once the place of honour in English gardens 
 never since challenged. All the old poets have some- 
 thing to say in its praise, now and then indicating the 
 derivation of the name, which is simply a condensed 
 form of "coronation" — a flower adapted for use in 
 chaplets, and which has never been given to anything else. 
 "Gilhflower," often supposed to be the same, had a much 
 wider meaning. In Lyte, 1576, it covers the carnation, 
 the pink, the sweet-william, the marsh-lychnis, the soap- 
 wort, and a couple of silenes, all members of the same 
 botanical family; also various crucifers, including the 
 hesperis, the two Matthiolas, the dentaria, and the wall- 
 flower; and, besides these, the Hottonia and the Tagetes 
 patula. Essentially, nevertheless, " gilliflower " was 
 understood to mean certain varieties of the Dianthus 
 Caryophyllus (the typical form of which is the carnation 
 ipsissi?na), as shown by the derivation supplied by 
 " caryophyllus," the latter word referring to the clove-like 
 
The Carnation. 169 
 
 odour again of the carnation ipsissima* The varieties 
 in question were doubtless those which to-day are called 
 bizarres, and which the florists of the Elizabethan age 
 thought to multiply by means of the odd and futile 
 process described in that curious old black-letter volume, 
 Hyll's Art of Gardening, 1574, p. 88. Perdita, whose 
 character, as we have seen above, is distinguished by its 
 love of truthfulness, will have none of these artificial 
 things. She is no horticultural experimentalist: she 
 takes the flowers just as God made them. In her 
 innocent ignorance she thinks that all the "pied gillies'' 
 ha.ve been obtained by the artificial process she detests. 
 She admits that as companions of the carnation, they 
 count with the "fairest flowers o' the season," but to give 
 them a personal welcome she declines : — 
 
 Of that kind 
 Our rustic garden's barren, and I care not 
 To get slips of them. 
 
 I'll not put 
 The dibble in earth to set one slip of thetn : 
 No more than were I painted, I would wish 
 This youth should say 'twere well ; and only therefore 
 Desire to breed by me. 
 
 *No botanical name ever experienced so many mutations. In 
 the literature of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries may be found 
 gyroflee, giroflee, gilofer, gillofer, galofer, gylofre, girofle, gelofer, 
 gyllofer, gelouer, gillyvor, gelyfloure, gilyfioure, gilofloure, gillo- 
 floure, gelliflower, giUoflower, no fewer than seventeen different 
 spellings, and probably othei-s not observed. 
 
170 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 How modestly she disclaims personal acquaintance with 
 the process : — 
 
 POLIXENES : Wherefore, gentle maiden. 
 
 Do you neglect them ? 
 Perdita : For I hare heard it said 
 
 There is an art which, in their piedness, shares 
 
 With great creating nature. 
 
 Polixenes — Shakspere — knew nothing of "cross fertili- 
 sation," the practice of which has given to modem 
 horticulture a complexion so new and grand — though in 
 a measure foreseen and here foretold by him, as well as 
 by Bacon. So much the more remarkable, accordingly, 
 becomes the reply: — 
 
 Say, there be ; 
 Yet nature is made better by no mean. 
 But nature makes that mean; so, o'er that art 
 Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art 
 That nature makes. 
 
 This is an art 
 Which does mend nature— change it rather, but 
 The art itself is nature. 
 
 The discourse between these two, Perdita and Polixenes, 
 illustrates over again that other admirable characteristic 
 of Shakspere — the disclosure that he knows everything, 
 without ever advertising his knowledge. The " for," 
 before "I have heard it said," means "because." 
 
 Another name, in the middle ages, for the carnation, 
 was " sops-in-wine," or simply "sops," given because 
 the flowers were supposed to impart flavour, especially 
 
The Carnation. 171 
 
 the sweet wine presented to brides after the wedding 
 remony. Hence, in the Taming of the Shrew, iiL, 2: — 
 
 Quaffd off the muscadel. 
 And threw the sops all in the sexton's face. 
 
 A smaller kind of Dianthus, the pink, is generally 
 pposed to be referred to in Romeo and Juliet, iL, 4, 
 len Mercutio figuratively styles himself " the very pink 
 ' courtesy," or courtesy in perfection. In the foUow- 
 g scene Nurse says that Romeo is not the flower of 
 )urtesy, here, perhaps, pla)dng upon the name of the 
 ;autiful crimson amaranth to-day called the prince's 
 ather, in Shakspere's time the " floure-gentle." 
 
 "Coronation," literally "garland-flower," the original \/ 
 rm, as above said, of "carnation," serves as the key-note 
 i some other very interesting words. The diminutive 
 
 the Latin corona, upon which it rests, is corolla, 
 :erally "a little crown,'' very elegantly applied, in 
 Dtanical language, to the aggregate of the petals of a 
 )wer, which, although often insignificant and without 
 mmetry, in very many cases — those, no doubt, which 
 iggested the application of the name — may quite fairly 
 5 said to be disposed chaplet-wise around the interior 
 jrtions. The employment, by the ancients, of crowns 
 id chaplets wrought of leaves and flowers, especially for 
 istowal in testimony of honour and approval, was very 
 ctensive, and has innumerable illustrations in classical 
 ;erature. Chaplets thus given were things ensuing 
 iturally upon what had preceded, as honours must 
 
172 The Shakspere Flora, 
 
 needs, especially when symbolical Corollarium, "a 
 little garland," thence came to denote, frequently, a 
 natural result or sequence of any other kind ; and thence 
 ' something supplementary or additional. When, accord- 
 ingly, in the Tempest, iv., i, Prospero says. 
 
 Now come, my Ariel, bring a corollary. 
 Rather than want a spirit, 
 
 he means rather than be deficient, bring a surplus. 
 
 THE COLUMBINE. 
 
 The columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris, though a plant 
 wild in England, was probably, like the sweet-briar, best 
 known to Shakspere as a cultivated garden-flower. It 
 appears, slightly, with metaphorical purpose, in the 
 pageant which ends Lovis Labour's Lost; and again in 
 Hamlet, here in reference to some emblematic or super- 
 stitious idea the traces of which are obscured. " There's 
 fennel for you and columbines." Ophelia employs it, 
 seemingly, as a representative of thanklessness, since in 
 Chapman we have — 
 
 What's that, a columbine ? 
 No ! that thankless flower grows not in my garden. 
 
 Why "thankless" is a question still to be answered. 
 Turner speaks only of the supposed medicinal virtues, 
 Matthiolus and Gerard do no more. 
 
 One cannot part from Shakspere's flowers without 
 recalling what he has told us of the little wizards of the 
 
Bees. 1 73 
 
 hive. Under Providence, he says, there is special work 
 in the world for everybody, and the faithful concurrence 
 of the whole, duly performed, is " like music" 
 
 Therefore doth heaven divide 
 The state of man in divers functions, 
 Setting endeavour in continual motion. 
 To which is fixed, as an aim or butt, 
 Obedience. 
 
 So vifork the honey-bees. 
 Creatures that, by rule in nature, teach 
 The act of order to a peopled kingdom. 
 They have a king, and officers of sorts ; 
 Where some, like magistrates, correct at home; 
 Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad; 
 Others, like soldiers, armM in their stings. 
 Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds ; 
 Which pillage they, with merry march, bring home 
 To the tent-royal of their emperor. 
 Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
 The sin^ng masons building roofs of gold ; 
 The civil citizens kneading up the honey ; 
 The poor mechanic porters crowding in 
 Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate ; 
 The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum. 
 Delivering o'er to executors pale 
 The lazy, yawning drone. — King Henry the Fifth, i., 2. 
 
 As an account of the domestic economy of the honey- 
 bees, this most beautiful description, it hardly needs the 
 saying, is inexact Bee-life, in the Shaksperean age, had 
 not been studied. The main idea, however, is faithfully 
 put, and it is for the reader who knows the particular 
 truth to correct it mentally as he reads. There are 
 many other allusions to bees and honey, in all, probably, 
 not fewer than thirty. In All's Well, for instance, 
 
174 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 This he wished, 
 Since I nor wax, nor honey, can bring home, 
 I quickly were dissolved from my hive. 
 To give some labourers room. — (i., 2.) 
 
 Some of them are very beautifully figurative : — 
 
 O my love, my wife ! 
 Death that hath suclc'd the honey of thy breath. 
 Upon thy beauty yet hath had no power. 
 Thou art not conquer'd ; beauty's ensign yet 
 Is crimson in thy lips, and in thy cheeks. 
 And death's pale flag is not advancM there. 
 
 RovitQ and Juliet, v., 3. 
 
Cljapt^r fintlr. 
 
 CULTIVATED FRUITS, ESCULENT VEGETABLES, 
 AND MEDICINAL HERBS. 
 
 Think'st thou it honourable for a noble man 
 Still to remember wrongs? — Coriolanus, v., 3. 
 
 The rarer action is 
 In virtue than in vengeance. — Tempest, v., i. 
 
 H E interest of the Shaksperean references 
 to the garden fruits and vegetables of 
 his period, and to the herbs grown for 
 medicinal purposes, consists chiefly in 
 tlie information they afford as to the 
 horticulture of the Elizabethan age, and the value then 
 attached to simple herb-physic. The circumstances 
 amid which these references occur are seldom poetical. 
 They differ altogether from the beautiful surroundings of 
 the flowers. Sometimes tliey are distinctly unpleasing; 
 and the characters with whom they are identified are 
 
176 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 often of third-rate position in the drama. For com- 
 pleteness' sake, it is of course proper to recognise these 
 various allusions, bearing in mind, at the same time, that 
 many of them may quite possibly not be Shakspere's own, 
 but the unfair interpolations of actors or transcribers. 
 The associations are usually quite lateral. These fruits 
 and so forth seem to be introduced, not so much because 
 of their merits, as to illustrate the jocularity of the 
 speaker, or to serve as the basis of a pun or a double 
 entendre. Shakspere wrote his plays, no doubt, with a 
 view to their being performed before audiences to whom 
 amusement and broad farce were more welcome than 
 poetry and philosophy. He knew that he must supply 
 material for fun, and this he did supremely. He is 
 entitled, nevertheless, to the full benefit of the doubt 
 whether the vulgarities and the impurities may not have 
 been inserted by other hands. No manuscripts of his 
 own, as already said, are in existence. Between the 
 time of the original writing of the dramas and the first 
 printing there was plenty of opportunity for desecration, 
 and the desecration would be carried still further by 
 players who found it to their interest to interpolate 
 expressions adapted to "bring down the house," these 
 getting by degrees into the successive manuscript copies. 
 Pope pointed out, more than one hundred and sixty 
 years ago (his edition of Shakspere having been published 
 in 1721), that the Jiomeo and Juliet of the famous "first 
 folio " — the first collective edition of the plays, issued 
 in 1623 by the two players Heminges and Condell — 
 
Quibbles in Shakspere. lyj 
 
 contains many mean conceits and ribaldries of which 
 there is no hint in the early single-play editions. It can- 
 not be supposed for a moment that these were inserted 
 by Shakspere as after-thoughts. Surely their introduction 
 must have been after the manner indicated. 
 
 That Shakspere had no real and personal love for low 
 quibbles and other such vulgarities, he himself plainly 
 shows us in the Merchant of Venice, iii., 5, illustrating, 
 as in many other places, his own private ideas, without 
 an atom of ostentation. Launcelot, old Shylock's coarse 
 and ignorant serving-man, talks rudely to Jessica. While 
 they are conversing, he is interrupted by the entrance of 
 Lorenzo, who, if not one of the foremost of the Shak- 
 sperean characters, is distinguished at least for his 
 reverence, his good common-sense, and other qualities 
 of the gentleman. It is to Lorenzo that at a more 
 pleasing time we owe the sublimest burst of reverent 
 poetry in the whole of Shakspere; — 
 
 How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank ! 
 Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
 Creep in our ears. Soft stillness and the night, 
 Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
 Sit, Jessica. Look, how the floor of heaven 
 Is thick inlaid with patines* of bright gold ! 
 
 *"Patines, small golden dishes employed in the ritual of the 
 Catholic Church." The stars bear no resemblance to these. Surely, 
 as proposed, the better word would be patterns — i.e., designs or 
 beautiful geometrical sketches and methods of arrangement, as set 
 forth in the constellations, Orion, in its season, Cassiopeia, and the 
 sleepless Seven, with all the rest of the host of heaven, "shedding 
 sweet influence. " 
 
178 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 There's not the smallest orb that thou beholdest 
 But in his motion like an angel sings, 
 Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim : 
 Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
 But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
 Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. 
 
 Those wonderful words, also, a little later on — 
 
 The man that hath no music in himself, 
 
 Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, 
 
 Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils. 
 
 The motions of his spirit are dull as night. 
 
 And his affections dark as Erebus; 
 
 Let no such man be trusted. 
 
 One cannot be other than predisposed in his favour, and 
 thus, when Lamicelot resumes his quibbling talk, the 
 comment, never doubt, is from Shakspere's own heart : — 
 
 Launcelot: It is much that the Moor should be more than 
 reason ; but if she be less than an honest woman, she is indeed more 
 than I took her for. 
 
 Lorenzo : How every fool can play upon the word ! I think the 
 best grace of wit will shortly turn into silence, and discourse grow 
 commendable in none only but parrots. 
 
 Still, like all other quibblers, Launcelot is heedless of 
 the rebuke. He catches at every phrase used by 
 Lorenzo, who, when the silly fellow makes his exit, says 
 to himself, — 
 
 The fool hath planted in his memory. 
 An army of good words. And I do know 
 A many fools, that stand in better place, 
 Garnish'd like him, that for a tricksy word 
 Defy the matter. 
 
 The same spirit of private and personal contempt for all 
 
Offensive Passages. 1 79 
 
 that is low, vulgar, sham, and contemptible, is set forth 
 in Hamlet's advice to the players^ — incomparably more 
 Shaksperean in truthfulness to his own nature than all 
 the- offensive utterances put together. Refusing him 
 the benefit of the doubt; conceding that he was him- 
 self the author of the un-Shaksperean lines and passages; 
 it may at all events be considered probable that, 
 had he revised with the pen, he would have expunged 
 very much when thinking of posterity, or at least 
 have so modified various expressions, as to enable 
 us to rejoice to-day in Shakspere pure and simple, 
 instead of feeling that the volume in our hands is Shak- 
 spere plus appendages not of his own heart, but attached 
 in order to tickle a public whose chief wish was to be 
 made laugh. 
 
 Whatever may be the true history of these vulgarities 
 and impurities, in looking at passages of any kind in 
 Shakspere that offend, let us never be too severe. The 
 pure and beautiful outweighs the contrary beyond 
 measure. We should so accustom ourselves to rejoice 
 in his wisdom and grace as to forget the uncomely, 
 passing it over just as we ignore the disagreeables of 
 daily life. If we care for a true artist, whatever his 
 department of work, this is the true way, not only to 
 honour, but to enable ourselves to appreciate him, just 
 as in contemplating the works of God, the charm con- 
 sists in habituating one's-self to companionship with what 
 is loveliest in them and most glorious. People who are 
 sincerely interested in beauty and the pure, do not look 
 
i8o Tlie Shakspet'e Flora. 
 
 for blots and deficiences. They have enough to occupy 
 their time without The disposition to hunt for flaws in 
 things constitutionally good and noble, before we are 
 quite sure that we have realised all the worth, is a malady 
 to be regarded with special terror. No disorder can be 
 more disastrous to one's intelligence, since the mind 
 must needs become degenerate in the exact ratici 
 of its interest in the defective, which last can never be 
 either nourishing or healthful. The most unenviable of 
 aptitudes is that one which leads people to look for 
 blemishes in things better than themselves. 
 
 The garden fruits named by Shakspere aie all of the 
 very ordinary kinds, and such as had been in cultivation 
 in this country, in most cases, probably, since the time 
 of the Romans, to whom, in all likelihood, the original 
 introduction of the exotic sorts was owing. That the 
 apple, the pear, the cherry, the plum, and the medlar/ 
 exist in England, in the wild condition, is no doubt true; 
 but that the eatable varieties cherished in orchards and 
 gardens in the Shaksperean age had been developed in 
 our own island can hardly be supposed: they would be 
 descendants of imported trees, perhaps of the Norman 
 period, or the Plantagenet The grape, the fig, the 
 mulberry, the quince, the walnut, the chestnut, the 
 peach, the apricot, it hardly needs the saying, were in 
 the first instance chiefly of oriental origin, moving west- 
 wards with wheat and other features of civilisation. 
 
 Shakspere turns to the fruit-trees for two or three of his 
 most beautiful pictures of the vicissitudes of human life : — 
 
Fruit-trees. i8i 
 
 Then was I as a tree 
 Whose boughs did bend with fruit; but in one night 
 A storm, a robbery, call it what you will. 
 Shook down my mellow hangings, nay, my leaves, 
 And left me bare to wither. — Cyvihelint, iii., 3. 
 
 So in that most profoundly, not to say sacredly pathetic 
 
 of all his scenes, the story of the downfall of Cardinal 
 
 Wolsey: — 
 
 So farewell to the little good you bear me. 
 Farewell, a long farewell, to all my greatness ! 
 This is the state of man. To-day he puts forth 
 The tender leaves of hope ; to-morrow blossoms, 
 And bears his blushing honours thick upon him. 
 The third day comes a frost, a killing frost. 
 And, — when he thinks, good easy man, full surely, 
 liis greatness is a-ripening, nips his root. 
 And then he falls, as I do. 
 
 I have ventured. 
 Like little wanton boys that swirn on bladders. 
 This many summers in a sea of glory. 
 But far beyond my depth. My high-blown pride 
 At length broke under me, and now has left me, 
 Weary, and old ivith service, to the mercy 
 Of a rude stream, that must for ever hide me. 
 Vain pomp and glory of this world, I hate ye. 
 I feel my heart new-open'd. O how wretched 
 Is that poor man that hangs on princes' favours ! 
 There is, betwixt the smile we would aspire to. 
 That sweet aspect of princes, and their ruin, 
 More pangs and fears than wars and women have ; 
 And when he falls, he falls like Lucifer, 
 Never to hope again. — Henry the Eighth, iii., 2. 
 
 " Blushing honours " would seem to have been suggested 
 by the incomparable May roseate of the apple-trees, 
 since all other standard fruit-bearers which have petaled 
 
1 82 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 flowers, are altogether snowy, and reddening fruit is 
 never liable to be thrown down by frost. Surely, too, it 
 would be the apple-trees, and the pears alongside, which 
 suggested the pleasant comparison of the first sweet 
 shoots of love to opening buds or sprouts, these being 
 what are intended by the Shaksperean "springs" in 
 Venvs and Adonis, no, 
 
 This canker that eats up love's tender spring; 
 in the Rape of Lucrece, 
 
 Unruly blasts wait on thy tender spring ; 
 and in the Comedy of Errors, iiL, 2, 
 
 Even in the spring of love, thy love-springs rot. 
 The same may be the intent, perhaps, of the phrase in 
 the charming lines, quoted on page 21, from the Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, 11., 2 : — 
 
 And never, since the middle summer's spring, 
 
 Met we on hill, in dale, forest, or mead. 
 
 Or on the beached margent of the sea, 
 
 To dance our ringlets to the whistling mnd. 
 
 But with thy brawls thou hast disturbed our sport. 
 
 Titania is upbraiding Oberon and complaining of his 
 revels. That they have been married for many years 
 may safely be assumed. The present quarrel, a "very 
 pretty'' one, is certainly not the first in which the royal 
 couple have been engaged. From this point of view 
 the "middle summer's spring" may perhaps refer to a 
 period when love between them was more abounding, 
 and tliere were fewer of the "forgeries of jealousy." 
 There are difficulties, however, in the way of thus under- 
 
The Apple. 183 
 
 standing the phrase such as do not interfere with the 
 interpretation given above. "Orchard," we must 
 remember also, in the Shaksperean times, was often 
 equivalent to "garden," as in Much Ado, ii., 3, 
 
 The orchard- walls are high and hard to climb ; 
 
 and in Romeo and Juliet, 
 
 He ran this way, and leaped this orchard walL — (ii., I.) 
 
 The Apple itself, of which literature of every kind has 
 always been so fond, holds quite a subordinate place 
 in regard to prettiness of the allusions — about a dozen 
 altogether, — most of them being allied to the jocular, 
 and scarcely one distinctly elegant Usually it is a 
 named variety that is cited, as the "pomewater, " in 
 Lovis Labour's Lost, iv., 2; the " leathercoat," in 2iid 
 Henry the Fourth, v., 3; the "pippin," in the Merry 
 Wives, l., 2 ■ the "bitter-sweeting," in Romeo and Juliet, 
 ii., 4; the " costard," a large and coarse variety that 
 served as a contemptuous metaphor for a vulgar and 
 ignorant head, as in Lear, iv., 6, and elsewhere; and the 
 John-apple, or " apple-john," a fruit of good flavour, 
 and that kept good for two years, but naturally during 
 that time became very shrunken, so that old FalstafPs 
 comparison was well based, and his dislike of it quite 
 intelligible {ist Henry tJie Fourth, iii., 3; 2nd Henry the 
 Fourth, ii., 4). More pleasing allusions occur in Twelfth 
 Night, v., L : — 
 
 An apple cleft in two is not more twin 
 
 Than these two creatures; 
 
184 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 and in the Tempest, ii., i, "I think he will carry the 
 
 island home, and give it his son for an apple." When, 
 
 in Sonnet xciii., we have — 
 
 How like love's apple doth thy beauty grow, 
 If thy sweet virtue answer not thy show, 
 
 the reference is obviously to the conventional use of the 
 apple in Scriptural interpretations, to denote the " for- 
 bidden fruit" of the Garden of Eden. 
 
 The Pear furnishes Falstaff with a simile not unlike 
 the previous one (Merry Wives, iv., 5), and which is 
 almost echoed by Parolles f'^/Z'j Well, i., 1). Mercutio's 
 graceless allusion to the " Popering pear " is rendered 
 interesting by the association of this variety with the 
 village near Calais, of which Leland, the famous anti- 
 quary, was some time rector, and from which it was 
 named. When in the Winter's Tale, iv., 2, we read of 
 " warden pies," the reference is again to a particular 
 variety, golden yellow when quite ripe, famous for its 
 long-retained goodness, whence the name — A.S. wearden, 
 to preserve — and greatly esteemed, not for what we call 
 " pies " to-day, but for the analogues of apple-dumplings. 
 
 The Quince is mentioned in Romeo and Juliet, iv., 4, 
 when Lady Capulet is giving orders for the wedding-feast, 
 
 They call for dates and quinces in the pastry, 
 
 the "pastry" being the place in which "paste" was 
 
 made, as in Nicholas Brereton, 1582, 
 
 Now having seene all this, then you shall see, hard by, 
 The pastrie, meale-house, and the roorae whereas the coales 
 do ly. 
 
The Quince. 185 
 
 The fame of the quince reaches back to the remotest 
 antiquity. There can be no doubt that it was included 
 in the tappuach of the Hebrews (in the A.V. rendered 
 "apple"), and that it is immediately intended by the 
 Greek /i^Xov and the Latin malum. In Theocritus this 
 downy and fragrant fruit supplies a ver}' celebrated 
 metaphor, which no doubt well pleased Boccaccio, and 
 is imitated by Ben Jonson, who calls it the melicoton. 
 It appears in the famous myth of the golden apples of 
 the Hesperides. For the same reason, when Hero became 
 the wife of Zeus, the divinities presented her with appro- 
 priate bridal gifts, — Gaia, — the earth personified, providing 
 a tree which bore "golden apples." There is no occasion 
 here to go into the significance minutely. Shakspere is 
 thought to have Tjeen no stranger to it, and to have had 
 it in view in the Romeo and Juliet passage, which is 
 possible, but not likely, since the esteem in which the 
 fruit was held in his age, for the making of marmalade, 
 or "cotiniac," is quite enough to account for the intro- 
 duction of it Miss Wood relates an amusing anecdote 
 as to the regard in which it was held by fickle and 
 insatiable Henry the Eighth. In 1539, the new queen, 
 Anne of Cleves, desired to engage a maid-of-honour. 
 Lady Lisle, seeking to propitiate his majesty in favour 
 of her daughter Katharine, sent him a present of damson- 
 cheese, and some of this identical cotiniac. Whether 
 the object was attained or not, we are left in doubt. So 
 acceptable, however, to the royal epicure were Lady 
 Lisle's sweetmeats, that Anne Bassett, by whose hand 
 
1 86 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 they had been conveyed, writes off-hand, "The king 
 doth so like the conserves you sent him, that his grace 
 commandeth me to send to you for more, and this as 
 soon as may be." 
 
 The Medlar. Partly, no doubt, because of its un- 
 inviting appearance when sufificiently softened to be 
 passed across the lips ; partly because of the very 
 peculiar astringency, the medlar has never held a high 
 place among the orchard fruits; and almost invariably, 
 when mentioned in literature, the associations are ignoble, 
 if not offensive. Apemantus cites it in Timon of Athens, 
 playing jocularly upon the sound of the name, — 
 
 There's a medlar for thee, eat it. 
 
 Tl.\rON : On what I bite, I feed not. 
 
 Apemantus: Dost hate a medlar? 
 
 Timon : Ay, though it look like thee. 
 
 Apemantus : And thou had'st hated meddlers sooner, thou 
 should'st have loved thyself better now. 
 
 (iv-, 3) 
 Lucio also mentions it, in Measure for Measure, iv., 3, 
 and Mercutio, whose gay laugh " rings down the street," 
 in Romeo and Juliet, ii., i. Rosalind comes just in time 
 to atone for the latter, bantering old Touchstone, and 
 again with play upon the double sense of the word, 
 though we must be careful not to mistake her intent 
 in calling the medlar the "earliest fruit of the season." 
 She does not mean that it is the first to be gathered from 
 the bough, but the first of the hard ones collected for 
 winter store which after gathering becomes soft enough 
 to eat. 
 
The Plum. 187 
 
 The Plum. The allusions to the plum, like those to 
 the medlar, both in Shakspere and in literature generally, 
 are, one with another, upon a very low level; at all 
 events, they make little appeal to one's intellectual 
 tastes. The tree is mentioned in Venus and Adonis, in 
 the Passionate Pilgrim, and in the farcical scene in 
 2nd Henry the Sixth, ii., i, where also the fruit is named. 
 The fhiit appears again in the Merry Wives, v., 5, "I 
 will dance and eat plums at your wedding." Many 
 varieties have been in cultivation from very early times. 
 The Henry the Sixth passage includes notice of the 
 damson, or damascene, attributed to the gardens of 
 andent Damascus. Prunes, the dried produce of a sort 
 grown chiefly in France, are mentioned upon no fewer 
 than five occasions, but never once invitingly. Happily, 
 there is once again a set-off, though the scene in which it 
 occurs is one of those which make the heart beat with 
 mingled sympathy and indignation. Poor Constance, 
 the deceived, the friendless, lies at the mercy of bitter- 
 tongued Elinor, little Arthur, "my fair son," guessing, 
 only too sadly, what it all means : — 
 
 Elinor : Who is it thou dost call usurper, France ? 
 
 Constance : Let me make answer — thy usurping son. 
 
 Elinor: Out, insolent ! Thy bastard shall be king; 
 
 That thou may'st be a queen, and check the world ! 
 
 Constance : My bed was ever to thy son as true. 
 
 As thine was to thy husband; and this boy 
 Liker in feature to his father Geoffrey, 
 Than thou and John in manners ; being as like 
 As rain to water, or devil to his dam. 
 My boy a bastard ! By my soul I think, 
 
1 88 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 His father never was so true begot ; 
 
 It cannot be, an if thou wart his mother. 
 Elinor: There's a good mother, boy, that blots thy father? 
 Constance : There's a good grandam, boy, that would blot thee! 
 
 Elinor : Come to thy grandam, child ! 
 
 Constance : Do, child. Go to it grandam, child : 
 
 Give grandam kingdom, and it grandam will 
 
 Give it a plum, a cherry, and a fig : 
 
 There's a good grandam ! * — King John, ii., I. 
 
 One can see the quivering lips, the red lids, the hot tears 
 
 coursing fast down the pallid cheeks. By-and-by comes 
 
 the infinite, yet still most queenly grief. Arthur, as we all 
 
 know, perishes cruelly: "An image," says Mrs. Jameson, 
 
 "more majestic, more wonderfully sublime, was never 
 
 presented to the fancy : — 
 
 I will instruct my sorrows to be proud ; 
 For grief is proud, and makes his o^vner stout. 
 To me, and to the state of my great grief 
 Let kings assemble; for my grief's so great 
 That no supporter but the huge firm earth 
 Can hold it up. Here I and sorrow sit ; 
 Here is my throne — ^bid kings come bow to it. 
 
 Throws hersdf on the ground. — (iii., ;.) 
 
 " Not only," continues that accomplished authoress, " do 
 her thoughts start into images; her feelings become 
 persons; grief haunts her as a living presence: — 
 
 * Observe, in the above passage, the very interesting old-fashioned 
 employment of // where now we say its, which last, when Shakspere 
 wrote, was but slowly coming into use. With many other Shak- 
 sperean arcliaisms, this form of the word is still extant in the 
 Lancashire dialect; — no phrases are more common than such as 
 "Come to :'/ mammy." 
 
The Cherry. 189 
 
 Grief fills the room up of my absent child. 
 Lies in his bed, walks up and dovvn with me ; 
 Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, 
 Remembers me of all his gracious parts, 
 Stu6Fs out his vacant garments with his form ; 
 Then have I reason to be fond of grief — (iii., 4.) 
 
 The Cherry. The Shaksperean references to the 
 cheny, introduced by the above in King John, contrast 
 strongly with those to all the other fruits yet mentioned, 
 being in every instance pure, if not breathing the genuine 
 spirit of poetry. How pretty the picture in Venus and 
 Adonis, one of the loveliest ever drawn of reciprocity 
 of goodly service : — 
 
 When he was by, the birds vrith pleasure look. 
 That some would sing, some other in their bills 
 Would bring him mulberries and ripe red cherries. 
 He fed them with his sight ; they him with berries. 
 
 Then comes the fond comparison in the Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, when Demetrius talks of Helen : — 
 
 O, how ripe in show. 
 Thy lips, those kissing cherries, tempting grow! — (iii., 2.) 
 
 No fruits are individually more like one another than 
 cherries, or more apt to conjoin. Hence in Henry the 
 Eighth, V. I : — 
 
 'Tis as like you. 
 As cherry is to cherry; 
 
 and in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, iii., 2, that 
 exquisite delineation by Helena of the mutual love 
 between herself and Herraia in the days of their un- 
 chequered girlhood, now so sadly marred. If one 
 
igo The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 sentiment more than another was specially dear to Shak- 
 spere, it was the sanctity of friendship : — 
 
 O, and is all forgot? 
 All schooldays' friendship, childhood innocence? 
 We, Hennia, like two artificial* gods, 
 Have with our neelds created both one flower, 
 Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion. 
 Both warbling of one song, both in one key ; 
 As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds, 
 Had been incorporate. So we grew together. 
 Like to a double cherry, seeming parted. 
 But yet a union in partition ; 
 Two lovely berries moulded on one stem ; 
 So with two seeming bodies, but one heart; 
 Two of the first, like coats in heraldry, 
 Due but to one, and crowned with one crest. 
 And will you rend our ancient love asunder. 
 To join with men in scorning your poor friend ! 
 It is not friendly, 'tis not maidenly ; 
 Our sex, as well as I, may chide you for it. 
 Though I alone do feel the injury. 
 
 The cherry appears also in the description of the accom- 
 plishments of Marina, in Pericles: — 
 
 She sings like one immortal, and she dances 
 
 As goddess-like to her admired lays ; 
 
 Deep clerks she dumbs, and with her neeld composes 
 
 Nature's own shape, of bud, bird, branch, or berry, 
 
 That even her art sisters the natural roses, 
 
 Her inkle, silk, twin with the rubied cherry. 
 
 (Act v., proem.) 
 
 The "deep clerks'' who failed in discussion wth the 
 royal Tyrian maid, were, in the Shaksperean sense of the 
 
 •"Artificial," here curiously used in the sense of skilful or 
 ingenious. 
 
The Fig. 191 
 
 words, learned men, or such as to-day would be termed 
 "scholars," the fine old original meaning of "clerk" 
 being in the Elizabethan age still the current one. A 
 more interesting word is not to be found in the English 
 language, since it takes us back to the time of the 
 Druids, and is coeval with the most ancient Celtic 
 monuments. The priesthood in those times was three- 
 fold, the second of the three orders, called the Bards, 
 having for their special office the composition of verses, 
 which they sang to the music of the harp. The harp 
 was called clar; the bard was a clarsair; that which 
 related to the harp was clarach. Taken up by the 
 Romans, this word was Latinized into derkus. The 
 Bards or harpers were men of high attainments for their 
 period; — clericus thus came to signify mental culture, 
 and a " clerk " one who was better informed than the 
 people around him. 
 
 A favourite game with the boys of Shakspere's time 
 was "cherrj'-pit," often alluded to in the contemporary 
 literature, and by himself in Twelfth Night, iii. 4. 
 
 The Fig. Excepting in the King John passage, ii. i, 
 and the verses in the Midsummer Night's Dream, where 
 Titania gives the injunctions that in performance would 
 be so gratifying, — 
 
 Feed him with apricocks and mulberries, 
 With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries. 
 
 Excepting in these t^^-o places, the Shaksperean allusions 
 to the fig have no attractions. From time immemorial, 
 this fruit has been a metaphor for the worthless and the 
 
192 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 mean. Why so, there is no occasion to inquire too 
 curiously. Light enough is cast upon it by the classical 
 poets. Shakspere quite appropriately introduces the fig 
 in similar association, not forgetting the employment of 
 it to express insult and contempt, and more than this 
 need not be said. 
 
 The Apricocks of the lines last quoted are the 
 "apricots" of to-day, by Turner called the "hasty peche.'' 
 Early as they are to arrive, apricots at midsummer would 
 in England still be a phenomenon. This does not matter 
 just now. The scene is laid in fairy-land, where times and 
 seasons are indifferent, and in the climate of the Graces. 
 Another allusion to this fruit occurs in Richard the Second, 
 iii., 4, already cited (p. 150). The peach ipsissima, 
 though well-knoivn in Elizabethan gardens, is adverted to 
 by Shakspere in reference simply to its colour. 
 
 Grapes are mentioned in the Shaksperean dramas 
 upon ten occasions. The beautiful climbing shrub, with 
 its green tendrils, which produces them — the vine — is 
 noticed in just as many other places; the vineyard 
 receives notice nearly as often. There is no instance 
 of anything distasteful in the grape allusions; the poetic 
 passages are nevertheless those which refer rather to 
 the plant, foremost among them coming Cranmer's fine 
 paraphrase of Scripture during his benedictions at the 
 baptism of Elizabeth: — 
 
 In her days every man shall eat in safety 
 Under his own vine — what he plants, and sing 
 The merry songs of peace to all his neighbours. 
 
 Henry the Eighth, v. , 5. 
 
The Vine. 193 
 
 While the delicious masque in the Tempest, iv., i, is in 
 progress, Iris speaks of the " pole-clipt vineyard." Here 
 we are treated to the employment of one of the capital 
 old Anglo-Saxon words now forgotten except among the 
 rustics in particular districts — clyppan, to embrace. 
 Trained, as was formerly the practice with grape-growers, 
 so as to encircle poles, the vine literally clasps or 
 embraces them. " Our king, being ready to leap out of 
 himself for joy of his found daughter . . . again 
 
 worries he his daughter with clipping her" (Winter's 
 Tale, v., 2). In Lancashire, to this day, to twine the 
 arms fondly around one is to " clip." 
 
 Several fruits come in for trifling or incidental. allusion, 
 as the Gooseberry, in Second Henry the Fourth, i., 2; the 
 Strawberry, in Othello, iii., 3; Richard the Third, iii., 4; 
 and Henry the Fifth, v., i. ; the Walnut, in the Merry 
 Wives, iv., 2, and the Tamhig of the Shrew, iv., 3; and 
 the Chestnut in the same play, i., 2 j Macbeth, i., 3; and 
 As You Like It, iii., 4, where Celia adduces the colour 
 of the ripe shell as corresponding with that of Orlando's 
 glossy hair. The Mulberry, the last in the list, had 
 long been established in English gardens when Shakspere 
 wrote. His personal regard for this famous tree led, it 
 hardly needs the saying, to the planting by his own hand, 
 of one which, but for sacrilege, would probably have been 
 a joy to this very day, since the mulberry is one of the 
 longsevals. The fruit is referred to in Venus and Ado?iis, 
 Coriolanus, iii., 2 ; and in the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 iii., I. In v., I of the same play we have the beautiful 
 O 
 
194 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 picture of Thisbe "tarrying in the mulberry shade," so 
 soon to be exchanged for the turf and the throbbing 
 moment when, the moon high in the heavens, and the 
 "sweet wind did gently kiss the trees," she herself, 
 panting, did 
 
 Fearfully o'ertrip the dew, 
 
 And saw the lion's shadow ere himself. 
 
 And ran, dismayed, away. 
 
 Alas, little veil ! — ^how much thou hast to answer for in 
 the story of human love ! 
 
 THE ESCULENT VEGETABLES. 
 
 The esculent vegetables mentioned by Shakspere — 
 those cultivated in the kitchen-gardens of the time, — are 
 adduced like most of the fruits, chiefly for some kind of 
 facetious or jocular use, and only a few of them appear 
 more than once or twice. The history of the intro- 
 duction to this country of the sorts indigenous to other 
 lands, the times when brought, and by whom, constitutes 
 a very interesting chapter in the annals of horticulture. 
 Here it is sufficient to note that several of the best 
 of our cultivated vegetables, like many of the best 
 cultivated fruits, are accounted native productions of old 
 England, though developed, probably, into the condition 
 in which we now have them upon the continent. Such 
 are the turnip, the carrot, which seems to be owing to 
 the skill of the Flemings of the time of Edward III., and 
 the immensely diversified plant still represented in the 
 
Esculent Vegetables. 195 
 
 wild cabbage of our sandy shores. The very ancient 
 kinds, such as peas, broad or Windsor beans, the radish, 
 and the lettuce, were in all likelihood, introduced by the 
 Romans. The first-mentioned, the turnip, appears in 
 the Merry Wives, iiL, 2, which play also contains the 
 sole allusion to the carrot (iv., i). Peas, Biron tells us, 
 are good not only for man, but for birds : — 
 
 This fellow picks up wit as pigeons' pease. 
 
 Lovers Labour's Lost, v., 2. 
 
 The young green shells are also referred to under their 
 obsolete name of "squashes," derived from the onomato- 
 pcetic French esquacher, or Italian squasciare, as in the 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, iii., i, and in Twelfth Night, 
 i., 5, "Not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough 
 for a boy, as a squash is before 'tis a peascod." 
 "Peascod" was the appellation of the matured pod, or 
 when ready for gathering; and after the manner of many 
 an ancient and beautifiil intimation in colloquial speech 
 of the season intended, without actually mentioning it, 
 by citation of some characteristic product, — in 2nd 
 Henry the Fourth is made a synonym of summer, — "Well, 
 fare thee well ! I have known thee these twenty-five 
 years come peascod-time." Touchstone, in As You Like 
 It, ii., 4, refers to a somewhat celebrated old method of 
 divination practised by lovers with the pods. A fully 
 ripe one was selected and snatched away suddenly from 
 the stem. If it broke, and the peas were scattered, the 
 omen was bad: if it remained whole, the promise was 
 happy, — though in the present instance, of Jane Smile 
 
196 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 and "her pretty chopped hands," we hear no more. 
 Beans are mentioned in ist Henry the Fourth, ii., i, in 
 the same line with another reference to peas. 
 
 That various forms of the Brassica oleracea have been 
 cultivated from time immemorial, seems indubitable. In 
 Shakspere, however, the reference is collective: — "Good 
 worts,'' exclaims old Falstaff, catching at Evans' faulty 
 pronunciation, "worts" instead of "words,'' and playing 
 upon it, — "Good worts ! Good cabbages !" (Merry 
 Wives, i., r.) With Sir John this term was plainly 
 equivalent to the modern market-woman's "greens." 
 Etymologically, ihe word is primEeval. It appears in 
 ^Ifric's translation of Genesis ii., 5., "and call gaers and 
 wyrta ealles eardes." Then in Chaucer, when the fox lies 
 concealed, biding his time to pounce upon chanticleer. 
 In Baret, 1580, we have "wourts, all kind of herbes that 
 serve for the potte," cole or kail wort included. 
 Aristophanes, says Lyte, "taunted his Euripides \vith the 
 remark that his mother was not a seller of wurtes or good 
 pot-herbs, but only of scandix." It is the same, with 
 still further extended significance, which appears in the 
 plant-names star-wort, stitch-wort, rib-wort, glass-wort, 
 cross-wort, sneeze-wort, and fifty others. 
 
 In what degree of estimation the Leek was held when 
 Shakspere wrote, does not appear with any clearness, and 
 the poet's own allusions to it are only lateral. The 
 beautiful emerald shade of the leaves adverted to in 
 chrysflprasus, as well known, is very anciently proverbial; 
 hence it is aptly cited in the comic parody of the 
 
Esculent Vegetables. 197 
 
 Pyramus and Thisbe story in the Midsummer Night's 
 
 Dream, v., 2 : — 
 
 His eyes were green as leeks ; — 
 O Sisters three 
 Come, come to me ! 
 
 The "Sisters" invoked are the classical Fates; — 
 
 Since you have shore 
 With shears his thread of silk, 
 
 Tongue, not a word ; — 
 
 Come, trusty sword ; 
 Come, blade, my breast imbrue ; 
 
 And farewell, friends. 
 
 Thus Thisbe ends, 
 Adieu, adieu, adieu! 
 
 The other interesting association — that of the leek with 
 primitive Welsh history, is also placed before us, appear- 
 ing several times in King Henry the Fifth (iv., i; iv, 7; 
 and v., r, in the encounter between Pistol and Fluellin). 
 The origin of the use of this plant as the Welshman's 
 emblem is referred to a period as early as the days of 
 King T^rthur, whose uncle, St. David, having gained a 
 great victory over the Saxons, commanded his troops 
 thenceforward to wear, every one of them, a leek upon 
 the anniversary of his death, which occurred March ist, 
 A.D. 550. It is to be feared, however, that the specific 
 identity of the plant intended by his ancient majesty is 
 quite as problematical as that of St. Patrick's shamrock,* 
 
 *The national badge of Ireland is generally thought to be the 
 white clover, Trifolium repeiis. But the nonsuch, Medicago Lupu- 
 lina, is also honoured, and so, in truth, are several other little trefoils. 
 None of these, after all, meet the requirements, which are of a leaf 
 
198 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 since in its earliest signification, leac denoted any kind 
 of green and juicy plant, as still indicated in the com- 
 pounds houseleek, hemlock, and charlock. It may be 
 worthy of notice here, that the Hebrew word chdtsir, 
 translated "leeks" in Numbers, xi., 5, is elsewhere in the 
 Old Testament rendered "grass." "He causeth the 
 cIidtsirX.0 growfor the cattle" (Psalms, civ., 14). "Behold 
 now behemoth which I made with thee; he eateth chdtsir 
 as an ox (Job, xL, 15). 
 
 The Onion, like the leek, is never actually spoken of 
 by Shakspere as an esculent, though mentioned as taint- 
 ing the breath (Midsummer Night^s Dream, i,., 2), and 
 several times in reference to the effect of the vapour 
 upon the eyes, drawing tears. In the Taming of the 
 Shrew this is used satirically for sham or pretended grief: 
 
 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. — (Introd.) 
 
 Again in Antony and Cleopatra, i., 2, "Indeed the tears 
 live in onion that should water this sorrow;" while in 
 All's Well, v., 3, it becomes a figure for mental percep- 
 tion of coming trouble, — not an elegant one, it must be 
 acknowledged, though appropriate to the occasion, — 
 
 Mine eyes smell onions, I shall weep anon. 
 Garlic, very naturally, appears only in similar association, 
 or as an article of food such as the vulgar alone would 
 care for — Midsummer Night's Dream, iv., 2; Measure 
 
 constituted of three exactly similar leaflets, a form supplied, in the 
 British islands, solely by the wood-sorrel, Oxalis Acclosella. 
 
Esculent Vegetables. 199 
 
 for Measure, iii., 2; Coriolanus, iv., 6; ist Henry the 
 Fourth, iii., i. The Radish is mentioned in the same 
 play, iL, 4, and again in the Second Part, iii., 2. The 
 Lettuce appears in Othello, i., 3, where also there is a 
 reference to garden Thyme. Parsley is mentioned in 
 a passage one does not care to re-peruse (Taming of the 
 Shrew, iv., 4). Salad-plants in general are alluded to 
 under the name of " grass " by Jack Cade (2nd Henry 
 the Sixth, iv., 10, twice); and by the clown in All's 
 Well, iv., 5 — " I am no great Nebuchadnezzar, sir; I 
 have not much skill in grass." The famous Chaldsean 
 monarch's "grass,'' it is hardly necessary to say, was 
 not grass in the botanical sense of the word, but green 
 herbaceous vegetation, in the Hebrew, 'asdbh. 
 
 Excepting the pumpion or pumpkin, which would 
 seem to have been grown in the Elizabethan gardens as 
 a sort of ornamental adjunct, and which is used in the 
 Merry Wives, iiL, 3, as in old Greek literature, meta- 
 phorically, for a great dullard or empty-pate; — excepting 
 this, the Shaksperean vegetables comprise, in addition, 
 only a few of the class called seasoning-herbs. Perdita 
 mingles mint, savory, and marjoram with her marigolds 
 (Winter's Tale, iv., 3). Marjoram appears also, not very 
 intelligibly, in Sonnet xcix; and in All's Well, iv., 5: — 
 " Indeed, sir, she was the sweet marjoram of the salad." 
 The Lear passage, iv., 6, introduces the name simply as 
 a watchword. Fermel possesses more interest, being 
 associated both with Falstaff and with Ophelia. Poins, 
 says the dissolute and sensual, though jovial old knight. 
 
200 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 "plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel" 
 (2nd Hairy the Fourth, ii., 4), a habit quite as probably 
 his own, and fashioned not more upon the flavour of the 
 plant, when used as a condiment, than upon a super- 
 stition of the time which Falstaif, at least, would not care 
 to quarrel with. "Auttours,'' says Turner (1568), "wr)fte 
 that serpentes waxe yonge agayne by tastinge and eatynge 
 of this herbe, wherefore sum thinke that the use of the 
 herbe therefore is very mete for aged folke" (vol. 2. p. 5). 
 When Laertes' unhappy sister, addressing the king, says, 
 " There's fennel for you, and columbines,'' there seems 
 to be an allusion to another ancient belief, mentioned 
 by Pliny, and adopted by many writers of the Shak- 
 sperean age, namely, that fennel improves the eyesight. 
 " It hath a wonderful propertie to take away the film 
 or web that overcasteth and dimmeth our eyes." She 
 hopes, by the gift of it, to quicken the royal conscious- 
 ness, just, as a minute before, thinking of Hamlet and 
 her lost bridals, her lips play with rosemary, the emblem 
 of remembrance. Fennel, in tlie Elizabethan age, was 
 also used as an emblem of flattery: — "Litde things catch 
 light minds, and fancie (love) is a worm that feedeth first 
 upon fennel." * One cannot but remember, when in the 
 presence of these green succulents, the happy metaphor 
 in Antony and Cleopatra, i., 5 : — 
 
 My salad days. 
 When I was green in judgment. 
 
 ' Lyly. Sappho, ii., 4. 
 
Garden Herbs. 20 1 
 
 . ODORIFEROUS AND MEDICINAL HERBS. 
 
 The home gardens, when Shakspere wrote, appear to 
 have been rich in aromatic or odoriferous herbs and 
 under-shrubs, many of which held a conspicuous place 
 in medicine. They were the store-houses whence the 
 good wives and village dames drew their supplies for the 
 manufacture, chiefly by distillation, of cordials and simple 
 domestic physic. In an age when the use of mineral 
 drugs had scarcely commenced, and faith in "potions" 
 was unbounded, the little plots of balm, rue, and hore- 
 hound were almost sacred. The tradition was still alive 
 of virtues in plants equivalent to the miraculous, 
 
 In such a night, 
 Medea gathered the enchanted herbs. 
 Which did renew old .^Eson ; 
 
 the "Botany" of the times itself consisted very largely of 
 search into, and enumeration of their qualities; fable was 
 even more rife than the reality. Hence, Ophelia's 
 employment in the passage just referred to, of Rosemary, 
 that beautiful azure-blossomed shrub which the ancients 
 associated vA\h the spray of the sea, whence the name, 
 ros marinus, literally "sea-dew," as in that fair old 
 picture where care of the toilet and conjugal affection 
 run, as they always should do, hand in hand; — "Her 
 hair is smoothed with a comb; now she decks herself 
 with rosemary; again with violets or roses; sometimes 
 wears white lilies; washes twice a day her face in springs 
 that trickle from the top of the Pagasaean wood; and 
 
202 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 twice she dips her body in the stream." * The particular 
 virtue ascribed to it was that of strengthening the 
 memory. "Rosemarie comforteth the brayne, and re- 
 storeth speech; especially the conserve made of the 
 flowers thereof with sugar." t Spenser calls it "refresh- 
 ing rosmarine." Newton, in the Bible Herbal, says it 
 "recreateth and cheereth both the heart and mind 
 of man." Turner adds that "men do put rosa-mary in 
 medicines that dryve werisumnes away." In the suave 
 little poem, " a Nosegay, alwaies sweet, for Lovers," in 
 the " HandefuU of Pleasant Delites," already quoted 
 (p. 8i), we have — 
 
 Rosemarie is for remembrance 
 
 Betweene us daie and night, 
 Wishing that I might alwaies have 
 
 You present in my siglit. 
 
 Can we wonder that it was consecrated to friendship, as 
 illustrated so tenderly in Sir Thomas More; and that 
 in the realm of poetry it should be the first to be offered 
 by courteous Perdita: — 
 
 Give me those flowers, there, Dorcas. Reverend sirs, 
 For you there's rosemaiy, and rue ; these keep 
 Seeming and savour ail the winter long. 
 Grace and remembrance be to you both, 
 And welcome to our shearing! — {Winter's Tale, iv., 3.) 
 It was introduced, for the same reason, among the 
 symbols used at funerals, as in Ronuo and Juliet, iv., 5, 
 Dry up your tears, and stick your rosemary 
 On this fair corse ; 
 and in the spirit of the gold ring, emblem of constancy, 
 
 * Ovid, Met., xii., 409-413. t Lyte, p., 264. 
 
Garden Herbs. 203 
 
 among those used also at weddings, when a sprig of 
 rosemary was put in the wine dedicated specially to good 
 wishes for the bride's happiness. Rosemary is mentioned 
 also in King Lear, ii., 3 ; in Pericles, iv., 6; and, facetiously, 
 in Romeo and Juliet, ii., 4. 
 
 Rue, distinguished for its repulsive odour, was also 
 celebrated in the bygones as a plant able to invigorate 
 the memory. "The juice, with vinegar," says Lyte, 
 " given to smell unto, doth revive and quicken such as 
 have the forgetful sicknesse." Shakspere mentions it 
 upon five occasions, but never in the strictly literal 
 sense. Without any etymological connection, it so 
 happened that while the Latin name of the plant was 
 ruta, regret and remorse were in old English ruth, 
 while the verb denoting these emotions was, as it 
 continues to the present day, "to rue." 
 
 Playing upon the similarity of terms, rue was made 
 by our forefathers, always glad of such an accident, 
 the emblem of sorrow and repentance. The transition 
 was easy to the idea of Grace, in the Scriptural sense 
 of the word; and at last the plant itself was called 
 " Herb o' Grace," and simply " Grace." The Divine 
 favour is the most excellent of benisons; for this reason, 
 it is invoked by Perdita. Ophelia, on the other hand, 
 regards the plant as the emblem simply of grief. Hence 
 while giving a portion of what she holds to the queen; 
 the remainder she takes to herself — " There's rue for you, 
 and there's some for me" (in tone, alas, how piteous!) 
 "We may call it herb o' grace on Sundays; — you may 
 
204 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 wear your rue with a difference." Why "on Sundays" 
 does not appear. Perhaps it was a current phrase or 
 saying of the time.* "With a difference" is more in- 
 telligible, the words being borrowed from the language 
 of heraldry, though by no means correctly used in the 
 present instance, the heralds' "differences" (the crescent, 
 the martlet, the annulet, &c.) denoting seniority of sons 
 when there are several, whereas Ophelia means that vAxh 
 the queen it should be the emblem of something more 
 than simple grief, — contrition in regard to the past. The 
 heraldic phrase occurs also in Much Ado, i., i, when 
 " my dear lady Disdain," satirical, aggravating Beatrice, 
 who, with all her airs and graces, is still a true, tender- 
 hearted, loving woman, says of Benedick, " So now, if 
 he have wit enough to keep himself warm, let him bear 
 it for a difference between himself and his horse." She 
 means nothing unkind, — since for one who is a Beatrice 
 in capacity for sincere affection to be unkind is quite 
 impossible. The other Shaksperean allusions to rue 
 occur in RicJiard the Second, iii., 4; All's Well, iv., 5; 
 and Antony and Cleopatra, iv., 2, — 
 
 Grace grow where these drops fall ! 
 
 * For various conjectures as to the meaning, see N^oles and Queries, 
 March loth, 1883, p. 193. Among them is a quotation from 
 IJr. Warburton: — "Rue was a principal ingredient in the potion 
 which the Romish priests used to force the ' possessed ' to swallow 
 when they exorcised them. These exorcisms were generally 
 performed upon a Sunday, in the church, before the whole congre- 
 gation." Contracted into " Herbygrass, " it was stated in Notes and 
 Queries, Nov. l8th, 1S82, tliat the name is still in use near Sheffield. 
 
Garden Herbs. 205 
 
 Wormwood, adverted to by the old nurse in Romeo 
 uTid Juliet, i., 3, and in Hamlet, iii., 2, in both instances 
 with reference to its bitterness, serves also in Lov^s 
 Labour'' s Lost, v., 2, for an expressive metaphor, — 
 
 To weed this wormwood from your fruitful brain, — 
 
 this last use recalling the frequent introduction of the 
 same figure in Scripture, " the wormwood and the gall," 
 affliction the most severe. The literature of all later ages 
 supplies similar examples. In the melancholy Pontic 
 Epistles of the unfortunate author of the Metamorphoses 
 (in which Epistles, by the way, there is scarcely a 
 reference to trees and flowers), the "unsightly plains" 
 produce no more than the bitter unhappy wormwood " 
 (3, L, 23, and again in 3, viii., 15). Horace seems to 
 put wormwood for physic, the reputation of which has 
 from the beginning been that of bitterness. — Epistles, 
 2, i., 14. 
 
 Hyssop appears in Othello, i., 3; Lavender in the 
 
 Winter'' s Tale, iv., 3; Balm (the Melissa officinalis), in 
 Antony and Cleopatra, v., 2; and again in the Merry 
 
 Wives, v., 2, — • 
 
 The several chairs of order, look you, scour 
 With juice of balm, and every precious flower. 
 
 The last passage recalls pleasantly the description of 
 
 good old Baucis when, preparing for her guests, she 
 
 cleanses and sweetens her cottage table with "green 
 
 mint," with those other beautiful usages of antiquity 
 
 when resort was made for similar purposes to verbena. 
 
 In these charming echoes of the past, most probably 
 
2o6 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 quite unperceived by the poet himself, consist not a few 
 of the fascinations that give him immortality. Like the 
 tips of sea-shells half embedded in the brown ripples of 
 the still wet sand, such allusions tell of far more awaiting 
 research. They are gentle hints and invitations, with 
 sure reward beyond. Finally, there is the Chamomile, 
 introduced in ist Henry the Fourth, ii., 4, where Shak- 
 pere's object seems to be, for once, to make merry at the 
 expense of a writer of his own period, or nearly so, — 
 John Lyly, author of Euphues, or the Anatomie of Wit, 
 originally published in 1523. Crowded with pedantry 
 and affectations, injurious, therefore, in its influence upon 
 the literary style of his admirers, this celebrated work 
 was, in its way, nevertheless, moral, and of good practical 
 service, becoming with the courtiers of the time a sort 
 of guide to stately manners. Upon it rose the school of 
 the Euphuists, ^^'riters who delighted in puns, allitera- 
 tion, and antithesis. "Though camomile," says Lyly, 
 the more it is trodden and pressed down, the more it 
 spreadeth" (a well-known fact in botany); "yet the 
 violet, the oftener it is handled and touched, the sooner 
 it withereth and decaieth." " Harry," says Falstaff, " I 
 do not only marvel how thou spendest thy time, but also 
 how thou art accompanied; for though the camomile 
 the more it is trodden on, the faster it grows, yet youth, 
 the more it is wasted, the sooner it wears." Whatever 
 may have been intended with regard to Lyly, remember 
 that these latter words of wisdom are from the same 
 heart that spoke in Adam: — 
 
Garden Herbs. 207 
 
 All this I give you. Let me be your servant 
 Though I look old, yet am I strong and lusty. 
 For in my youth I never did apply 
 Hot and rebellious liquors in my blood ; 
 Nor did not with unbashful forehead tvoo 
 The means of weakness and debility. 
 Therefore my age is as a lusty winter. 
 Frosty, but kindly. — As You Like It, ii., 3. 
 
 Several of the above-named garden herbs are accounted 
 indigenous to the south of England, where, especially 
 upon sea-side cliflfs, and in sandy pastures where there 
 is smell of the waves, parsley, fennel, chamomile, and 
 wormwood are at all events thoroughly naturalised. The 
 others, rue, hyssop, lavender, balm, and marjoram are, 
 like rosemary, natives of the south of Europe. When 
 introduced to this country is uncertain. Some think 
 not very long before Shakspere's own time. 
 
 Fennel, Faniculum vulgare, is one of the species which 
 differ from the mass of its great family, the Umbelliferse, 
 in possessing bright yellow flowers, by which, taken in 
 connection with the stature, and the deep green leaves, 
 split into innumerable capillary segments, it may always 
 be easily recognised. Wormwood, Artemisia Absiiithium, 
 is a curious little bushy plant, covered in every part with 
 greyish and silky down, the flowers forming innumerable 
 half-pendulous and yellowish buttons the size of peas, 
 and borne in a rather close panicle. Rue, Ruta 
 graveolens, is also grey in every part, but not downy, 
 the four-petaled yellow flowers very curiously and prettily 
 crimped. Hyssop is told from its near allies among the 
 
208 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Labiatse, by its spikes of rich violet-purple flowers, 
 varying sometimes to pink. Balm, as regards beauty 
 of aspect, is the least effective of any of the series, the 
 flowers being white and insignificant, and half-concealed 
 among the dark-hued foliage. It must not be con- 
 founded with the source of Balm-of-Gilead, mention of 
 which is also made by Shakspere, and upon various 
 occasions, as will be noticed in due course. How the 
 name came to be extended to a plant relatively of such 
 little importance as the melissa, does not appear. It is 
 one of the bequests of the fanciful and conjectural 
 botany of the middle ages. 
 
THE FARM. 
 
 Silence is the perfectest lierald of joy: — I were tut 
 little happy if I could say how much. — MueA Ado, ii., I. 
 
 HE Shaksperean references to farm-plants, 
 after the same manner as those to garden 
 esculents, are interesting chiefly in the 
 light they reflect upon the agriculture of 
 the period. Some are of the kind that 
 belong to every age and country, the greater portion for 
 instance of the allusions to grass : — 
 
 When Phoebe doth behold 
 Her silvery visage in the watery glass, 
 Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass. 
 
 Midsummer Alight' s Dream, i., I. 
 
 Mowing like grass. 
 Your fresh-fair virgins and your flowering infants. 
 
 Henry the Fifth, iii. , 3. 
 
2 TO rphe Shakspere Flora. 
 
 These tidings nip me, and I hang the head 
 
 As flowers with frost, or grass beat down with storm. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, iv., 4. 
 
 Say to her, we have measured many miles 
 To tread a measure with her on this grass. 
 
 Lffve^s Labour's Lost, v., 2. 
 
 Now and then, in allusion to the same, some pretty old 
 superstition or rural custom comes in for notice, as at the 
 opening of the Merchant of Venice, when Antonio is 
 telling his friends of his anxieties : — 
 
 Antonio : In sooth I know not why I am so sad ; 
 It wearies me; you; say it wearies j/ot^. 
 
 Salario : Your mind is tossing on the ocean ; 
 
 There, where your argosies with portly sail, 
 
 Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood, 
 
 Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea. 
 
 Do overpeer the petty traffickers. 
 
 That curt'sey to them reverence 
 
 As they fly by them with their woven wings. 
 
 Salanio : Believe me, sir, had I such venture forth, 
 The better part of my affections would 
 Be with my hopes abroad. I should be still 
 Plucking the grass to know where sits the wind. 
 
 A more primitive mode of forecasting the weather it 
 would be difficult to find, unless, perhaps, in the con- 
 templation in the olden time of the scarlet pimpernel, 
 the "shepherds' weather-glass." The allusion is very 
 appositely introduced, the idea being that in times of 
 profound anxiety, men turn to the most trivial signs and 
 tokens of the possible future. Roger Ascham did not 
 discredit it. "This way," says he, in his famous old 
 treatise upon Archery, 1571, "I used in shooting. 
 
The Farm. 2 1 1 
 
 Betwixt the markes was an open place. There I take a 
 fethere, or a \yViSe. grasse, and so learned how the wind 
 stood." 
 
 Shakspere's references to grass are probably not fewer 
 than twenty or thirty, but he never means anything 
 precise as to kind. No term applied to the vegetable 
 productions of the soil is used in a broader sense. The 
 number of genuine botanical grasses in England con- 
 siderably exceeds a hundred, and of these about thirty 
 help to supply the natural food of sheep and cattle, 
 though not more than fifteen different kinds ever occur 
 in the same meadow. Mingled with them there are 
 scores of little plants which, botanically, are not grasses 
 at all. The word is to be taken, accordingly, in Shak- 
 spere as it is colloquially, or as denoting the components, 
 whatever they may be, of the turf, the meadow, and 
 pasture of every description. 
 
 "Com'' is to be understood in much the same way, 
 or as a general term for cereal grain, though the appel- 
 lation may at times be made specific In Shakspere this 
 word occurs upon at least twenty occasions, sometimes in 
 reference to com as an article of food; sometimes, as it 
 has been for thousands of years (corn being an adjunct, 
 as well as one of the factors of civilisation), as an 
 • emblem of prosperity and wealth — 
 
 No use of metal, com, or wiiie, or oil. — Tempest, ii., i. 
 
 I am right glad to catch this good occasion, 
 Most thoroughly to be wimiowed, where my chafF 
 And com shall fly asunder. — Henry the Eighth, v., I. 
 
212 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Occasionally there is a fine image of some other kind, 
 as in Cranmer's flattering prophecy of the grand reign of 
 Elizabeth : — 
 
 Her foes shake like a field of beaten com, 
 And hang their heads with sorrow. — Ibid, v., 4. 
 
 Why droops my lord, like over-ripened com 
 Hanging the head at Ceres' plenteous load ? 
 
 2nd Henry the Sixth, i., 2. 
 
 First let me teach you how to knit again 
 
 This scattered com into one mutual sheaf. — Titus, v., 3. 
 
 When, in the Midswmner Nighfs Dreatn, i., 2, Oberon 
 says, 
 
 Am not I thy lord ? 
 
 and Titania replies, 
 
 Then I must be thy lady. But I know 
 When thou hast stolen away from fairy-land. 
 And in the shape of Corin sat all day. 
 Playing on pipes of com, and versing love, 
 
 she refers particularly to oats, the stems of which, just 
 before they begin to change colour, supply tolerably 
 inflexible tubes, which, with a little trimming, can be con- 
 verted into pipes, suitable in clever hands for imitation of 
 such music as that of the "great god Pan," when he 
 resorted to the "reeds by the river." In ancient times 
 these little pipes were a favourite musical instrument with 
 shepherds, as appears both from Ovid {Met., i., 677) and 
 from Virgil, whose reference to them is almost the first 
 thing learned in school-boy Latin, 
 
 Tityre, tu, patula; recubans sub tegmine fagi, 
 Silvestrem tenui Musam meditaris avena. — Eel. i., i, 2. 
 
The Farm. 2 1 3 
 
 Mention of them is made also in Eel. x., 51- Both 
 authors make avena, when used in this connection, 
 equivalent to calamus and arundo. The introduction of 
 them in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream passage is 
 peculiarly appropriate, the musician himself being so 
 diminutive. They are spoken of also in Lov^s Labour's 
 Lost, at the end: — 
 
 AVheii shepherds pipe on oaten straws, 
 And merry larks are ploughmen's clocks. 
 
 As a grain good for horses, Shakspere refers to the Oat 
 upon four or five occasions. Barley appears twice — 
 Tanpest, iv., i; Henry the Fifth, iiL, 5. Rye also 
 twice: — 
 
 Between the acres of the rye 
 
 Those pretty country folks would lie. 
 
 As You Lite It, v., 3. 
 
 You sun-burned sicklemen, of August weary, 
 
 Come hither from the furrow and be merry. 
 
 Make holiday, your rye-straw hats put on. — Tempest, iv., i. 
 
 Wheat comes in rather more frequently; and now 
 and then in very beautiful association : — 
 
 O happy fair ! 
 Your eyes are lode-stars, and your tongue's sweet air 
 More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, 
 When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, i., 1. 
 
 As love between them like the palm might flourish; 
 As peace should still her wheaten garland wear. 
 
 Hamlet, v., 2. 
 
 The green fodder plants esteemed in the Elizabethan age 
 
214 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 appear to have been precisely those which are valued by 
 the farmer of to-day. Clover is mentioned in Henry 
 the Fifth, v., 2 ; also, under the synonym of " honey- 
 stalks," in Titus Andronicus, iv., 4. Vetches are named 
 in the Tempest, iv., 1; and Horse-beans in the Mid- 
 sutiimer Night's Dream, ii., i. An exception must be 
 made perhaps, as regards Bumet, named \vith clover in 
 the Heiiry the Fifth passage, care for this plant as a cattle- 
 food being now very limited. As one of Shakspere's 
 plants, its place of course remains unchanged, and being 
 frequent as a wild-flower in calcareous districts, to learn 
 itc pretty complexion is quite easy. Botanically, bumet is 
 the Poterium Sanguisorba, the generic name referring to 
 the pleasant flavour imparted by the leaves, which taste 
 something Hke cucumber, to goblets of wine. Thus 
 employed, says the old herbaUst, " it yealdeth a certaine 
 grace in the drinking," making the heart "merry and 
 glad." The leaves, which come up in dense tufts, are 
 very elegantly pinnate. The flowers are clustered in 
 little spheres at the points of stems about nine inches 
 high, the stamens hanging out in buff"-coloured tassels, 
 the pistils forming little crimson aspergilli. 
 
 SHAKSPERE'S WEEDS. 
 Weeds, so called, are wild-flowers in excess of number, 
 and gromng where the soil is wanted for the purposes of 
 cultivation. Taken individually, few of the plants which 
 are prone to trouble the gardener and the farmer through 
 their fecundity and their perseverance, are inferior in 
 
Shaksperds Weeds. 215 
 
 beauty of structure to the generality of the garden 
 favourites. Isolated by the wayside, and in the pride of 
 their summer, they seldom fail to please. Many of the 
 larger kinds no doubt, for want of training, become 
 ragged and disorderly, but even then they redeem them- 
 selves by their lustre. Nothing in the costliest garden is 
 more splendid than a full-grown cotton-thistle, a scarlet 
 corn-poppy, or a well-developed specimen of the azure 
 bugloss, Echium vulgare. At any time, it is not so much 
 ■what the plant is, as where it is, that constitutes either 
 the gem or the weed; just as, upon the converse, in 
 regard to the affections, it is not so much in places that 
 repose is found, as in persons. Shakspere shows us many 
 a time that weeds, although impedimenta, can still be 
 made elements of most beautiful pictures. Nowhere in 
 his writings is there a more perfectly finished though 
 sorrowful description than that one of the calamities 
 induced by war, under the figure of weeds, in Henry the 
 Fifth, briefly referred to when speaking of the cowslip : — 
 
 My duty to you both, an equal love. 
 Great kings of France and England ! 
 
 That I have laboured 
 With all my wits, my pains, and strong endeavours 
 To bring your most imperial majesties 
 Unto this bar and royal interview. 
 Your mightiness on both parts best can witness. 
 Since, then, my office hath so far prevailed, 
 That, face to fcice, and royal eye to eye, 
 You have congreeted ; let it not disgrace me, 
 ff I demand, before this royal view. 
 What rub, or what impediment there is. 
 
2i6 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Why that the naked, poor, and mangled peace. 
 
 Dear nurse of plenties, arts, and joyful births. 
 
 Should not, in this best garden of the world. 
 
 Our fertile France, put up her lovely visage ? 
 
 Alas ! she hath from France too long been chased, 
 
 And all her husbandry doth lie on heaps. 
 
 Corrupting in its own fertility. 
 
 Her vine, the merry cheerer of the heart, 
 
 Unpruned dies ; her hedges even-pleached. 
 
 Like prisoners wildly overgrown with hair, 
 
 Put forth disorder'd twigs : her fallow leas, 
 
 The darnel, hemlock, and rank fumitory. 
 
 Doth root upon ; while that the coulter rusts. 
 
 That should deracinate such savagery. 
 
 The even mead, that erst brought sweetly forth 
 
 The freckled cowslip, bumet, and gieen clover, 
 
 Wanting the scythe, all uncorrected, rank, 
 
 Conceives by idleness, and nothing teems 
 
 But hatefiil docks, rough thistles, kecksies, burs. 
 
 Losing both beauty and utility. 
 
 And, as our vineyards, fallows, meads, and hedges, 
 
 Defective in their natures, grow to wildness, 
 
 Even so our houses, and ourselves, and children, 
 
 Have lost, or do not learn, for want of time 
 
 The sciences that should become our country, 
 
 But grow, like savages, — as soldiers will, 
 
 That nothing do but meditate on blood, — 
 
 To swearing, and stem looks, diffused attire, 
 
 And everything that seems unnatural ; 
 
 Which to reduce into our former favour, 
 
 You are assembled ; and my speech entreats 
 
 That I may know the let, why gentle peace 
 
 Should not expel these inconveniences. 
 
 And bless ns with her former qualities. — (v., 2. ) 
 
 Mark, before going into the consideration of the 
 individual weeds, the powerful reminder supplied in this 
 
Shaksperes Weeds. 217 
 
 fine passage, that Nature, although from one point of 
 view, inanimate and passionless, is capable of setting 
 forth both joy and sorrow. All the highest poetry 
 recognises in Nature a life higher than the simply 
 physiological. Neglected, it runs to waste. Carefully 
 tended; fed with human love, it rejoices. Mark, also, 
 the Shaksperean association of weeds with what is 
 dishonourable in life as well as with the lamentabla 
 To the bridal couch of virtue he gives flowers : — 
 
 Qdeen : Sweets to the sweet : Farewell, 
 
 I hoped thou should'st have been my Hamlet's wife. 
 I thought thy bride-bed to have decked, sweet maid, 
 And not have strewed thy grave. — Hamlet, v., I. 
 
 On the contrary, — 
 
 No sweet aspersion shall the heavens let fall 
 To make this contract grow; but barren hate. 
 Sour-eyed disdain, and discord shall bestrew 
 The union of your bed with weeds so loathly 
 That you shall hate it both. — Tempest, iv., i. 
 
 "Aspersion" is one of the words which illustrate how 
 curiously, with lapse of time, the original or literal sense 
 may disappear, or nearly so, the figurative or metaphorical 
 one alone remaining. The literal sense of "aspersion,"' 
 that in which Shakspere employs the word, is a scatter- 
 ing or sprinkling, as of rain-drops from the clouds, and 
 when the "holy water" is cast upon the people during 
 the ceremonies of the Catholic Church. At present it 
 is seldom heard except in the extended sense of scatter- 
 ing calumny or false accusations. Three curious old 
 terms in the Henry the Fifth passage also deserve notice, 
 
2i8 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 "deracinate," "teem," and "the let." To deracinate is 
 literally to tear up by the roots; as again in Troilus and 
 Cressida, L, 3: — 
 
 Frights, changes, horrors, 
 Divert and crack, rend, and deracinate 
 The unity and calm of married states 
 Quite from their fixture. 
 
 " Teem " is the Anglo-Saxon ieman, to bring forth, as 
 in the miserable king's imprecations upon his shameless 
 daughter : — 
 
 Hear, nature, hear; 
 Dear goddess, hear ! Suspend thy pui-pose, if 
 Thou didst intend to make this creature fruitful ! 
 Unto her womb convey sterility ! 
 Dry up in her the organs of increase. 
 And from her derogate body never spring 
 A babe to honour her ! If she must teem. 
 Create her child of spleen, that it may live, 
 And be a thwart disnatur'd torment to her! — Lear, i., 4. 
 
 A "let" signified originally a hindrance, as in Hamlet, " I'll 
 make a ghost of him that lets me." Shakspere's contem- 
 poraries use the word in exactly the same sense : — 
 
 It had been done ere this, had I been counsel : 
 We had had no stop, no let. — Ben ybnson. 
 
 In matters of this kind, he is usually his own interpreter. 
 The number of words which occur but once in the 
 dramas must be relatively very small. 
 
 Several of the weed-names in the Henry the Fifth 
 passage must be understood as collective. The names 
 of individual kinds of cornfield interlopers have in all 
 ages been employed as appellations for the aggregate; 
 
Shakspere's Weeds. 219 
 
 and though science may find it convenient to restrict 
 the application, as long as the world lasts, the usus 
 loquendi will take its ancient course. Shakspere probably 
 meant nothing definite by "darnel," though the botanists 
 tie down this name to the Lolium temulentum. They do 
 so because tradition says that this grass was the infelix 
 lolium of Virgil, which is the same as identifying it with 
 the alpa of the Greeks. The sense is precisely that of 
 the i^i^aviof of the parable of the sower, in the A.V. 
 rendered "tares." Fuchsius, in 1542, folio 127, figures 
 the purple-flowered corn-cockle, Agrostemma, or Githago 
 segeium, under the name of lolium, and, as if in tran- 
 slation of Fuchsius, " darnel " is the name given to this 
 identical plant by Shakspere's contemporary, Drayton : — 
 
 The crimson darnel-flower, the blue-bottle, and gold,* 
 Which though esteemed but weeds, yet for their dainty hues, 
 And for their scent not ill, they for their purpose choose. 
 
 Cockle and lolium seem, in truth, to have meant, in the 
 Shaksperean times, very much the same thing. Chaucer 
 had already used "cockle" for cornfield-weeds in general. 
 Old Latimer, speaking of Satan, in his famous Sermons, 
 p. 7 T, asks vehemently " who is able to tell his diligent 
 preaching which every day and every hour labouretli to 
 sow cockle and darnel ? " Newton, in the Herbal to the 
 Bible, 1587, observes: "Under these names of cockle 
 and darnel are generally understood not themselves only, 
 but also all harmefull encumbrances, lets, hurts, and 
 
 * "Golds," in the Elizabethan times, were the corn-marigold, 
 Chrysanthemum segetum. Spenser calls them "goolds." 
 
220 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 annoyances, which doe any way hinder the growth of 
 corne." "Darnel" appears again in King Lear, iv., 4, 
 when the wretched old monarch, his reason departed, 
 is met 
 
 As mad as the vexed sea ; singing aloud ; 
 Crowned witli rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, 
 With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers. 
 Darnel, and all the idle weeds that gi-ow 
 In our sustaining coriL 
 
 "Cockle," anciently "kokylle" — a name derived from 
 caucalis, the Greek cavii-aXie, the wild carrot — is men- 
 tioned in Coriolanus, iii., i, in a figurative sense, — 
 
 We nourish 'gainst our senate 
 The cockle of rebellion, — 
 
 and again in Lovis Labour's Lost, iv., 3, where it seems 
 to preserve some kind of proverbial phrase, — 
 
 AUons ! allons ! Sowed cockle reaped no com. 
 
 The sense is here that, beginning %vith deceit, the end 
 can be only emptiness and disappointment, as verified by 
 the lines which immediately succeed : — 
 
 And justice always whirls in equal measure ; 
 
 Light wenches may prove plagues to men forsworn ; 
 
 If so, our coffer buys no better treasure. 
 
 For convenience' sake, as with "darnel," it may be 
 allowed to limit Shakspere's '-cockle" to the Githago, 
 one of the handsomest plants of its tribe, the purple 
 flowers an inch across, and lifted to the level, nearly, 
 of the ripening ears. 
 
 So with "Hemlock." The derivation of this name 
 shows it to have been originally applied to large and 
 
Shakspere's Weeds. 221 
 
 vigorous members of the natural order Umbelliferse in 
 general, both poisonous and innocuous, as indeed it is to 
 this day with the non-discriminating. Foremost among 
 these would be the genuine hemlock of Botany, Coniunt 
 maculatum, the cow-bane, Cicuta virosa, and the Angelica 
 sylvestris. Nothing more definite can be asserted in 
 regard either to the Henry the Fifth passage, or to the 
 other in King Lear. Shakspere may quite possibly have 
 adopted the word from the Old Testament, where in two 
 places (Hosea, x., 4, and Amos, vL, 12), it is put for the 
 Hebrew ro'sh, a term of unknown signification, except as 
 denoting some kind of corn-field intruder. It is these 
 self-same plants, in any case, the larger UmbeUiferae, 
 which are to be understood by the term "kecksies," or 
 kex, applied to them by meton)miy, kecksies being the 
 stiff, round, tubular stems, useful, when stripped of the 
 leaves and trimmed, for various domestic purposes. The 
 name may be connected very specially with the stems of 
 the angelica, that beautifiil species of its great family 
 which haunts the water-side in every stream-fed meadow, 
 reserves its large round delicately lilac umbel till the 
 arrival of autumn, and is always so reluctant to go. 
 
 The name occurs a third time in Macbeth, when the 
 ^vitches are preparing their horrible broth, — 
 
 Root of hemlock, digg'd in the dark. 
 
 Here we may legitimately imderstand allusion to the 
 genuine conium, the deadly "hemlock'' par excellence, 
 "whosoever taketh which into his body," says Lyte, 
 
222 Tfie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 "dieth remedilesse." "Root" does not necessarily mean 
 merely the radix, being put, again by metonymy, for the 
 plant as a whole, a very common usage, and well illus- 
 trated in another passage in the same play, — that one 
 where Banquo, after the interview with the infernal trio, 
 says to Macbeth, — 
 
 Were such things here, as we do speak about ? 
 Or have we eaten of the insane root, 
 That takes the reason prisoner? — (i., 3.) 
 
 The root or plant intended here would seem to be hen- 
 bane, Hyoscyamtts niger, described as far back as the 
 time of Dioscoridf»s, as causing madness, an idea repeated 
 in various writers of the Shaksperean age, as Boord, in 
 the Brevyary of Health, 1557, and Bulleyn, who says, 
 "if it be used either in sallet or in potage, then doth it 
 bring frenzie, and whoso useth more than four leaves 
 shall be in danger to sleepe without waking." 
 
 By "Hardocks," mentioned in the Lear passages, are 
 probably intended those roughest and coarsest of our 
 native plants, the more-usually-called "burdocks," in 
 their one or two kinds, the Arctium Lappa and Arctium 
 Bardana of the botanists. Haunting farm-land, although 
 the foliage is liked by artists for their foregrounds, they 
 are almost too cumbersome to be admired. They 
 possess a certain curious interest, nevertheless, in the 
 abundance of their spherical heads, purple-topped while 
 young, and covered at all times with little hooks, which 
 catch one's clothing, or anything else that is soft, on the 
 instant, and never willingly let go. Hence the familiar 
 
Shaksperis Weeds. 223 
 
 name of "burs," given to the plant itself, for brevity' 
 sake, in Henry the Mfth, and so aptly employed in 
 metaphor, upon no fewer than four separate occasions : — 
 
 Nay, friar, I am a kind of bur, I shall stick. 
 
 Measure for Measure, iv., 3. 
 
 Our kindred, though they be long ere they are wooed, are con- 
 stant, being won; they are burs, I can tell you. — Troilus and 
 Cressida, iii., 2. 
 
 Then in the Midsummer Night's Dream, iii., 2, and 
 lastly, when Rosalind and Celia, before setting off for 
 the woods, are chatting in somewhat melancholy mood, 
 Rosalind herself, even, dejected for the time, for her 
 father's sorrows are weighing upon her mind:— "O how 
 full of briars is this work-a-day world!" Happy those 
 who in such cases have a loving Celia at hand to reply, 
 "They are but burs, cousin, thrown upon thee in holiday 
 foolery. If we walk not in the trodden path, our very 
 petticoats \\i\\ catch them." But the smile cannot 
 come just yet — "I could shake them off my coat; these 
 burs are in my heart." 'Were the occasion more pro- 
 foundly serious, the words would remind one of the iron 
 that "entereth into the soul." 
 
 Shakspere's "Thistles" may be thought of as well 
 represented in the stalwart and universal Carduus lan- 
 ceolatus, the "spear-thistle" of the vernacular, which will 
 serve alike for the intruding weed, and for the beautiful 
 picture in the Midsicvimer Night's Dream, of the bee 
 sucking the honey from the well-charged crimson bloom. 
 Shakspere, who had the observing eye, that inestimable 
 
224 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 privilege, could not fail, however, to have often noticed 
 the wand-like stems of the palustris, and their crowded 
 clusters; the arvensis, that returns to the charge again 
 and again, with valour so troublesome; and that 
 supremely handsome plant of the green margins of 
 little-travelled roads, and of airy green downs, the 
 nodding musk-thistle, Carduus nutans, so fragrant, but 
 alas, so vicious to the fingers that would molest it 
 
 Fairly precise as the application of this name is in 
 Shakspere, " thistle " must not be accepted as such 
 in literature generally, and, least of all, as regards its 
 employment in the AN. of the Old Testament, where 
 it is used in the broad and general sense of prickly corn- 
 field plants. In the famous Genesis passage, iii., i8, 
 the Hebrew word, dardar, if it means anything specific, 
 denotes, perhaps, the Tribulus terrestris, or "caltrops;" 
 and the same will then be meant in Hosea, x., 8. The 
 other Hebrew word translated "thistle," choach, is so 
 vague in the literal sense, that it is rendered indifferently, 
 thistle, thorn, and bramble. 
 
 Shakspere's "dock," Tempest, ii., i, may safely be 
 understood as the large, coarse Rumex obtusifoUus of 
 the wayside. The "mallows " of the same line are the 
 Alalva sylvestris, a plant incapable of keeping itself tidy, 
 but with beautiful purple flowers. " Knot-grass," Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream, iii., 2, is the Polygonum 
 aviculare, called " hindering," because of a droll super- 
 stition that if a boy drank an infusion of the stems and 
 leaves, it would arrest his growth. "Fumitory" is that 
 
Shakspere's Weeds. 225 
 
 light and pretty little annual, with purple and rosy 
 flowers, which botanists call Fumaria officinalis, and the 
 name of which is undividedly its own. The furrows 
 retain it long after the com and barley have been 
 garnered. It is one of the sweet little lingering things 
 which, though Autumn gives daily warning, are always 
 so loth to depart, and is never prettier than when 
 "smiling through its tears" in the dewy beams of 
 an October sunrise. "Rank" fumiter means simply 
 "luxuriant," the epithet having here the same sense as 
 in Genesis xli., 5. 
 
 Many of the plants which vex the gardener by their 
 intrusion where not wanted, really and truly deserve the 
 epithet of rank, or luxuriant to a degree that renders 
 them harmful. These are referred to in Richard the 
 Third, ii., 4: — 
 
 Grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper, 
 
 My uncle Rivers talked how I did grow 
 
 More than my brother. ' ' Ay, " quoth my uncle Gloster, 
 
 "Small weeds have grace; great herbs do grow apace;" 
 
 And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast. 
 
 Because sweet flowers are slow, and weeds make haste. 
 
 Of Shakspere's agricultural weeds there remains only 
 the Nettle, the familiar stinging plant from which 
 Ophelia's is differentiated alike by its beautiful golden 
 flowers and inability to hurt, the bloom of the Urtica 
 being green and insignificant. The latter is mentioned 
 by Shakspere upon eleven distinct occasions, several of 
 which involve metaphor, as most natural, considering the 
 Q 
 
2 26 The Shakspei'e Flora. 
 
 temper of the plant. One reference alone calls for 
 special notice, and this one chiefly because of the pro- 
 posed curious change of the reading. In Twelfth Night, 
 ii., 5, when keen-witted, sarcastic Maria — Olivia's maid — 
 comes tripping into the garden, "Here," exclaims Sir 
 Toby, with his accustomed drollerj'-, " Here comes 
 the little villain: How now, my nettle of India?" 
 Some of the critics say this ought to be "mettle.'' 
 Others would have "metal," understanding the phrase 
 to mean "gold of India," and to be equivalent to "my 
 darling." There is no necessity for any such change. 
 In the scene closely preceding (ii., 3), Sir Toby has 
 already addressed the "little villain" as Penthesilea, 
 comparing her, by the use of that name, to the famous 
 queen of the Amazons, killed in single combat with 
 Achilles, a fate declaring her spirit and courage. In 
 i., 3, where her behaviour to the pair of old knights 
 shows very plainly what she is made of. Sir Andrew calls 
 her "fair shrew." Now, Maria all over, she is about to ■ 
 cheat her "trout" Malvolio. Sir Toby perceives exactly 
 what is ahead. He aptly compares her to the lively 
 weed, and "of India" comes in adjectively as a metaphor 
 of the warmth of purpose wth which she will operate 
 upon her victim. The idea comes up again in 3rd Henry 
 the Sixth, iii., 3 : — 
 
 Nay, mark, how Lewis stamps as he were nettled; 
 I hope airs for the best. 
 
 Also in 1st Henry the Fourth, i., 3 : — 
 
 Why, look you, I am whipped and scourged with rods. 
 
Shaksper^s Weeds. 227 
 
 Nettled, and stung with pismires, when I hear 
 Of this vile politician, Bolingbroke. 
 
 It may not be superfluous, after all, to quote 
 the nettle passage in Othello, since it illustrates 
 in the same manner as when Apemantus appeals 
 to Timon, "Shame not these woods," — how pro- 
 found was Shakspere's knowledge of the possibilities 
 of human nature. lago has the heart and the desires 
 of a demon. Shakspere allows him, nevertheless, 
 to give lessons in ethics. "Virtue? a fig! 'Tis in 
 ourselves that we are thus, or thus. Our bodies 
 are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners; 
 so that if we plant nettles, or sow lettuce, — set hyssop, 
 and weed up thyme, — supply it \^dth one gender of 
 herbs, or distract it with many, — either to have it sterile 
 with idleness, or manured with industry; — ^why the power 
 and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills " (i., 3). 
 The passage is of course to be understood as entirely 
 metaphorical. By lettuce, hyssop, and thyme, he means 
 the agreeable possessions and pleasures of the heart which 
 reward discreet self-culture. Nettles, on the other hand, 
 represent the miserable, discontented hours, the suscep- 
 tibilities to mean mortification, which inevitably arise 
 upon neglect of it, with those most despicable of all 
 things, envy and selfishness. 
 
 "Weed," Anglo-Saxon weed, meaning clothes or apparel, 
 a sense of the word now almost forgotten, except in 
 " widoVs weeds," also occurs several times in Shakspere. 
 In the Winter's Tale, iv., 3, when Perdita is dressed 
 
228 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 somewhat showily for the reception of her father's guests, 
 Florizel says: — 
 
 These your unusual weeds to each part of you 
 Do give a life ; no shepherdess, but Flora, 
 Peering in April's front. This your sheep-shearing 
 Is as a meeting of the petty gods, 
 And you the queen on't. 
 
 So in the Midsummer Nighfs Dream, ii., 2: — 
 
 There sleeps Titania, some time of the night, 
 LuU'd in these flowers with dances and delight ; 
 And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin 
 Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in. 
 
 The grey transparent beauty of the cast-off skin of tlie 
 snake is well known. The amplitude is more than 
 enough: the variegated delicacy of the natural pattern 
 might supply hints for the fabricators of mantles other 
 than such as fairies need. 
 
THE WILDERNESS AND THE WAYSIDE. 
 
 Love adds a precious seeing to the eye ; 
 A lover's gaze will gaze an eagle blind ; 
 A lover's ear -nill hear the lowest sound. 
 
 Love*s Labour's Lost, iv,, 3. 
 
 ROM the neglected farm to the wilderness 
 is but a step; the productions are, 
 nevertheless, in many respects quite 
 different. The ligneous plants found in 
 the hedgerows, where all is, no doubt, 
 as well as in the wilderness, comfortable, are themselves 
 always suggestive of the untamed. The hedgerows, 
 in truth, constitute a kind of charming border-land 
 between scenes of exact culture and the desert They 
 contain little that has been deliberately planted; in 
 parts they are altogether barbarian; yet it quite as often 
 happens that their productions are no less estimable 
 
230 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 for economic use than those of the meadow and the 
 cottage garden. Their happy intermediate character is 
 declared also by the graceful decorative plants which 
 often intermingle plentifully with the ruder ones — the 
 vine-like bryony, the glossy tamus, the pencilled wood- 
 vetch, the scarlet and orange-berried spindle-tree — not 
 to mention the wild clematis, the t^vice-blooming honey- 
 suckle, and the dog-roses that never satiate. Sheltered 
 by these larger plants, on the slopes below them grow 
 wild-flowers that enjoy life upon the hedge-bank more 
 than in any other habitat which suits their nature, as 
 the germander-speedwell and the snowy mollugo; and 
 no slight matter is it for these, that along with all other 
 wilderness and semi-wilderness wild-flowers, they have 
 the privilege of immunity from the swift ruin ^vrought 
 by the sickle and the scythe. 
 
 Shakspere refers to at least a dozen of the hedgerow 
 and wilderness class of our indigenous Flora, and, as a 
 rule, the allusions, if not distinctly pleasing and poetical, 
 have nothing at all about them that offends. Con- 
 spicuous among the fruit-bearing kinds, we have, in the 
 first instance, the wild apple, often called simply the 
 " crab," as in a passage that would be beautiful in every 
 sense were it not spoken under the influence of wine : — 
 
 I'll show thee the best springs; I'll pluck thee berries; 
 I'll fish for thee, and get thee wood enough. 
 
 I pr'ythee let me bring thee where crabs grow ; 
 And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts ; 
 Show thee a jay's nest, and instruct thee how 
 
The Wilderness. 231 
 
 To snare the nimble marmazeL I'll bring thee 
 To clustering filberds, and sometimes I'll get thee 
 Young sea-mells from the rock. — Tempest, ii., 2. 
 
 The harshness and the acidity of the fruit are proverbial : 
 
 Petruchio : Nay, come, Kate, come, you must not look so sour. 
 Katherine: It is my fashion when I see a crab. 
 Petruchio : Why here's no crab, and therefore look not sour. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, ii., i. 
 
 It was esteemed, nevertheless, in rustic fireside merry- 
 makings, — 
 
 When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, 
 Then nightly sings the staring owL 
 
 Lovers Labour'' s Lost, v. , 2. 
 
 Puck : And sometimes lurk I in a gossip's bowl. 
 In veiy likeness of a loasted crab. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, ii., I. 
 
 When pressed, as if for cider-making, these wild apples 
 yielded the thin and rather poor condiment for those 
 who could not afford a better one of the kind, called 
 verjuice. In the Elizabethan age it was in common use, 
 and though not mentioned by Shakspere, seems to be 
 pointed to in the name of the silly sub-constable Verges, 
 in Much Ado; just as foolish, self-complacent Dogberry, 
 his superior, seems to have got his name from the Avorth- 
 less fruit of the dogwood, Cornus saiiguinea* 
 
 * This must not be confounded with the cherry-like fruit of the 
 Coinus mascula, celebrated by the old Roman poets. The berries 
 of the sanguima, very common in the south of England, are small, 
 black, and bitter. 
 
232 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The wood of the crab-tree was valued for the sake of 
 
 its toughness : — 
 
 Fetch me a dozen crab-tree staves, and strong ones. 
 
 Henry the Eighth, v., 3. 
 
 The Hazel-nut. After the crab comes the hazel-nut — 
 only the produce, never the tree itself, except laterally, 
 in the first portion of Petruchio's gallant comparison, — 
 
 Kate, like the hazel-twig. 
 Is straight and slender; and as brown in hue 
 As hazel-nuts, and sweeter than the kernels. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew, ii., I. 
 
 Are we to to think of Baptista's shrewish daughter as 
 gipsy-faced? Was she another "Nut-brown niayde," 
 that faithful creature to whom good and evil were alike 
 indifferent, so that she could share the fate of the man 
 she loved, even in the wilderness ?— 
 
 Among the wylde dere, such an archere 
 
 As men say that ye be, 
 May ye not fayle of good vitayle, 
 
 Where is so great plente. 
 And water clere of the ryvere 
 
 Shal be full swete to me. 
 With which in hele, I shall ryght wele 
 
 Endure, as ye shall see. 
 And, or we go, a bedde or two, 
 
 I can provyde anone. 
 For, in my mynde, of all raankynde 
 
 I love but you alone. 
 
 Perhaps he intended that her eyes were of that beautiful 
 colour, likening them to the smooth brown shell after the 
 manner of Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet: — "Thou wilt 
 
The Wilderness. 233 
 
 quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no other 
 reason but because thou hast hazel eyes." 
 
 Shakspere knew full well the ways, the manners and 
 customs, of simple woodland creatures; his zoology is 
 often as interesting as his botany: — 
 
 TiTANiA : I have a venturous fairy that shall seek 
 
 The squirrel's hoard, and fetch thee new nuts. 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, iv., I. 
 
 And how beautiful the introduction of the little animal 
 as a skilled artificer ! 
 
 O then I see Queen Mab hath been with you ! 
 She is the fairies' midwife, and she comes 
 In shape no bigger than an agate-stone 
 On the forefinger of an alderman. 
 Drawn with a team of little atomies. 
 Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep. 
 
 Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut. 
 Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub. 
 Time out of mind the fairies' coachmakers. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, iv., i. 
 
 Whatever people may think of Folk-lore in general — z. 
 natural outcome of the human fancy, therefore wisdom 
 to the wise, though folly to the incurious, it is impossible 
 to resist capture by Queen Mab, the more particularly 
 since it is in Shakspere that she first appears in the place 
 assigned to her. No earlier instance, that is to say, 
 occurs in literature of her being styled the Queen of the 
 Fairies. Gloriana, the "Faery Queene" of Shakspere's 
 noble contemporary, Edmund Spenser, it hardly needs 
 the saying, is not queen of the fairies at all, but of 
 
2 34 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 chivalry and the knightly virtues. The history of the 
 royal lady is full of charming interest Enough for the 
 present to say that while in powers and attributes Queen 
 Mab is another rendering of the idea pourtrayed in 
 classical Diana, the name itself is Keltic, and that she 
 is the Meave or Mebdh of ancient Irish story. Folk-lore, 
 woven in so many hues, pleased Shakspere most upon 
 its fairy side. How often the little beings are allowed 
 to step to the front we have seen already. They com- 
 pensate the total absence from his dramas of little girls. 
 
 Five or six other allusions to nuts and nutshells might 
 be quoted, but with one exception they carry little of 
 importance. This is in AlVs Well, when Lafeu says 
 of the foppish and vacant ParoUes, in well-chosen 
 metaphor, "There can be no kernel in this light nut: 
 the soul of this man is his clothes: trust him not in 
 matter of heavy consequence" (ii., 4). In the Tempest 
 nuts are called "filberts," the name, strictly speaking, 
 of the garden or cultivated form of the fruit, but that 
 the hazel-nut is meant is shown by the context. 
 
 The Blackberry is mentioned thrice; — in Troilus and 
 Cressida, v., 4, as an emblem of worthlessness; in ist 
 Henry t/ie Fourth, Falstaff the speaker, as an emblem of 
 abundance — " Give you a reason on compulsion ? If 
 reasons were as plenty as blackberries, I would give 
 no man a reason on compulsion;" and further on, in 
 the same scene, again by Falstaff, while joking with 
 Prince Henry— "Shall the blessed son of heaven prove a 
 micher, and eat blackberries ? " The allusion is here to 
 
The Wilderness. 235 
 
 boys who, playing truant from school, and afraid to go 
 home, to escape observation wander up and down the 
 lanes and by hedgerows, to "mich" signifying to lurk 
 out of sight, or hide one's self Of all our wild or 
 native fruits, this one is without question the most 
 interesting, bound up as it is with the history of child- 
 hood, joy and grief going hand in hand over the 
 gathering; commemorated, moreover, in many a simple 
 old verse : — 
 
 Their pretty lips with blackberries 
 
 Were all besmeared and dy'd. 
 And when they saw the darksome night. 
 They sat them down and cry'd. 
 
 The Children in the Wood. — Roxburghe 
 Ballads, ii., 220. 
 
 The fruit may, perhaps, have been what Caliban promised 
 to find, — 
 
 I'll pluck thee berries, — 
 
 though it can hardly be the same which he tells us 
 Prospero gave him in the beginning of his servitude : — 
 
 When thou cam'st first, 
 Thou strok'st me, and mad'st much of me ; would'st give me 
 Water with berries in it ; 
 
 And then I loved thee, 
 And show'd thee all the qualities of the isle, 
 Cursed be I that did so ! 
 
 What Shakspere intends in the latter passage by "berries" 
 is an open question, met, so far, by no satisfactory con- 
 jecture. It is probable, however, that he really means 
 blackberries when in the Midsummer Night's Dream, 
 
236 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 iii., I, he mentions dewberries. Titania, giving her 
 pleasant behest to the four fairies, says: — 
 
 Be kind and courteous to this gentleman ; 
 Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes ; 
 Feed him with apricocks and dewberries, 
 With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries; 
 The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees. 
 And for night-tapers, crop their waxen thighs, 
 And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes. 
 To have my love to hed. 
 
 For, compared with the fruit of the Rubus fruticosus, 
 that of the ccssius is insipid j it is never collected for 
 eating, and certainly would not be such as Titania 
 would associate, meaning it to be a treat, with figs and 
 apricots. In Shakspere's time, moreover, the two names 
 were used indifferently. Lyte, p. 661, describing the 
 casius, says it "is called a dewberrie or blackberrie." 
 Possibly, in the present instance, " dewberry " may have 
 been introduced as more euphonious. Shakspere could 
 hardly fail to be acquainted with it botanically, the large 
 round drupeolae being covered with a peculiar glaucous 
 bloom, different altogether from the rich and jetty lustre 
 of the blackberry ipsissima. 
 
 The plant producing the genuine blackberry is men- 
 tioned many times, either as the "bramble," or inclusively, 
 in the large company of the "thorns." The former name 
 occurs in Venus ajid Adonis, and in As You Like It, 
 " There is a man hangs odes upon hawthorns, and elegies 
 upon brambles" (iii., 2). Thorn, meaning the blackberry, 
 appears in the Midsummer Night's Dream, iii , 2, — 
 
The Wilderness. 237 
 
 For briers and thorns at their apparel snatch ; 
 also in 3rd Henry the Sixth, iii., 2, — 
 
 And I, like one lost in a thorny wood. 
 By "thorns," however, in several other places, we are 
 to understand not so much brambles, or Rubi, as prickly 
 and spinous plants which grow underfoot, after the 
 manner of the rest-harrow. Ononis sfinosa, though there 
 is nothing in any passage upon which to base an exact 
 identification, even were this important. "Thorns and 
 thistles " present a sufficiently exact and vivid picture of 
 the plants said to be contemporaneous with the moral 
 declension of mankind: — 
 
 The care you have of us, 
 To mow down thorns that would annoy our foot, 
 Is worthy praise. — 2nd Ki7ig Henry the Sixth, iii., I. 
 
 Another prickly wilderness plant appears in a line made 
 famous by the amount of dispute it has given rise to. 
 Shipwreck in progress — "we split ! we split !" and drown- 
 ing imminent — "Now," says good old Gonzalo, "would 
 I give a thousand furlongs of sea for an acre of barren 
 ground, long heath, brown furze, anything. The wills 
 above be done, but I would fain die a dry death" 
 (Tempest, i., i). The line is thus printed by all modern 
 editors in deference to the first folio, 1623, which is, 
 literatim, "long heath, browne firrs." It was suggested, 
 however, by the " Oxford Editor," Sir Thos. Haimier, 
 in 1744, that the true reading would in all probability 
 be, "ling, heath, broom, furze — anything," — anything, 
 that is to say, which means land, and not water, so 
 
238 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 that we do not drown. Hanmer, Dr. Johnson tells us, 
 possessed that first and most essential requisite of the 
 genuine critic, "the intuition by which the poet's 
 intention is immediately discerned." He comes, accord- 
 ingly, with excellent credentials, and that his judgment 
 has plenty to sustain it, is undeniable. " Ling " is a 
 well-known provincial name for the beautiful -^vilderness 
 undershrub, with innumerable glossy lilac flowers, com- 
 monly called heather, the Calluiia vulgaris. It is very 
 different from the genuine heaths, or Ericas, so that 
 there is no tautology in the introduction of the word, 
 and Shakspere had very probably seen the plants in 
 company, since the Calluna is a frequent associate of 
 the no less lovely crimson heath. Erica ciiierea, which 
 if "heath" means anything at all, it will mean here. 
 "Broom," assuming Sir Thomas Hanmer's conjecture 
 to be well founded, is the well-known shrub, rendered 
 conspicuous in early summer by its countless dishevelled 
 golden butterflies. Furze, the never bloomless, the 
 flowers of rival gold, and exhaling the odour of cocoa- 
 nut, grows in our country more profusely even than the 
 Spartium. Is it possible that the truth lies between 
 the two extremes, and that the reading should be, "ling, 
 heath, brown furze?" The great objection, both to 
 "long" and to "brown," is that in an emergency so 
 terrible Gonzalo would not be likely to employ epithets. 
 He would just run over the names of the plants, and 
 leave adjectives till a happier time. If Sir Thomas 
 Hanmer's interpretation be accepted as the most reason- 
 
The Wilderness. 239 
 
 able one, the line in question, instead of adding only 
 two plants to the general catalogue, heath and furze, 
 will thus really make an addition of four. 
 
 There is something better for us in the connection 
 than the minute botany, — the character of the "honest 
 old counsellor of Naples" himself, the only man on board 
 who in those terrible moments preserved his cheerfulness, 
 and nourished his heart with hope — a mere coincidence 
 perhaps, but in any case we cannot forget that his 
 previous life had been one of virtue. It was Gonzalo who, 
 when Prospero was driven from his home and country, 
 stood the thoughtful " fHend in need." Miranda, whose 
 innocent prattle and sweet child-smiles had sustained 
 her father during their first sad years upon the desolate 
 island, "infused with a fortitude from heaven," — a great 
 light may shine through a very small ^vindow, — now that 
 she is old enough to understand, is told the story of their 
 wrongs. And how, says she, " came we ashore? " 
 
 Prospero : By Providence divine. 
 
 Some food we had, and some fresh water, that 
 
 A noble Neapolitan, Gonzalo, 
 
 Out of his charity (who being then appointed 
 
 Master of this design) did give us ; with 
 
 Rich garments, linens, stuffs, and necessaries 
 
 AVhich since have steadied much. So of his gentleness. 
 
 Knowing I loved my books, he furnished me. 
 
 From my own library, with volumes that 
 
 I prize above my dukedom. — Tempest, i., 2. 
 
 Later on in the play, furze turns out to be nearer than 
 Gonzalo imagined. Once upon shore, his wish would 
 
240 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 have been gratified without going very far. Prospero, 
 having given mischief-loving little Ariel charge of Caliban 
 and his fellow-rascals for punishment, now inquires what 
 has he done, — 
 
 Where did'st thou leave these varlets ? 
 Ariel : I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking. 
 
 Then I beat my tabor. 
 At which, like unback'd colts, they pricked their ears. 
 Advanced their eyelids, lifted up their noses. 
 As they smelt music. So I charmed their ears 
 That, calf-like, they my lowing followed, through 
 Toothed briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss, and thorns. 
 Which entered their frail shins. At last 1 left them 
 I'the filthy mantled pool beyond your cell. 
 There dancing up to the chins ! 
 
 What a subject for a comic picture ! As yet, our artists 
 have hardly touched the edge of Shakspere, though 
 there is material enough in him for galleries. 
 
 Ariel's "pricking goss'' is usually understood to be one 
 of the smaller kinds of furze, and some have connected 
 the name, definitely, with the Genista Anglica. But there 
 is no justification for this. The word is but a varied form 
 of the low Latin gorra or gorassi, denoting brushwood 
 in general. It is only in modern times that gorse has 
 been made a synonym of furze, and Shakspere in using 
 goss had certainly nothing specific in view. Gorassi 
 when cut down and dried became " bavin," the coarse 
 fuel mentioned in ist Henry the Fourth, iii , 2, in capital 
 metaphorical allusion to the amusement afforded by 
 poor inane buffoons, easily got out of them, over in a 
 moment : — 
 
The Wilderness. 241 
 
 He ambled up and down. 
 With shallow jesteis, and rash bavin wits, 
 Soon kindled, and soon burned. 
 
 Rough and tangled wilderness shrubs, with plenty of 
 the tall coarse fern commonly called " bracken," Pteris 
 Aquilina, would constitute, as to-day, the Shaksperean 
 " brake," such a one, for example, as when Demetrius 
 shows how cruel a man can be to a woman who for her 
 own part loves fondly as life : — 
 
 Helena : Your virtue is my privilege for that 
 It is not night when I do see your face. 
 Therefore I think I am not in the night ; 
 Nor does this wood lack worlds of company. 
 For you, in my respect, are all the world. 
 Then how can it be said, I am alone, 
 When all the world is here to look on me ? 
 
 Demetrius ; I'll run from thee, and hide me in the brakes. 
 And leave thee to the mercy of wild beasts ! 
 
 Midsummer Night's Dream, ii., 2. 
 
 The Aquilina, which often attains, in the wilderness and 
 in woods, the stature of seven or eight feet, would also 
 be the principal feature of the sylvan covert upon 
 the margin of the nibbled turf, where the keepers of the 
 chase, armed with their crossbows, waited the coming of 
 the deer: — 
 
 Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves. 
 For through this laund anon the deer \vill come; 
 And in this covert will we make our stand. 
 
 ^rd King Henry the Sixth, iiu, I. 
 
 That the plant was named, like "heath," from its habitat, 
 and not the habitat from the plant, has been plainly 
 
242 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 cerrified by the etymologists. It is quite legitimate, 
 nevertheless, in any such picture, when deer are men- 
 tioned, to at once fill the " brake," mentally, with the 
 fern, since there is nothing as tall as themselves in which 
 hart and roebuck take more delight. Bracken and the 
 dappled deer, when nature is allowed her own free way, 
 always imply one another. Whenever on the frontiers of 
 some sweet green undulating down, where "the heavens' 
 breath smells wooingly," a little forest of Aquilina may 
 be descried, be sure the pretty creatures are not far off. 
 
 No other allusio^ to ferns, as growing plants, occurs 
 in Shakspere. Even this one to the bracken (although 
 L5rte uses " brake " as a sjTion)Tii of "female fern" ) can 
 be claimed only as by implication. He mentions the 
 " seed," the brown spores cast from the spangles upon 
 the under-surface- — this, however, not as a botanical 
 object, but simply in reference to one of the celebrated 
 old mediaeval superstitions. Being. of impalpable minute- 
 ness, itself almost invisible, to be dusted over with fem- 
 seed, according to the doctrine of " Signatures," gave 
 absolute invisibility, — 
 
 We have the receipt of fern-seed ; we walk mvisible, 
 
 ist King Henry the Fourth, ii., I. 
 
 The " receipt," so called, was the formula of magic 
 words to be employed during the process. Allusions to 
 the superstition are often met with in contemporaneous 
 literature, but never once do we come upon certificate 
 that the belief is sound ! Old Turner (1562) speaks of 
 collecting it from the fronds of the shield-fern, comparing 
 
The Wilderness. 243 
 
 the slaty-purple lids, or indusia, before they have 
 begun to curl, to poppy-seeds. Seed, he adds, hath also 
 been found upon "brakes," on "midsomer even." The 
 spoiiferous braid which runs round every leaflet of the 
 pteris is not in perfection till several weeks later in 
 the season, so we must conclude that there is here a 
 little infusion of the fable, since the efficacy of the 
 magic dust came largely of its being gathered during 
 those lovely hours which offer a hand alike to sunset 
 and to Aurora. 
 
 The Ivy. — Never, in the sylvan wilderness, do the eyes 
 rest upon a spectacle more delightful than that of the 
 aspiring "ivy green," as it creeps up trunk and branch, 
 till, overweighted with its own wealth, it rolls over in 
 those sumptuous and swelling masses, the very perfection 
 of perennial chiar" osairo, which bear the golden spheres 
 of honeyed bloom, and seem emblems of immortality. 
 How beautiful, too, that younger life set forth in the 
 close embrace of little shoots that sport in all sweet 
 shades of amber and ruddy bronze. Shakspere mentions 
 ivy upon three occasions. In the Midsummer Nighfs 
 Dream, iv., i, it is associated with the honeysuckle of 
 the woodlands, as an emblem of tender affection : — 
 
 TiTANiA : Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms. 
 Fairies, begone, and be all ways away. 
 So doth the woodbine — the sweet honeysuckle — 
 Gently entwist — the female ivy so 
 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. 
 
 "Female" is an epithet adopted from the early botanical 
 
244 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 writers, who, imitating the herbalists of ancient Greece, 
 bestowed it upon the flower and fruit-bearing in- 
 dividuals of many different species of plants in which 
 there is no real distinction of sex, but which are often 
 individually barren, or given exclusively to the pro- 
 duction of leaves. Plenty of plants exist, many of 
 them wild in England, which are really and truly 
 illustrative of difference of sex. With these, however, 
 ivy does not count, the structure being no less con- 
 summate than that of the lily and the rose. So long 
 as the idea prevailed that leaves without flowers implied 
 masculine, as distinguished from feminine nature, ivy 
 might well be regarded as male and female — for it is 
 the custom of this ambitious plant never to produce 
 flowers and berries while ascending. However lofty the 
 vertical surface up which it runs, on it goes, onwards, 
 leafy, but still quite sterile. Not until disengaged, and 
 rolling as it were into space, does the inflorescence come 
 forth, and then it is developed, usually, in profusion. 
 This very interesting change is accompanied by a change 
 in the outline of the leaves. They cease to be three or 
 five angled, and all the new ones become more or less 
 oval and acutely pointed. At the first blush it seems 
 most surely a different kind of plant, and to deem it, and 
 designate it when in this ripe and prolific condition, the 
 "female ivy," was in the infancy of botanical science 
 most natural, though erroneous. 
 
 In the Comedy of Errors, ii., 2, Adriana calls it 
 "usurping ivy:" — 
 
The Wilderness. 245 
 
 If aught possess thee from me, it is dross, 
 Usurping ivy, brier, or idle moss. 
 Who all, for want of pruning, \vith intrusion 
 Infect thy sap, and live on thy confusion. 
 
 Here the citation, excellent in its way, is metaphorical; 
 the ivy is an interloper, and Adriana would have us 
 believe it hurtful and a spoiler besides. She continues, — 
 
 The time viras once when thou, unurged, wouldst vow 
 That never words were music to thine ear. 
 That never object pleasing in thine eye. 
 That never touch weU-welcome to thy hand. 
 That never meat sweet-savour'd in thy taste 
 Unless I spake, look'd, touch'd, or carved to thee. 
 How comes it now, my husband, oh, how comes it 
 That thou art then estranged from thyself? 
 
 Ivy is again introduced in the Tempest, i., 2, now as a 
 figure for ingratitude. Prospero is describing the wicked 
 conduct of his brother Sebastian : — 
 
 He was 
 The i%-y which had hid my princely trunk, 
 And sucked my verdure out ou't. 
 
 In both these latter passages Shakspere adopted the idea 
 of his time (quite as natural of its kind, as that of the 
 berried plant being "female " ), that ivy both feeds upon 
 the tree up which it clambers, and operates injuriously 
 upon the sap. Neither idea has any real foundation. 
 Ivy is not a parasite. It is not even an epiphyte. The 
 root is in the ground, and like all other leafy climbing 
 plants of temperate countries, it obtains its nourishment 
 from the soil and the enveloping atmosphere. When 
 injury is done to a tree (and this happens only to weakly 
 
246 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 and exceptional individuals), the hurt comes of the tree 
 being too much shut in from the beneficent action of the 
 air, the rain, and the sunshine. Old trees observed to 
 be dead or dying in the midst of masses of ivy, were 
 in all likelihood beginning to die while the ivy about 
 them was still quite young, and would have died in- 
 dependently of it. The ascent of the ivy up such trees 
 would be the same as up an old wall. 
 
 Ivy, in ancient times, was one of the plants dedicated 
 to Bacchus — " hedera est gratissima Baccho." The 
 ground of the consecration was that when the child lay 
 in his cradle, an object of vengeance with Juno, the 
 nymphs of Nisa concealed him with ivy trails. Homer 
 bestows on him the epithet of "ivy-tressed." Not that ivy 
 was purely the god's own. '\^'hen Calliope, lyre in hand, 
 sang that charming ode in praise of Ceres, she had her 
 hair bound with a sprig of the same beautiful evergreen. 
 The dedication to Bacchus is mentioned also in the 
 Second Book of Maccabees, where, when the temple is 
 desecrated, the Jews are compelled to go in procession, 
 carrying Kiaaoz- Hence, in the middle ages, it became 
 customary with the o^vners of inns and taverns to hang a 
 small bough of ivy over the entrance, by way of invita- 
 tion to the thirst)' traveller. References to this custom 
 appear frequently in old authors, though not earlier, 
 perhaps, than in Chaucer. A very curious and distinct 
 allusion to it occurs in the preface to the Latin tran- 
 slation of the famous old German History of Plants by 
 Hieronimus Tragus, published in 1532. The Latin 
 
The Wilderness. 247 
 
 version, by David Kyber, appeared in 1552. It is usual, 
 says Kyber, " to descant upon the merits of an author one 
 may edit or translate. But in the present instance we 
 shall refrain from doing so, partly because this is already 
 done by another hand (Conrad Gesner's) in the Intro- 
 duction; partly because, according to the common 
 proverb. Good wine requires no suspended ivy." Very 
 naturally, the descriptive portion of the original proverb, 
 whatever it was, would abbreviate itself into the smallest 
 possible compass, becoming at last " Good wine needs 
 no bush," as cited by Rosalind in the charming Epilogue 
 to As You Like It: — 
 
 Rosalind : It is not the fashion to see the lady the epilogue; but 
 it is no more unhandsome than to see the lord the prologue. If it 
 be true that good wine needs no bush, 'tis true that a good play 
 needs no epilogue ; yet to good wine they do use good bushes, and 
 good plays prove the better by the help of good epilogues. What a 
 case am I in then, that am neither a good epilogue nor cannot 
 insinuate with you in the behalf of a good play ! I am not furnished 
 like a beggar, therefore to beg will not become me : my way is to 
 conjure you; and I'll begin with the women. I charge you, O 
 women, for the love you bear to men, to like as much of this play as 
 pleases you: and I charge you, O men, for the love you bear to 
 women — as I perceive by your simpering, none of you hates them — 
 that between you and the women the play may please. If I were a 
 woman I would kiss as many of you as had beards that pleased me, 
 complexions that liked me, and breaths that I defied not: and, I 
 am sure, as many as have good beards or good faces or sweet 
 breaths will, for my kind offer, when I make curtsy, bid me 
 farewelL 
 
 The name of "The Bush" has not even yet disappeared 
 from English taverns. 
 
248 The Shakspei'e Flora. 
 
 The allusion in the Winter's Tale, iii., 3, "They have 
 scared away two of my best sheep; if anywhere I find 
 them 'tis by the sea-side, browsing on ivy," — is not really 
 Shakspere's, and applies to some quite different plant. 
 The phrase is palpably taken from Greene's Pandosto, 
 the novel upon which the play was partly founded, and 
 in which we have — "It fortuned a poore mercenary 
 sheepheard . . . missed one of his sheepe, and . . . 
 wandered downe toward the sea cliffes to see if perchaunce 
 the sheepe was browsing on the sea ivy, whereon they 
 greatly doe feede," etc. Something very palatable is 
 here intended. Ivy is not so. That ivy occurs near 
 the sea is quite true, but under no circumstances can 
 it be considered a maritime plant, and Greene must have 
 been thinking of one to which sheep incline. The 
 original Pandosto was published in 1588; the Winter's 
 Tale, Shakspere's last complete play, was wTitten in 16 11, 
 five years only before the poet's death. Seeing whence 
 the allusion to sea ivy was derived, it may thus at once 
 be relegated to the list, not very short, of Shaksperean 
 anachronisms — no play showing less regard to accuracy 
 in respect of time and geograph)', than the Winter's Tale 
 itself We are in no wise required to demur to these 
 anachronisms; much less are we called upon to quarrel 
 ■with them. Unpardonable in actual history, anachron- 
 isms, in the ideal, count with the very slightest of blemishes. 
 The ideal is always young and is tied to no localit)'. 
 The poets rightfully so called may alwa)-s be known by 
 their emerald wings, such as render them independent of 
 
The Wilderness. 249 
 
 epoch and country. In the Winter's Tale we seem 
 seated upon the soft turf of some beautiful seclusion. 
 Here the fascinating grace of Shakspere's youth "shakes 
 hands with the thoughtfulness of his mature age." "The 
 golden glow of his genius/' says Mr. Furnivall, "is over 
 it; the sweet country air all through it ... As long 
 as men can think, shall Perdita brighten and sweeten, 
 Hermione ennoble, men's minds and lives ... Its 
 purpose, its lesson, is to teach forgiveness of wrongs, not 
 vengeance for them; to give the sinner time to repent 
 and amend, not to cut him off in his sin." 
 
 The Mistletoe. — Mistletoe, unlike ivy, is a genuine 
 parasite, fixing itself upon the branches of trees of very 
 various kinds, twenty different ones at least, in England 
 alone, — though upon the oak, with which tradition so 
 closely connects the plant, very seldom. The known 
 examples at the present day can be counted upon the 
 fingers. The favourite haunts of this curious plant are 
 apple-orchards. Shakspere (if the lines be really his) 
 connects it with the wilderness, where mistletoe occurs 
 frequently, seated upon hawthorns. Tamora, Queen of 
 the Goths, says in Titus Andronicus, ii., 3 : — 
 
 Have I not reason, think you, to look pale ? 
 These two have 'ticed me hither to this place, 
 A barren, detested vale you see it is ; 
 The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, 
 O'ercome with moss, and baleful mistletoe. 
 
 Moss. — Moss is mentioned in three other places as an 
 inhabitant of the bark of decrepit trees: — 
 
250 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Under an oak whose boughs were moss'd with age. 
 
 As You Like It, iv., 3. 
 
 It appears also in ist Henry the Fourth, iii., i, as an 
 occupant of the walls of ancient and ruinous buildings, — 
 
 Steeples and moss-grown towers. 
 
 With Shakspere the name denoted, as with all other 
 poets, not merely the little green-leaved plants called 
 Musci by the botanists, but the commoner and con- 
 spicuous kinds of lichen. These last quite as frequently 
 drape the branches of aged foresters with their curiously 
 tufted grey filaments; and still oftener in their horizontal, 
 crispy, and lace-edged kinds, confer those beautiful time- 
 stains, both grey and yellow, upon broken arch and 
 mouldering turret, which catch the e}'e of the tasteful 
 artist, and test the ingenuity of his pencil. To the 
 minute observer they are unfailing objects of delicate 
 pleasure. Their crowds of pretty cups "make glad the 
 solitary place," and in winter particularly, show that 
 nature has festivals for all seasons. The green-leaved or 
 true mosses chiefly observed by Shakspere, would 
 be species of the large and varied genus Hypnum, 
 especially the riitabulum and the shining sericeum, though 
 in one place he alludes more particularly to the elegant 
 little furry cushions formed by others of this most 
 pleasing race of nature's minims. 
 
 With fairest flowers. 
 While summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 
 I'll sweeten tliy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack 
 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose ; nor 
 
The Wilderness. 251 
 
 The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 
 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander 
 Outsweeten'd not thy breath. The ruddock would 
 With charitable bill (O bill sore shaming 
 Those rich-left heirs that let their fathers lie 
 Without a monument) ! bring thee all this. 
 Yea, and furred moss besides. — Cymbeline, iv., 2. 
 
 Imogen deserves all. A more loveable character is found 
 nowhere in Shakspere. She discloses herself, once for 
 all, in assuming while persecuted, the name of '"Fidfele." 
 How beautiful, too, the introduction of the little bird ! 
 Men failing in their duty, the ruddock at least would not 
 forget, perhaps even be the first, to scatter flowers. 
 Not that the pretty superstition is of date no remoter 
 than the Shaksperean age, for although fastened to the 
 robin, perhaps not so very long before, kindly bird-work 
 of this general nature was believed in quite fifteen cen- 
 turies antecedently. Horace tells us that stra}'ing away 
 from home when a boy, and lying asleep in the wilds, he 
 was covered with leaves by the wood-pigeons (Carm. 
 iii., 4). With Shakspere, nevertheless, it becomes new. 
 There are many things in objective nature, as well as in 
 the realm of poetry, which are at once curiously old and 
 delightfully young. Look, for instance, at those crowds of 
 little sylvan equiseta, with their many cupolas of green, 
 plant-forms not so much of to-day as of the times when 
 they existed in company with sigillarias and lepidodendra, 
 and the thousand other quaint antediluvians one sees in 
 the museums. 
 
 The concluding line of this Cymbeline passage is 
 
252 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 printed in the first folio, 1623, as above given, with a 
 full stop at "besides," — 
 
 Yea, and farr'd moss besides. 
 
 Then resuming, 
 
 When flowers are none, 
 To winter-ground tliy corse — 
 
 But in modern reprints the pimctuation has been altered 
 
 to- 
 
 Yea, and furred moss besides, when flowers are none, 
 To winter-ground thy corse. 
 
 It seems to have been thought that Shakspere meant 
 that the same birds would go on in wnter. But surely, 
 as pointed out by Mr. Hunter, it is Arviragus. Arvira- 
 gus begins with telling what he will do " while summer 
 lasts.'' Then he is about to say what he will do in the 
 time of frost and snow. He intends to imitate the 
 gardeners when they "winter-ground" their particularly 
 tender plants with litter, — 
 
 When flowers are none, 
 To winter-giound thy corse — (I'll) — 
 
 Guiderius, however, breaks in; will not let him proceed; 
 stops him short with — 
 
 Pr'ythee have done. 
 And do not play in wench-hke words with that 
 Which is so serious. 
 
 So much for the sense and the proper stops. Expecting 
 more sweet poetn-, one is inclined, for the moment, to 
 be vexed by the interruption, especially as Guiderius 
 cares to talk only about the funeral. Let be. Shak- 
 
The Wilderness. 253 
 
 spere knew what he was doing. We may thank him for 
 reminding us, as in a thousand other places, that the best 
 and truest sentiment is always that which flows forward 
 into the faithful performance of the prosaic and practical 
 duties of life; and that sentiment which fails to express 
 itself in sound personal conduct, is like religion without 
 charity, a tinkling cymbal. Sentiment and the practical 
 are not, as many people think, antagonistic. The 
 happiest conjugal unions ever witnessed in the world 
 are those in which common-sense has for its partner the 
 cheerful abundance of a serene imagination. 
 
 "Who can rcc^d," Mr. Hunter remarks, the words con- 
 cluding his own volume, — "Who can read this beautiful 
 scene, though it may be for the hundredth time, 
 without taking from it the most sensible pleasure, and 
 feeling most deeply grateful to the men of other days 
 who, in the treasures of song, have sent down to us so 
 much that administers such high and innocent delight ? 
 They have been the great and generous benefactors of 
 mankind, scattering their gifts with an unsparing and an 
 equal hand, strewing them in the humblest cottage, and 
 laying them before princes in their gorgeous palaces; and 
 worthy are they in turn to receive all honour, for the 
 utmost that can be done for them is no equivalent for 
 the extensive and enduring benefits which they have 
 conferred upon their kind. I have in this work scattered 
 a few flowers upon the grave of one of them."* 
 
 * New Illustrations, ii., 301. 
 
2 54 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Guiderius' desire that sentiment shall not excuse neglect 
 of the practical, is another of the Shaksperean ways of 
 illustrating what the master never forgets — the great 
 law of nature that trouble shall always be in some way 
 compensated; that no year shall be altogether dreary: — 
 
 The time ivill bring on summer. 
 When briers shall have leaves as well as thorns. 
 And be as sweet as sharp ; 
 
 that contraries in human experience shall never be far 
 asunder — a very ancient story, no doubt, but always open 
 to new and impressive illustration, since he — the master — 
 never forgets either that behind the sweetest and most 
 joyous things of earth there is always an undertone of 
 sadness, waiting the opportunity to express itself, and 
 which it is quite as much his boundea duty to recognise 
 and deal with. This is why, in almost all the greatest 
 of Shakspere's works, as in Homer, we have interfusion, 
 so skilful, of the bright and cheery with the grave and 
 solemn, of fun and playfulness with the philosophic, and 
 in most of the tragedies, amid agony and blood, or the 
 thirst for it, even the comic and the humorous. How 
 admirably, in the Merchant of Venice, are the stem and 
 terrible features of the scene in the judgment hall 
 relieved by those of the garden at Belmont: — 
 
 Shylock : So do I 2.-os,\\a you ! 
 
 The pound of flesh, which I demand of him, 
 Is dearly bought, is mine, and I will have it. 
 If you den)' me, fie upon your law ! 
 There is no force in the decrees of Venice. 
 I stand for judgment : — answer, shall I have it ? 
 
The Wilderness. 255 
 
 Gratiano : O be thou cursed, inexorable dog ? 
 
 The moon shines bright. In such a night as this. 
 When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees, 
 And they did make no noise : — in such a night, 
 Troilus, methinks, mounted the Trojan walls. 
 And sighed his soul toward the Grecian tents, 
 Where Cressid lay that night. 
 
 In Hamlet, after the same manner, we turn from crime, 
 and madness, and the intensest pathos, to the mirthful 
 chat of the old grave-diggers in the churchyard. In 
 Macbeth, before the horrors begin, the mind is pleased, 
 and in a measure invigorated, as if from some fragrant and 
 sustaining wine-cup, by what is perhaps the loveliest pic- 
 ture of natural repose in the whole of our immortal poet : — - 
 
 Duncan : This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
 Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
 Unto our gentle senses. 
 
 Banquo : This guest of summer, 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet, doth approve 
 By his lov'd mansionry, that the heavens' breath 
 Smells wooingly here; no jutty, frieze, or buttress. 
 Nor coigne of vantage, but this bird hath made 
 His pendent bed, and procreant cradle : — where they 
 Most breed and haunt, I have observed, the air 
 Is delicate. — (i., 6.) 
 
 Fairy-rings. — Upon outrof-the-way green rural surfaces — 
 sunward slopes where the turf is short, and inlaid with 
 eyebright and other bijouterie — there are very commonly 
 seen broad dark circles, varying in diameter from a few 
 feet to many yards. These are the " fairy-rings " alike of 
 poetry and science, which when talking of them, does not 
 
256 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 disdain the language of fable. They are referable, as 
 before stated, to the centrifugal growth of certain fungi 
 of the agaricus or mushroom type, though, according 
 to Prof Buckman, by no means always dependent upon 
 fungi for the initiative. In the Elizabethan age, when 
 "fungi" and "mushrooms" meant the same thing, these 
 pretty circles were believed to indicate, when discovered 
 at sunrise, the spots where, the night before, the fairies 
 had been dancing; thus to have been formed, at once, 
 of their full dimensions. Shakspere has several beautiful 
 references to them. First, in the invocation of the spirits 
 by Prospero, one of the most exquisite minglings of 
 veritable nature and the unreal to be found anywhere 
 in his works : — 
 
 Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves. 
 And ye that on the sands with printless foot 
 Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him 
 When he comes back : — you demi-puppets, that 
 By moonshine do the greensome ringlets make 
 Whereof the ewe not bites, and you whose pastime 
 Is to make midnight mushrooms. 
 
 " Whereof the ewe not bites" is in acceptance of another 
 popular fancy of the time, sheep having in reality no 
 objection to eat the grass marked by the rings in 
 questioiL "Greensome," again, almost always printed 
 "green sour," is surely the epithet intended. "Green 
 sour" is by no means Shaksperean. So doubtful is the 
 authenticity, that some have proposed to read "green- 
 sward." "Greensome" has parallels in "winsome," 
 "gladsome," "lightsome," and fifty besides. 
 
The Wilderness. 257 
 
 Then comes the charming couplet in the Midsummer 
 Nighfs Dream, ii., i : — 
 
 And I serve the Fairy Queen, 
 
 To dew her orbs upon the green, — 
 
 to moisten them, that is, with dew, after they have been 
 worn dry by the tripping of the little dancers; — then 
 in the Merry Wives v., 5, the queen's own personal 
 injunction to her maids and the company, one and all, 
 to be sure they take full vocal part in the entertain- 
 ment: — 
 
 And, nightly, meadow-fairies, look you sing 
 Like to the Garter's compass, in a ring ; 
 The expressure that it bears, green let it be. 
 More fertile fresh than all the field to see. 
 
 The "Garter" here referred to is the famous badge 
 identified with the legend of Honi soit qui mal y pense. 
 "Field" is also to be understood as involving an heraldic 
 allusion, the "field" being, in armory, the surface upon 
 which the "charges" are depicted. 
 
 Reeds and Rushes. — Reeds, the emblem, from time 
 immemorial, of weakness and imbecility, in Shakspere 
 take their old accustomed place, mention being made of 
 them in Antony and Cleopatra, ii., 7; Cymbeline, iv., 2; 
 and very elegantly in ist Henry the Fourth, i., 3, where 
 we have the hand-to-hand combat of Mortimer and 
 " great Glendower" : — 
 
 Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink 
 Upon agreement, of s\yift Severn's flood. 
 Who then, affrighted with their bloody looks, 
 
 S 
 
258 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Ran fearfully among the trembling reeds, 
 And hid his crisp head in the hollow bank. 
 
 This beautiful river has a moment before been called 
 "gentle." Now, by a rich personification, after the 
 manner of the Hebrews, when they spoke of the laugh- 
 ing and singing of the cornfields, the reeds upon the 
 banks partake of the dismay of the stream and shiver 
 anew. The description is one of those so frequent in 
 Shakspere which we do not so much read as mentally 
 transfigure into life and visible action. In the highest 
 forms of art, the master is always known by his awaken- 
 ing a higher consciousness than the one immediately 
 addressed. 
 
 "Reed" being a generic or collective term, no par- 
 ticular species can be insisted upon either in this or 
 any other passage. But we shall not err in thinking of 
 Shakspere's reed as that tall and elegant plant, the 
 Aruiido Phragmites, largest and most tropical looking 
 of the English grasses, and familiar in its impurpled and 
 downy plumes, the ornament of the marshes throughout 
 the fall of the year, the more particularly since the refer- 
 ence in the Tempest, v., i., to the use of the reed for 
 thatch* points to this plant almost definitely. 
 
 Portia's words. Merchant of Venice, iii., 4, — 
 
 And speak, between the change of man and bo}-, 
 With a reed voice, — 
 
 refer to the shrillness of tone characteristic of that period 
 
 * After the manner of old Baucis and Philemon's cottage — 
 stipulis et canna tect& palustri. — Met., viii., 630. 
 
The Wilderness. 259 
 
 of life, image of the whistled melody of the most ancient 
 of musical instruments, shaped, quite possibly, from the 
 Phragmites; in any case, from the still more serviceable 
 as well as more stately Donax. 
 
 Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan ! 
 
 Piercing sweet by the river. 
 
 Apart from the beauty of the myth of the origin of the 
 first musical pipe, the incident of the employment of 
 the reed for its manufacture is one of the most interest- 
 ing in literal history, since in this we find the first step 
 towards the glorious Organ of to-day. Complex as it is 
 now, the organ began with the discovery that air may 
 be forced into a closed cavity, such as that of the reed, 
 and then, with ingenuity, and by means of lateral open- 
 ings, be forced out. Poetry tells the tale in its own way, 
 but virtually this is just what happened one summer's 
 eve in old Arcadia. 
 
 Rushes are cited in various association. In two or 
 three out of the total of sixteen passages in which the 
 word occurs, they appear after the same manner as 
 reeds, or as emblems of instability and trifles: — 
 
 Our gates, 
 Which yet seem shut, we have but pinned vrith rushes ; 
 They'll open of themselves. — Coriolanus, i., 4. 
 
 In one instance (AlFs Well, ii., 2) there is an allusion 
 to the scandalous mediaeval custom of marrj-ing, or rather 
 pretending to marry, with a ring made of a rush. In 
 another, they supply ^^-icks for candles (Taming of the 
 Shrew, iv., 5) ; the remainder bear chiefly upon the 
 
26o The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 employment of rushes, beifore the introduction of carpets, 
 for strewing upon the floors of the houses of people of 
 rank, a practice very frequently mentioned by old 
 authors, as in the piteous descriptioQ of the unhappy 
 queen of Edward IV. (nee Elizabeth Woodville), 
 when news was brought her of the monarch's death: — 
 "She sat alow (alone) on the rushes, all desolate and 
 dismayed." Grumio, when he asks, "Is supper ready?" 
 adds, "are the rushes strewed?" (Ibid, iv., i). In 
 1st Senry the Fourth, iii., i, the lady's Welsh, made by 
 her tongue and " swelling heavens," 
 
 Sweet as ditties highly penned, 
 
 is translated for Mortimer, 
 
 She bids yon. 
 Upon the wanton rushes lay you down. 
 And rest your gentle head upon her lap, 
 And she mil sing the song that pleaseth you ; 
 And on your eyelids crown the god of sleep, 
 Charming your blood with pleasing heaviness. 
 
 In the Rape of Lucrece, and in CymMine, ii., 2, Shak- 
 spere adverts to the vile incident in the life of Tarquin 
 which deservedly lost him his kingdom, — 
 
 Our Tarquin thus 
 Did softly press the rushes ere he wakened 
 The chastity he wounded. 
 
 Here he places before us, in the most vivid manner, 
 the simplicity of the times when old Rome had kings, 
 the luxury of the empire not arriving for many ages 
 afterwards. There is no evidence that England was 
 anticipated in this matter by ancient Rome. The 
 
The Wilderness. 261 
 
 practice, nevertheless, was of indefinitely early date. In 
 Theocritus (xiii.), when the Argonauts have gone on 
 shore in the land of the Cyanians, and the nymphs, 
 enamoured, steal Hylas from his companions, the sailors 
 are described as strewing the floor with the leaves of the 
 butomus — not the plant so called to-day, but some large 
 carex or cyperaceous plant That in the fourteenth 
 century the custom was continental, is proved by the 
 allusions in Froissart. The early Italian authors refer to 
 it in their word giuncare. 
 
 The rushes thus employed are intended also by 
 Shakspere, by implication, when the presence-chamber, 
 or briefly, the "presence" is said to be strewed. In 
 those admirable lines, for example, addressed to an 
 individual, but, like everything else noble and good in 
 Shakspere, intended for everybody^ when John o' Gaunt, 
 "time-honoured Lancaster," reminds us that sunshine 
 is at -the command of every one, and that happiness 
 is not a wonderful diamond, to be sought afar off, 
 but the multiplying and creative power of a thankful 
 heart: — 
 
 All places that the eye of heaven visits, 
 Are, to a wise man, ports and happy havens. 
 
 Look, what thy soul holds dear. Imagine it 
 
 To lie the way thou go'st, not whence thou cam'st — ■ 
 
 Suppose the singing birds musicians ; 
 
 The grass whereon thou tread'st, the presence strewed ; 
 
 The flowers, fair ladies ; and thy steps no more 
 
 Than a delightful measure, or a dance; 
 
262 TJie Shakspere Flora. 
 
 For gnarling sorrow hath less power to bite 
 The man that mocks at it, and sets it light. 
 
 King Richard the Second, \., "i- 
 
 The kinds of rush employed would be ordinarily the 
 common ^««« of rough waste land. Bulleyn says some- 
 what definitely, "Rushes that grow upon drie grounds be 
 good to strewe in Halles, Chambers, and Galleries to 
 walke upon, defendyng apparell (as traines of gownes 
 and kertles) from duste." "Rushes," he quaintly adds, 
 "be olde Courtiers; and when they be nothing worthe, 
 then they be caste out of the doores. So be many that 
 dooe tread upon them." But though "drie ground" 
 rushes may have had the preference, we cannot suppose 
 neglect of the abounding denizens of the watery hollow, 
 the /uncus effusus and its allies, always so friendly with 
 the pink flos-cuculi and the ivory meadow-sweet Use 
 would probably be made also of the spongy stalks of the 
 bulrush, Scirpiis lacustris, and perhaps to some extent, 
 of the cinnamon-rush or sweet-flag, Acorns Calamus. 
 "The sweet-scented rush," says Mr. EUacombe, was 
 always used when it could be procured. Loudon, in 
 1829, and Dr. Lindley, in 1833, make the same state- 
 ment, to which the Rev. C. A. Johns adds, in his 
 Flowers of the Field, that "as it did not grow near 
 London, but had to be fetched, at great expense, from 
 Norfolk and Suffolk, one of the charges of extravagance 
 against Cardinal Wolsey was that he caused his floors to 
 be strewed with rushes too frequently." The fresher 
 they were, so much of course the cleaner and more 
 
Btmh & £iched bT'Tho.Lorharltow 
 
 K_yC)U yZi/^^^ •-^''''' 
 
 'l-O. l/^i^ 
 
The Wilderness. 263 
 
 pleasant, especially for guests, whom it was customary to 
 
 honour with new ones: — 
 
 Where is this stranger? Rushes, ladies, rushes. 
 Rushes as green as summer for this stranger. 
 
 Poor Wolsey, the end not less majestic than the reign, 
 though faultful, neyer forget how much England owes to 
 him. When, temp. Henry VIII., endeavour was made 
 to introduce the language of ancient Greece into the 
 Universities, it was met by the most furious oppo- 
 sition. Erasmus' Greek New Testament (the first of its 
 kind) was denounced and reviled. Wolsey came to the 
 rescue, and Wolsey we may thank for giving io Greek 
 the splendid anchorage in England which was never 
 afterwards interfered with. Erasmus himself bears 
 eloquent testimony to Wolse/s merits in the matter. 
 "Learning," he says, "as yet struggling with the patrons 
 of the ancient ignorance, he upheld by his favour, 
 defended by his authority, adorned by his splendour, and 
 cherished by his kindness." 
 
 The authorities as to the use of the acorns stand high. 
 There is a little misgiving over it, nevertheless, since the 
 plant is not mentioned in the old herbals as a wild 
 English one, and would seem not to have become 
 common in England until after the Restoration. It is to 
 be observed also, that neither Shakspere, who was not 
 the man to miss anything characteristic, nor any of his 
 contemporaries, ever speak of their rushes as odoriferous, 
 not even when used like Romeo's, for the floors of 
 dancing saloons : — 
 
264 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 Let wantons, light of heart. 
 Tickle the senseless rushes with their heels. — (L, iv.) 
 
 Botanically regarded, a plant more interesting does not 
 exist. Growing just within the margin of ponds, to reach 
 it without wetting the feet is not easy — faint heart never 
 won fair lady. The leaves, which come up in crowds, 
 are tall, vertical, flat, narrow, and curiously crimped 
 along one edge. The flowers, borne upon stems of 
 similar figure, constitute curious lateral tapering cones, 
 not very unlike the spires of churches; the colour a 
 pretty greenish-brown; the surface covered \vith minute 
 golden mosaic. 
 
 Shakspere's " Sedges." Sedge, a term little altered 
 from the Anglo-Saxon, must be understood as denoting 
 in poetry any hard and wiry vegetation that may border 
 the pool or the river-side. These are the natural haunts 
 of the larger English species of botanical " sedge," a 
 dozen perhaps in all, and which are themselves haunted, 
 in turn, by various birds, the sedge-warbler to wit. 
 Hence, in Much Ado, ii., i, — 
 
 Alas, poor hurt fowl ; now will he creep into sedges. 
 
 Four other allusions show how easily the word can help 
 to make beautiful pictures: — 
 
 The gentle Severn's sedgy bank. 
 
 1st Henry the Foui-th, i., 3. 
 
 You nymphs, called naiads, of the winding brooks, 
 With your sedged crowns, and ever-harmless looks. 
 
 Tempest, iv., r. 
 
The Wilderness. 265 
 
 And Cytherea, all in sedges hid, 
 
 Which seem to move and wanton with her breath. 
 
 Taming of the Shrew. — Introd. 
 
 The current that with gentle murmur glides. 
 
 Thou know'st, being stopped, impatiently doth rage. 
 
 But when his fair course is not hindered, 
 
 He makes sweet music with the enamelled stones, 
 
 Giving a gentle kiss to every sedge 
 
 He overtaketh in his pilgrimage ; 
 
 And so by many winding nooks he strays 
 
 With willing sport, to the wild ocean. 
 
 Two Gentlemen of Verona, ii., 7. 
 
 " Pilgrimage " is perfect, the idea being that the trickle 
 on the mountain-side sees its Jerusalem or Mecca from 
 afar, never thenceforward wavers, is faithful to the end. 
 
 There are a few Shaksperean occupants yet of the 
 wilderness and the wayside. In the Merry Wives, v., 5, 
 mention is made of " bilberries," the violet-black fruit of 
 the Vaccinium Myrtillus, so common upon the moor- 
 lands, and more usually called whortleberries. Staining 
 the lips with a deep purplish-blue when eaten in quantity, 
 they supply an apt colour comparison. Whortle was 
 very naturally contracted into hurtle. Hence, in heraldry, 
 the deep blue roundlets occasionally met Avith received 
 the name of hurtes, just as the green roundlets were 
 designated pommes. 
 
 In the Tempest, ii., 2, where odious Caliban becomes 
 for a moment endurable, the earth-chestnut is adverted 
 to: — 
 
 I, with my long nails, will dig thee pig-nuts. 
 
 Shakspere here again gives preference to the less usual, 
 
266 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 though quite as suitable English name of that very pretty 
 and interesting plant, the Bunium flexuosum of the 
 botanists. In England, in its way, the pignut is unique. 
 The aerial portion reminds one of hemlock, of which, 
 indeed, this plant is a near ally, only that every part is 
 in miniature, and that the umbels, before blooming, are 
 pendulous. The usual height of the stem is about fifteen 
 inches. Below the surface of the ground it bends to and 
 fro in the most curiously irregular manner, diminishing in 
 thickness at every turn, till at last we reach the round 
 brown nut, white inside, hard, and of pleasant nutty 
 flavour. There is no pulling it up by force. Shakspere 
 had learned in his boyhood that the pignut is won alone 
 by patience and perseverance. Writing the line, he was 
 a boy over again. Say rather that the man of genius 
 in spirit never ceases to be a boy. 
 
 Another schoolboys' plant is plainly intended in 
 1st Henry the Fourth, ii., 4, "Yea, and to tickle our 
 noses with speargrass to make them bleed." Whether 
 the allusion be to the green needles of the horsetail, or 
 to the feathered leaves of the common milfoil, Achillea 
 Millefolium, by Lyte called "nose-bleed," is a point yet 
 to be settled. 
 
 In i., 3 of the same play there seems to be an allusion 
 
 to the "shepherd's purse," Capsella Bursa-pastoris : — 
 
 My liege, I did deny no prisoners. 
 But, I remember, wlien the fight was done, 
 When I was dry with rage, and extreme toil, 
 Breathless and faint, leaning upon my sword. 
 Came there a certain lord, neat, trimly dressed, 
 
The Wilderness. 267 
 
 Fresh as a brid^room. 
 
 He made me mad 
 To see him shine so brisk, and smell so sweet. 
 And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman. 
 Of guns, and drums, and wounds (God save the mark)! 
 And telling me the sovereign's! thing on earth 
 Was parmaceti, for an inward bruise. 
 
 The immediate reference here is to spermaceti, in the 
 Shaksperean times a famous remedy for hurts. But the 
 capsella had a similar reputation — "the juice," says the 
 Grete Herbal, "when drunk, staieth bleeding in any 
 part of the body." Hence it got the name of "Poor 
 man's Parmaceti," with involved equivocal allusion to 
 the poor man's queen of medicines, the well replenished 
 purse. 
 
 The common duckmeat or duckweed, Lemna minor, 
 the little plant of the thousand green spangles, which 
 roofs all rustic stagnant waters, is introduced in King 
 Lear, iii., 4, "the green mantle of the stagnant pool." 
 The "vagabond flag upon the stream," of Antony and 
 Cleopatra L, 4, means, probably, the surface plants in 
 general of slow waters, or such as with changing con- 
 ditions, glide to and fro. The leaf of the common 
 plantain, Plantago major, anciently reputed good for a 
 broken shin, is referred to in Lov^s Labour's Lost, iii., r, 
 and in Romeo and Juliet, i., 2. 
 
 When, however, in Troilus and Cressida, iii., 2, we 
 have — 
 
 As true as steel, as plantage to the moon— 
 
268 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 no reference is intended to the plantago in particular. 
 The word is here a kind of synonym of "herbage," 
 denoting vegetation in general, the mysterious lunar 
 influence upon so large a portion of which, with a sort of 
 reciprocal fealty to the moon on the part of the plant, 
 constantly crops up in the superstitions of the middle 
 ages. 
 
©IjaptBr WijivUtntlj. 
 
 THE MARKET-PLACE AND THE SHOPS. 
 
 We, ignorant of ourselves, 
 Beg often our own tanns, which the wise powers 
 Deny us for our good ; so find we profit. 
 By losing of our prayers. — Antony and Cleopatra, ii., I. 
 
 S with all the cultivated fruits and the 
 commonly cultivated esculent vegetables 
 mentioned by Shakspere, so with a 
 considerable number of plant products 
 sold in the market-place and the shops, 
 some for food, others for medicinal use, others again to 
 subserve various economic purposes. The allusions 
 very seldom carry with them anything either poetical 
 or inviting, except in so far as they are humorous or 
 facetious; and here let us not forget that to Shakspere 
 the most distasteful of all men, not criminal, was that 
 
270 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 one who after incapacity for delight in music,* could not 
 laugh, and laugh heartily. That these humorous and 
 facetious allusions should occur is thus quite in keeping 
 with the genial and stimulating humanity of Shakspere. 
 Without them, the plays would not have sho^vn him 
 truly, and we should have lacked a great portion of the 
 delightful influence which, whether it makes us laugh, 
 or weep, or meditate, is still, in its way, inestimable. 
 Shakspere's best characters are in every instance joyous 
 themselves, and most of them are able to be merry ; 
 and perhaps it is in the degree that we strive to assimilate 
 ourselves to those matchless creations that we rise in the 
 scale of existence — not forgetting that the central feature 
 of all those best characters is identical with that of the 
 man who fears God and obeys His law. The nature of 
 these references renders it unnecessary to dwell upon 
 them at length; — they so often speak for themselves that, 
 in many cases, it is enough to quote the passage, or to 
 indicate its position in the drama. Very interesting light 
 
 * CjESAe. : Let me have men about me that are fat ; 
 
 Sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights. 
 
 Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look. 
 
 He thinks too much ; such men are dangerous. 
 
 He loves no plays, 
 As thou dost, Antony— ^f hears no music. 
 Seldom he smiles, and smiles in such a sort 
 As if he mock'd himself, and scorned his spirit. 
 That could be moved to smile at anything. 
 Such men as he be never at heart's ease, 
 Whiles they behold a greater than themselves. 
 And therefore are they very dangerous. — Julius Ccesa?; i. , 2. 
 
The Shops. 271 
 
 ■ — ( 
 
 is thrown by the various citations upon the market busi- 
 ness of the time, and still more upon the early history of 
 English commerce, so far as regards articles imported. 
 The trade carried on by the original English merchants 
 would be chiefly with the maritime cities of the 
 Mediterranean, those, in particular, of Spain, Italy, 
 and the Levant We need think only of Antonio 
 and Bassanio, of unrelenting Shylock, and of graceful, 
 wise, and witty Portia, to remember that the great 
 centre of European mercantile fame for many ages, 
 was Venice. Up to the time of Henry VII., the 
 productions of India and other oriental countries 
 ■would come by the same routes, in the first instance, as 
 to Palestine in the days of Solomon and the Queen of 
 Sheba. The discoveries made by Columbus, and the 
 finding of a sea-passage to the East Indies by way of the 
 Cape, events almost contemporaneous, gave quite a new 
 character to foreign trade. The pride of Venice, as 
 regarded oriental productions, passed in a great measure 
 to Lisbon. The Portuguese merchants, in turn, made 
 an intermediate emporium of Antwerp. The mercantile 
 importance of the last-named city, in the time of 
 Elizabeth, is described in the livehest manner in the 
 well-known pages of Ludovico Guicciardini ; and from 
 Antwerp, in all likelihood, the Indian spices, and other 
 such articles named by Shakspere, would now be proxi- 
 mately received, though the fruits ripened in the 
 Mediterranean region would still arrive by way of the 
 Bay of Biscay. Let us first enumerate these. 
 
272 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 SHAKSPERE'S FOREIGN FRUITS. 
 As grapes take precedence in the garden, the corre- 
 sponding place in the new series may be allowed to 
 raisins, one of the most ancient of the historical fruits, 
 and mentioned in the Winter's Tale, iv., 2, as raisins "of 
 the sun," the commoner sorts being prepared by drying 
 in ovens. The name is no more than an altered form of 
 the Latin racemus, a bunch of grapes, as in Virgil : — 
 
 Aspice ad antrum 
 Silvestris raris sparsit labrusca racemis. 
 (See how the wild vine with clusters here and there 
 hath mantled over the grotto. — Eel. v. 7.) 
 
 When Shakspere wrote, the word "reasons" was pro- 
 nounced "raysons." Hence, the very natural double 
 entendre, an instance of which occurs in the now 
 proverbial line in ist Henry the Fourth, ii., 4, "Give you 
 a reason on compulsion ! If reasons = raisins were as 
 plenty as blackberries, I would give no man a reason 
 upon compulsion." 
 
 Currants. — The little Corinthian grapes imported from 
 Zante, which by and by became "Corinths," then 
 "corantes," and eventually "currants," are mentioned in 
 the same passage in the Winter's Tale, iv., 2. The vine 
 producing them is scarcely distinguishable from the plant 
 which yields grapes par excellence; the flower-clusters, the 
 bunches, and the berries alone are smaller. What a com- 
 mentarj' upon the vicissitudes of nations, that Greece, 
 once so illustrious, the parent of temple-architecture, of 
 sculpture, orator}', history, poetry, and the drama, should 
 
The Imported Fruits. 273 
 
 for ages before Shakspere talked of them, descend to the 
 exportation only of miniature raisins ! The red and white 
 currants of the garden, Ribes rubrum, though cultivated 
 in the time of Elizabeth, are not referred to by 
 Shakspere. 
 
 Dates, of celebrity almost as ancient, make their 
 appearance in the same passage (Winter's Tale, iv., 2), 
 from which, as also from the allusion in Romeo a?id Juliet, 
 iv., 4, it may be inferred that this fruit was a favourite 
 ingredient in confectionery. The same appears from 
 ParoUes' uncivil comment in AlPs Well, i., i, through the 
 characteristic and graceless medium of a verbal quibble, 
 upon grown-up ladies not yet married, — "Your date is 
 better in your pie and your porridge than in your cheek." 
 From ParoUes such language comes quite consistently. 
 Mr. Halliwell describes him as "amusing enough; a fop, 
 nevertheless, a fool, a liar, a braggart, every way a knave, 
 too contemptible for anger." Any one of these attributes 
 is quite enough to cancel that noblest social capacity and 
 privilege of man — respect for woman, and courtesy at all 
 times, in addressing her. Shakspere, when speaking from 
 his own heart, is never rude to the unmarried woman. 
 He was not one of the thoughtless class who imagine 
 that an " old maid " can only be so by reason of some 
 personal defect, which rendered her unattractive in the 
 bygones. Many an old maid is so because bereaved in 
 the lang syne of her heart's idol, the loved and lost, 
 never spoken of, but never forgotten; to whose sacred 
 place she does not care to admit a successor. Many 
 
 T 
 
2 74 "^^^ Shakspere Flora. 
 
 another is what we find her because too high-minded, 
 too recherche in her gentle and educated tastes, to have . 
 been satisfied with any one of her so-called "offers." 
 She has never condescended to marry. For although it 
 may be true, on the one side, that when a sensible and 
 worthy man asks a woman to become his wife, he pays 
 her the highest compliment in his power; — no man is 
 entitled to suppose that condescension in the matter of 
 marrying is a prerogative of his own gender. It is not 
 to wives and mothers only that honour pertains. What 
 more loveable sight in the world than that of the middle- 
 aged unmarried daughter who keeps house for an aged 
 and feeble father, who soothes his declining years, over- 
 flowing with all dutiful affections, prays for him, and 
 would lay down her life for him ? The most repulsive 
 female characters in Shakspere are the two ungrateful 
 daughters, Goneril and Regan (in Lear); — the most 
 heavenly one is their unmarried sister Cordelia. 
 
 Not that Shakspere was an admirer of feminine celibacy. 
 Varied as are the stories of the plays, those, again to 
 quote Mr. Halliwell, "in which the genial sunshine of 
 his warm heart is invested, where his humanity becomes 
 tender, and his imagination glowing, are his love- 
 plots," — those, in a word, which are designed to end 
 in matrimony. When he wishes to describe, in a single 
 phrase, the characteristics of woman after she becomes a 
 wife, they are "her sweet perfections'' (Twelfth Night, 
 i., i). No principle is more constantly illustrated by 
 Shakspere than that the reciprocal and active love of men 
 
The Imported Fruits. 275 
 
 and women originates, and assures, and gives completion 
 to what Goethe calls their Blessedness. Whether designed 
 or accidental, it is impossible to determine, but the fact 
 remains that one of the most profoundly original charac- 
 ters in the whole of Shakspere, as regards substantial 
 feminine love, is that one whose sweet name implies that 
 she Blesses — blight-hearted, mirthful, sprightly Beatrice, — 
 Beatrice, who, as a maid, could not endure to be left out 
 of anything that was going on in the way of lively 
 business, such as was calculated to give pleasure to 
 those around her. Following close upon this comes the 
 illustration on the feminine side, of the transfiguring power 
 of love. Rosalind is a girl up to the time when she 
 becomes alarmed for Orlando's safety. Then her simple 
 interest in him changes on the instant into yearning 
 emotion, one remove only from the marital. 
 
 To put anything of our own into Shakspere, or to 
 make him appear to mean more than he intends, would 
 be taking a liberty, as already said, beyond excuse or 
 justification. It is legitimate, nevertheless, to consider 
 that whatever he did say, was said designedly. Granting 
 this, the circumstance is noteworthy that while nearly 
 every one of his principal female characters has a Christian 
 name that can scarcely be accounted English — necessarily 
 so, in most cases, because of the foreign scene of the 
 play — Portia, to wit, Miranda, Juliet, Ophelia, Hermione, 
 Helena, Hero, Viola, Perdita, Desdemona; — when he does 
 want an English name, and this for the type of a good, 
 modest, courteous, and loveable woman of the middle 
 
276 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 social rank, neither princess nor plebeian, he goes for it 
 to his own wife. " Sweet Anne Page" is distinguished 
 also for her common - sense, — "Good mother, do not 
 marry me to that fool." 
 
 Almonds are mentioned in Troilus and Cressida, 
 v., 2 : — " The parrot will not do more for an almond," 
 words probably convepng some kind of proverbial 
 signification, now forgotten. The profound antiquity of 
 the esteem in which this fhiit was held, beginning, as 
 was natural, in one of its native countries, the "land of 
 Israel," is illustrated in the history of Joseph and his 
 brethren. Allusions to it m classical literature are 
 scanty, nevertheless, though the singular beauty of the 
 tree, when in full bloom, meets with occasional notice ; 
 and this may have been kno-svn to Shakspere, who was 
 not the man to overlook anything that would attract the 
 author of the Faery Queene, — 
 
 Like to an almond-tree ymounted hye 
 
 On top of green Selinis all alone. 
 
 With blossoms brave bedecked daintily. — I., 7, xxxii. 
 
 In the Elizabethan age almonds were much in demand 
 for the making of "marchpanes," the antet)fpe of the 
 modern macaroon, a sweet very evidently esteemed alike 
 by high and low, since in Romeo and Juliet we have from 
 one of the latter class, thoughts of his "Susan" notwith- 
 standing, — "Save me a piece of marchpane" (L, 5). 
 The Orange, though not comparing with the almond in 
 respect of historical fame, had by the time of Shakspere 
 become quite as common in southern Europe, whence it 
 
The Imported Fruits. 277 
 
 would seem to have been abundantly imported, for in 
 Coriolanus, iL, i, though the scene is laid in Rome, we 
 are of course to understand a reference to London ways 
 and characteristics, including the litigant street " orange- 
 wife." No mention of this queenly finit occurs in the 
 classical authors, the "golden apples" of ancient 
 mythology having been quinces; nor is there any notice 
 of it in literature before the time of the Arabian authors 
 of the tenth or eleventh century, with whom the orange 
 first appears. The original conveyance of the tree from 
 northern India may be assigned to a period some 
 little earlier. Very soon after this it was carried to Sicily 
 and Spain, and in due course to Italy and the south of 
 France, the diffusion coming partly of Moorish conquest, 
 partly of the old Venetian commerce, and in some 
 degree, probably, of the enterprise of homeward-bound 
 Crusaders, though in matters of this nature we must be 
 careful not to accredit those steel-clad warriors over- 
 much. The very name of the fruit is oriental, being no 
 other, Max Miiller tells us, than the Arabic naranj, 
 which represents in turn an Aryan word. The initial n 
 was retained in the original Latinised name, anarantium, 
 afterwards changed, apparently because of the golden 
 hue, into aurantium, and from this last, the transition, in 
 France, into " orange," was easy and natural. The loss 
 of the eastern initial n has a curious counterpart in the 
 history of the name of the adder, which is properly, by 
 derivation, "a nadder." When the fruit was first brought 
 to England is not known. The earliest mention of it, as 
 
278 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 regards this coimtiy, appears to be in Queen Eleanor's 
 household expense book for a.d. 1290, where it is said 
 that she purchased from a Spanish ship which came to 
 Portsmouth " vii poma de orenge." 
 
 In the Midsummer Night's Dream the hue of the 
 rind helps upon two occasions to describe a colour, very 
 happily, in particular, in Bottom's little song about the 
 birds : — 
 
 The ousel-cock, so black of hue, 
 
 With orange-tawny bill ; 
 The throstle, with his note so true, 
 
 The wren with little quill. — (iii., I.) 
 
 " Quill," a word ultimately derived from calamus, a reed, 
 refers to the sweet, high-pitched, piercing note, similar to 
 the reed-music heard that immemorial summer's eve when 
 
 The sun on the hill forgot to die. 
 The lilies revived, and the dragon-fly 
 Came back to dream on the river, — 
 
 the note which Shakspere had plainly learned so well 
 how to distinguish amid the songs of other birds, and 
 which for our own parts always make one wonder how 
 so much sound can be poured forth from so small a 
 body. The other mention of this colour occurs in i., 2, 
 "Your orange-tawny beard." It seems to have been 
 considered one of ill-promise in mankind, since Beatrice, 
 in Much Ado, playing upon Seville, the name of the 
 Spanish city whence the fruit was partly received, says 
 jocularly of Count Claudio, that he is " civil as an 
 orange, and something of that jealous complexion" 
 (ii., I). 
 
The Imported Fruits. 2 79 
 
 The Lemon is mentioned once, slightly, in Love's 
 Labour's Lost, v., 2. Like the orange, it came originally 
 from the forests of India, arriving in Europe, probably, 
 in the same way and about the same time. 
 
 The Pomegranate, also mentioned once, is cited, we 
 may be sure, from personal knowledge, acquired in 
 all likelihood in the metropolis, though the scene is 
 laid in Italy, occurring in All's Well, ii., 3. Con- 
 templating the histor}-, we are thrown back, yet again, 
 into the remotest antiquity, Hebrew scripture and 
 classical fable alike suppl)dng curious illustrations of the 
 primitive fame. Carried westwards at a very early period, 
 the Romans seem to have received this fruit first from 
 Carthage, queen Dido's own once glorious city: the 
 Arabs, at a later period, conveyed it to the Spanish 
 peninsula, and thence, or from Italy, it would seem to 
 have reached England as early as the Anglo-Saxon times. 
 The pomegranate was one of the fruits which, like the 
 lily and the rose, travelled arm-in-arm with Christianity. 
 The old French name, pomme-granate, "the grained 
 apple," passed, after the conquest, into England, super- 
 seding the Anglo-Saxon mpl-cyrnlu. It was partly 
 translated, however, into "apple-gamade," as in an old 
 poem of about a.d. 1360, upon the destruction of Sodom 
 and Gomorrali, in which the trees growing on the borders 
 of the famous Sea are described as covered wth produce 
 as fair to look at 
 
 As orange and other fryt and apple-gamade, 
 Al so red and so ripe and rychely hwed. 
 
28o The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The pomegranate-/«i? is alluded to in the immortal 
 chamber-window scene — that one in Romeo and Juliet 
 where we are shown so exquisitely how hard it is for a 
 woman whose whole heart is enveloped by the beloved, 
 to say "good-bye," and how the merest gossamer will 
 suffice her for an argument why not to go : — 
 
 Juliet : Wilt thou be gone ? It is not yet near day : 
 It was the nightingale, and not the lark 
 That pierced the fearfiil hollow of thine ear : 
 Nightly she sings on yon pomegranate tree : 
 Believe me, love, it was the nightingale. 
 
 Romeo : It was the lark, the herald of the mom; 
 
 No nightingale. Look, love, what envious streaks 
 Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east. 
 Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
 Stands tip-toe on the misty mountain-tops. — (iii., 5.) 
 
 In Othello, i, 3, we have the phrase "luscious as locusts." 
 These are the dried fruit of the very celebrated tree of 
 the Levantine region called the Ceratonia Siliqua, and 
 commonly the "carob," whence also the name of "alga- 
 roba beans," given to the pods, which are seven or eight 
 inches long, narrow, curved, and flattened. The leaves 
 are pinnate; the clustered pink flowers are incon- 
 spicuous. From time immemorial these pods have been 
 esteemed in their native countries, as a saccharine and 
 nourishing food for brute creatures, though too coarse 
 for mankind. They would appear to have become an 
 article of very early import, though for what distinct 
 purpose is not clear. At the present day they are used 
 in the manufacture of molasses and of artificial cattle- 
 
Eryngoes. — Samphire. 281 
 
 food. Historically, carobs are interesting as having been 
 the "husks" of the Parable of the Prodigal Son. 
 
 Of miscellaneous market-place edibles, not derived 
 from the home kitchen-garden, about half-a-dozen kinds 
 are mentioned by Shakspere, two of them, samphire and 
 eryngoes, prepared from productions of the sea-shore. 
 "Eryngoes,"' named in the Merry Wives, v., 5, were the 
 candied roots, once greatly esteemed, of the Eryngium 
 maritimum, grey denizen of the sea-side sandhills — 
 their veritable "touch-me-not," distinguished at once by 
 its intense prickliness, whence the s)Tion3mi of "sea- 
 holly," and the large egg-shaped heads of sky-blue 
 flowers. The roots run to a great length among the 
 sand; they are charged with a sweerish juice; and when 
 softened in syrup, were in the Elizabethan age greatly 
 valued, for purposes in harmony with FalstafiPs character, 
 as specified by Turner, p. 215 {1568). 
 
 Samphire, Crithmum maritimu7/i, grows never upon 
 the sandhills, but exclusively upon rocks and cliffs, such 
 as are daily splashed , by the salt water. The leaves are 
 many-fingered and very succulent; the flowers are pro- 
 duced in yellowish umbels, the plant becoming a mass, 
 in all, of some six inches in height. The juiciness and 
 pleasant saline flavour recommended it, at a very early 
 period, for use as a pickUng vegetable. The collecting 
 is at all times somewhat perilous. As a rule, samphire is 
 often quite inaccessible except by means such as those 
 referred to in the inimitable description in which it is 
 mentioned, — suspending a man by a rope from the brow 
 
282 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 of the cliff,— this particular cliff the most interesting in 
 
 our own island, since it is at Dover, and looks out upon 
 
 the channel: — 
 
 How fearful 
 And dizzy 'tis, to cast one's eye so low ! 
 The crows and choughs, that wing the midway air. 
 Show scarce so gross as beetles. Half-way down 
 Hangs one that gathers samphire; dreadful trade ! 
 Methinks he seems no bi^er than his head. 
 The fishermen, that walk upon the beach. 
 Appear like mice; and yon tall anchoring barque 
 Diminished to her cock ; her cock, a buoy 
 Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge 
 That on the unnumbered idle pebbles chafes. 
 Cannot be heard so high. I'll look no more, 
 Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight 
 Topple down headlong. — King Lear, iv. , 6. 
 
 Upon sea-side mud-flats there grows very commonly 
 another plant suitable for pickling, the salt-wort, Sali- 
 cornia herbacea, a singular production, made up of little 
 round, green, erect, and juicy pencils. This, sometimes 
 called samphire by mistake, is by no means to be 
 thought of as Shakspere's samphire. 
 
 In the same scene in the Merry Wives, where Falstaff 
 invokes eryngoes, he prays also for a rain of " potatoes." 
 These were not the potatoes of to-day, which in the 
 Shaksperean age were only just beginning to be known 
 through introduction from South America by Sir Walter 
 Raleigh. Falstaff's were the tubers of an East Indian 
 species of convohiilus, since named Cotivolvulus Batatas. 
 Large, solid, and very sweet, with great repute of pro- 
 perties similar to those of the eryngo, they became an 
 
spices. — Saffron. 283 
 
 object of culture in southern Europe during the early 
 middle ages, particularly in Spain, from which country 
 those sold in the markets of the Elizabethan times would 
 be obtained. They are now seldom heard of, and even 
 the plant is scarcely known out of botanic gardens. 
 
 Most of the principal spices are named in the plays. 
 Cloves appear in Lov^s Labour's Lost, v., 2. Nutmegs 
 in the same scene, and in two other places, in one of 
 which (Winter's Tale, iv., 2.) mace also is mentioned. 
 Pepper appears in Twelfth Ni^ht, iii., 4, and again in 
 two otlier places, only that now we must remember that 
 with Shakspere the word was equivalent to "spice," as 
 in 1st Henry the Fourth, i., 3, "pepper-gingerbread." 
 Ginger is named more frequently than any other sub- 
 stance of the kind. Observe that when in the Winter's 
 Tale, iv., 2, a " race " of ginger is mentioned, it intends 
 a racine, or portion of the root, as commonly used; 
 whereas in ist Henry the Fourth, ii., i, two " razes " of 
 ginger mean two parcels or packages of it, " to be 
 delivered at Charing Cross." To " knap " ginger, as 
 in the Mercliant of Venice, iii., i, is to break it, as in the 
 Biblical phrase, " He knappeth the spear in sunder." 
 
 Great regard seems to have been paid also in the 
 Shaksperean age to Saffron, so noted for the delicate and 
 very pure amber-yellow given out upon infusion in water, 
 and which recommended it as a colouring ingredient in 
 certain kinds of confectionery, and at one period for 
 staining foppish neckties. Botanically, saffron consists of 
 the dried stigmas of one of those beautiful species 
 
284 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 of crocus, with violet-purple flowers, which blossom in 
 
 the autumn, — ^technically, the Crocus sativus. The 
 
 distinguishing feature is that the stigmas, when the 
 
 flowers are in perfection, hang out in the form of a deep 
 
 golden-orange-coloured tassel between two of the petals. 
 
 Indigenous to south-western Asia, saffron acquired 
 
 celebrity at an exceedingly early period, and even more 
 
 as a perfume than a condiment Luxury employed it 
 
 in various ways for the surprise and delight of guests at 
 
 entertainments, and hence it falls quite naturally into the 
 
 list of odoriferous things valued by Solomon, a monarch 
 
 who seems to have been distinguished not more for his 
 
 magnificence, his wisdom, and his enterprise, than for 
 
 his predilection for odoriferous plants, as indicated in 
 
 various passages in the Canticles; where to the sweets 
 
 of the garden of spices, saffron, myrrh, and aloes, are 
 
 added the fragrant walnut-tree and the snowy Lawsonia. 
 
 Tliat with the Greeks it should give name to the colour 
 
 resulting from the infusion in water, was perfectly natural. 
 
 it was present to the mind of old Homer when he spoke 
 
 of " crocus-robed Aurora," the morning sky, in his poetic 
 
 country, presenting this identical lovely tint, — 
 
 The cheerful Lady of the Light, dress'd in her saffron robe, 
 Dispers'd her beams in every part of this enflowered globe : — 
 
 with the Greeks it was no less natural that saffron should 
 be deemed the fitting colour for the apparel of youthful 
 and virgin terrestrial ladies, especially upon their wed- 
 ding-days; girls wore saffron also upon occasions of 
 profound solemnity, as when Iphigenia, about to be 
 
Mustard. — Caraways. 285 
 
 sacrificed, smote every one around with the "piteous 
 glance of her eye."* 
 
 So vindictive can destiny be, that a saffron-coloured 
 beard was traditionally ascribed to dissembling Judas ! 
 The arch-traitor was said to have gone shares in this 
 matter with the first slayer of his kind. Hence, in the ■ 
 Merry Wives, i., 4, "No, forsooth; he hath but a little 
 wee face, with a yellow beard, — a Cain-coloured beard." 
 
 The use of Saffron as a colouring ingredient in 
 "warden-pies," is mentioned in the Winter's Tale, iv., 2. 
 The delicious old Homeric picture is imitated in the 
 Tempest, iv., r, when Ceres invokes Iris, — 
 
 Who, with thy saffron wings upon my flowers, 
 Difinseth honey-drops, refreshing showers. 
 
 The saffron-crocus was brought to England, it is believed, 
 during the reign of Edward III. Largely cultivated for 
 several centuries in Essex, it gave name to the town of 
 Saffron Walden. Cultivated also close to the metropolis 
 it gave name to Saffron Hill. 
 
 Mustard, named several times, and Caraways, men- 
 tioned in 2nd Henry the Fourth, v., 3, have both been in 
 England so long, that if not aborigines, the plants have 
 become perfectly naturalised, and in the Shaksperean age 
 were already common in cultivation. Some think that 
 the caraways of this passage denote a kind of apple, a 
 sub-variety of the nonpareil, called the "caraway-apple," 
 the scene being laid in Shallow's garden: — "Nay, you 
 shall see mine orchard, where in an arbour we will eat a 
 
 * ^schylus, Agamemnon, 239. 
 
286 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 last year's pippin of my own graffing, ^vith a dish of 
 caraways, and so forth." But as it is hardly likely that 
 the old gentleman would propose to his guests that they 
 should eat one kind of apple after another, a confection 
 flavoured with the aromatic seeds is most probably the 
 "dish"' intended. 
 
 To mention such articles of vegetable origin as remain, 
 is necessary only for completeness' sake. They merge, 
 indeed, into manufactures, and no exact line of distinc- 
 tion can be drawn. Rice appears in the Winter's Tale 
 passage cited when speaking of raisins (ii., 4). Hemp, 
 as employed for cordage, upon four or five occasions : — 
 
 Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing. 
 
 Henry the Fifth, Act ilL, Chorus. 
 
 Flax also, about as many times : — 
 
 Shall to my flaming wrath be oil and flax. 
 
 stid Henry tilt Sixth, v., 2. 
 
 Cork also, upon three occasions; and ebony upon four. 
 Ebon}', the quite black heart-wood of different species of 
 Diospyros, large evergreen trees of the eastern tropics, is 
 one of the earliest productions of its kind to be men- 
 tioned in history. "The men of Dedan were thy 
 merchants; many isles were the merchandise of thine 
 hand; they brought thee for a present, horns of ivory 
 and ebonies" (Ezek., xxvii., 15). With the ancients 
 this remarkable wood was highly esteemed for inlay 
 cabinet work. Because of the blackness, Ovid uses it to 
 intensify his picture of the abode of Sleep, the bedstock 
 of the god being fabricated of ebony (Met. xi., 610). 
 
Medicines. 287 
 
 Shakspere was probably no stranger to it, two of the 
 allusions being literal; the others, as with many of the 
 poets, metaphorical: — 
 
 By heaven, thy love is black as ebony. 
 Is ebony Uke her ? O vrood divine ! 
 A wife of such wood were felicity. 
 
 Love's Labour's Lost, iv., 3. 
 Rouse up revenge from ebon den, with fell Alecto's snake. 
 
 2nd Heary the Fourth, v., 5- 
 
 Sugar, wine, vinegar, oil, and their analogues, belong 
 to the idea of the flora even less. They were common 
 commodities of the time, and the references to them 
 acquire their interest on grounds altogether different. 
 
 MEDICINES. 
 Shakspere was no great admirer of the druggists of his 
 day: — 
 
 I do remember an apothecary, — 
 
 And hereabout he dwells, — whom hxte I noted 
 
 In tattered weeds, mth overwhelming bro^vs, 
 
 Culling of simples. Meagre were his looks, 
 
 Sharp misery had worn him to the bones. 
 
 And in his needy shop a tortoise hung. 
 
 An alligator stuffed, and other skins 
 
 Of ill-shaped fishes; — and about his shelves 
 
 A beggarly account of empty boxes, 
 
 Green earthen pots, bladders, and musty seeds. 
 
 Remnants of packthread, and old cakes of roses, 
 
 Were thinly scattered, to make up a show. 
 
 Noting this penury, to myself I said — 
 
 And if a man did need a poison now, 
 
 "Whose sale is present death in Mantua, 
 
 Here lives a caitiff wretch would sell it him. 
 
 Romeo and Juliet, v., I. 
 
288 The Shakspei'e Flora. 
 
 The contents of this dismal abode would be chiefly dried 
 herbs. Originally there were no medicines but these, as 
 implied in the very name of the apothecar)f's profession, 
 "drug" and "druggist" being derived from the Anglo- 
 Saxon drigan, to dry. The extension of the name to 
 mineral medicines is comparatively modem. Among 
 the former, in the Shaksperean age, would be all the 
 plants which still bear the botanical epithet officinalis, 
 literally, kept in the drug-shops, as Veronica officinalis. 
 Althaea officinalis, Melilotus officinalis. Here, too, we 
 are led to suppose, could be purchased senna, received 
 probably from Egypt; and rhubarb, from western Asia, 
 ■uia Turkey, whence the old familiar epithet — people 
 being prone to confound the place whence an article 
 is proximately received with the actual and original 
 source, — both drugs mentioned in Macbeth, v., iiL 
 Aconite, prepared from the purple monkshood, Aconitum 
 Napellus, would also be got there (2nd Henry the Fourth, 
 iv., 4). Colocynth, also, mentioned in Othello, i., 3, 
 under the name of " coloquintida," — the inexpressibly 
 bitter pulp of the gourd - like Cucumis Colocynthis, 
 indigenous to Palestine, where it supplied the "apples 
 of Sodom." Opium, also, mentioned in Othello, iii., 3, 
 under the name of the plant, the renowned "poppy," 
 Papaver so7nniferum, from which it has been prepared 
 for twenty-five centuries. 
 
 With the poppy is coupled the name of the other chief 
 opiate of the period, the, if possible, still more renowned 
 mandragora. The passage is that fearful one where 
 
Medicines. 289 
 
 Shakspere's most hideous character, the impersonation 
 of infernal craftiness, gloats over the successful issue of 
 his malignity. Enter Othello — 
 
 lAGO : Look where he comes ! Not poppy, nor mandragora. 
 Nor all the drowsy syrups of the world, 
 Shall ever med'cine thee to that sweet sleep 
 Which thou owed'st* yesterday ! — (iii., 3.) 
 
 No rest, no repose, ever again for thee, Othello ! Opiates 
 enough to cast a nation into slumber with thee, Othello, 
 henceforth shall avail not any. A reflection more 
 diabolically cruel it is impossible to imagine. Not con- 
 tent with seeing Othello the victim of his remorseless 
 villany, lago rejoices in the thought that he has secured 
 for him the torture of sleeplessness. Never again will 
 he go shares in the benevolent gift which nature allows 
 to the most forlorn : — 
 
 The mnocent sleep, 
 
 Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleeve of care. 
 
 The death of each day's life ; sore labour's bath ; 
 
 Balm of hurt minds; great Nature's second course; 
 
 Chief nourisher in life's feast. — Macbeth, ii., 2. 
 
 Othello stands in the front rank of the Shaksperean 
 characters whose sorrowful fate moves our souls to pro- 
 foundest pity. Magnanimous, ardent, capable of the 
 sincerest affection, innocent in all his own natural 
 impulses until so infamously deceived, this last through 
 
 * Owed'st, i.e. owned or had the command of, especially when the 
 speaker would imply an absolute right to the thing possessed, a 
 word met with elsewhere, as in the Two Gentlemen of Verona — 
 " That such an ass should owe them." 
 
290 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 the credulousness which so often belongs to a noble 
 heart — it is thefinnness, the resoluteness of his great spirit 
 which at last precipitates the dreadful event Nothing 
 of its sort is finer in Shakspere than the gradual poison- 
 ing of Othello's mind; the little by little growth of the 
 infinite misery; the faltering of the voice as the unhappy 
 man becomes conscious of his shame; with at last, when 
 too horribly convinced, the magnificent simile with which 
 he meets the insidiousness of his fiendish enemy: — 
 
 lAGO : Patience, I say ; your mind perhaps may change. 
 Othello : Never, lago. Like to the Pontic sea. 
 
 Whose icy crrent and compulsive course 
 
 Ne'er feels retiring ebb, but keeps due on 
 
 To the Propontic, and the Hellespont; 
 
 Even so my bloody thoughts, with violent pace. 
 
 Shall ne'er look back, ne'er ebb to humble love. 
 
 Till that a capable and wide revenge 
 
 Swallo%v them up. — (iii., 3.) 
 
 At last, when he is about to slay the poor guileless 
 creature, how sad and tender the wifely trembling. The 
 last dialogue is not so much spoken as breathed between 
 them. The depth of his love for her is still so vast that 
 a very little might make him relent. It is only by 
 summoning a whirlwind of passion that he is enabled to 
 nerve himself for the tragic close. 
 
 Mandragora appears again in Antony and Cleopatra: — 
 
 Cleopatra : Charmian ! 
 Charmian : Madam. 
 Cleopatra : Ha , ha ! 
 
 Give me to drink mandragora. 
 Charmian: Wliy, madam? 
 
Medicines. 291 
 
 Cleopatra : That I might sleep out this great gap of time. 
 My Antony is away. 
 
 Brilliant, fascinating, vain, artful Cleopatra, one of the 
 most striking illustrations in the entire series of Shak- 
 spere's characters, of his unsearchable mastery in the 
 superb art of blending diversities, the picture of the 
 Eg5T)tian queen in this respect surpassing even that of 
 Beatrice, and the more admirable because so entirely 
 in accord with unquestioned history — "Give me," she 
 means, oblivion. Cleopatra and Beatrice, among Shak- 
 spere's female characters, like Hamlet and Othello among 
 the masculine, illustrate also that wonderful power of the 
 poet, by which, over and above every other, he addresses 
 and engages the entire mind of his attentive reader. To 
 have particular faculties addressed is all very well: far 
 better is it for us that not one shall lie unsolicited; in 
 this respect, as years roll on, will the inestimable value 
 of Shakspere as an intellectual lever be found more and 
 more to consist 
 
 According to Lyte, mandragora was employed in 
 the cheerful surgery of the sixteenth century as an 
 anaesthetic: — "The wine wherein the roote of mandrage 
 hath been stieped or boyled, swageth all paine; where- 
 fore men do geve it, very wel, to such as they intende to 
 cut, sawe, or bume in any part of their bodies, because 
 they shall feel no payne" (p. 437). Shakspere would 
 seem to intend mandragora also in Hamlet, i , 5 : — 
 
 And duller should thou be than the fat weed 
 That rots itself at ease on Lethe's wharf. 
 
292 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 " Fat " is here to be understood as referring to the dul- 
 ness and sluggishness induced by obesity, which is an 
 image, in turn, of the paralysing effects of the herb. 
 
 The plant suppljdng this famous drug was the Mandra- 
 gora officinalis, one of the Solanaceae, indigenous to 
 Palestine, especially upon Mount Carmel and near 
 Nazareth, also to Syria and Greece. Sibthorp, who 
 gives a drawing of it in the Flora Graca, 232, says 
 that about Athens it is "not rare." In appearance it 
 resembles a primrose, only that the flowers are purplish- 
 white, and are followed by orange-coloured berries, 
 Rachel's dudhcHitn, above-mentioned, in old authors 
 called "love-apples." The root, long-enduring, is very 
 large, fleshy, and forked, so as to present a grotesque 
 image of the human body. Trimmed with the knife, so 
 as to intensify the likeness, it became the equally famous 
 " mandrake " of the middle ages. To find a vegetable 
 production more burdened with superstitions during 
 that period of history would probably be impossible. 
 The ridiculous litde images, called "puppettes" and 
 "mammettes,"' accredited with magical powers, and made 
 the centre of innumerable absurdities, fetched high prices 
 with the simple. The detail, were it worth while, would 
 fill a chapter; fortunately, the whole matter was 
 exhausted long ago by Sir Thos. Browne, in the "Vulgar 
 Errors." 
 
 Shakspere himself adverts to these old fancies, of 
 course not accepting, but in deference to the legends 
 of his time: — 
 
Medicines. 293 
 
 Would curses kill, as doth the mandrake's groan, 
 I would invent as bitter-searching terms. 
 As curst, as harsh, and horrible to hear. 
 
 znd Henry the Sixth, iii., 2. 
 
 And shrieks, like mandrakes', torn out of the earth, 
 That living mortals, hearing them, go mad. 
 
 Romeo and yuliet, iv., 3. 
 
 He refers also to the "puppettes," in 2nd Henry the 
 Fourth, i., 2, and again in iii., 2. 
 
 In connection with the mandragoia, it may be interest-^ 
 ing to mention that the Greeks gave this plant, for 
 another name, Circaea, in reference to the renowned 
 enchantress. Circaea, as a botanical name, has long 
 been transferred to a pretty and innocent little flower 
 of the woodlands, which thus inherits also the appel- 
 lation, in default of the history so unintelligible, of 
 " Enchanters' nightshade." 
 
 The introduction, in Much Ado, iii., 4, of another 
 famous medicinal plant of the middle ages, the Carduus 
 Baudidus, or "Holy Thistle," brings us back to Ufe's 
 merriment. For now we are again beside Beatrice, 
 cheered by the remembrance, as she enters, that all 
 Shakspere's greatest characters have humour in their 
 souls, and that all these greatest, though they can be 
 serious enough when occasion requires, never take their 
 leave without having at times induced a smile, the 
 priceless function of all that is truly good. At the 
 same moment we have sly, shrewd, roguish Margaret, 
 and dear little Hero, her mistress, who never fails in 
 modesty and gentleness. Beatrice is at loving war 
 
294 
 
 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 with the "young lord of Padua," Benedick. Margaret 
 has read that "this worthy hearbe," the Benedictus, 
 'was named the blessed thistle for his singular vertues 
 as well againste poysons, as the pestilent agues and 
 other perilous diseases of the heart.'' Where, when, 
 ever lived the woman who would let slip so golden a 
 chance! Beatrice says, "I am sick." 
 
 Margaret : Get you some of the distilled Carduus Benedictus, 
 and lay it to your heart. It is the only thing for a qualm ! 
 
 Beatrice : Benedictus ! Why Benedictus ? You have some 
 moral in this Benedictus ! 
 
 Margaret : Moral ! No, by my troth, I have no moral mean- 
 ing. I meant pl^n Holy Thistle ! 
 
 That we may believe or not, as we like. Beatrice, 
 pretend as she may, knows quite well what Margaret 
 means. 
 
Cliapter fanvhmt\j. 
 
 BOOK AND HEARSAY NAMES. 
 
 Full many a glorious morning have I seen 
 Flatter the mountain-tops ^vith sovereign eye ; 
 Kissing with golden face the meadows green, 
 Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy. 
 
 Sonnet xxxiii. 
 
 HE mass of all language, even of such 
 portions as on the surface seem purely- 
 literal, consists either of metaphors, or 
 of short crystallised similes. Language 
 teems also, as it must needs, with 
 expressions referring to objects and phenomena of 
 which the people who use them can very seldom have 
 personal knowledge, but which objects no one ever 
 hesitates to talk of as if familiar. The whirlpool and the 
 volcano, crocodiles, sharks, and scorpions, are as much 
 a part of the popular vocabulary as trees and oxen. 
 
296 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 The poets' language, most particularly, is crowded with 
 such expressions, many of them primaeval. They are 
 employed, however, in very different ways. The inferior 
 man simply copies; he is only a scribe: the master uses 
 them as prisms, and by this we discover him. When 
 Shakspere adopts metaphors from the ancients, we get 
 lamps, as of old; but, as in the Arabian tale, they are 
 "new" ones in exchange for the exhausted. His 
 repetitions never carry the look of the second-hand; his 
 echoes are as charming as the originalities. Possessed 
 of the sweet aptitude for observing personally, first and 
 finest of the fine arts, without which there can be no 
 true greatness, he sees everything that his predecessors 
 saw, and sees it with Shaksperean eyes besides. He 
 knew better, moreover, than to adventure upon uncertain 
 ground, simply for the sake of being novel. Better often 
 than to be very new is it to be very old, stepping forth 
 like one of the goddesses in Homer. 
 
 The trees unknown to Shakspere as living objects, but 
 which he introduces upon hearsay, are the palm, the 
 cedar, the pine, the laurel or bay, the myrtle, and 
 the olive. Mention is made also of cypress-wood and of 
 Balm-of-Gilead, neither of which articles did he ever 
 see. One or two of the trees may have been seen by 
 him in some garden when he ^vrote. His references to 
 them were founded, nevertheless, upon simple book- 
 knowledge. 
 
 Of Balm, Balsam, or Balsamum, meaning Balm-of- 
 Gilead, the sevenfold famous medicament of Scripture, 
 
The Cypress. 297 
 
 little more, even now, is exactly known than that it is 
 yielded by certain trees of the order Amyridaceae, 
 growing in Abyssinia, and in the land of mystery, 
 ancient Arabia. Fragrant, and, when new, semi-fluid, 
 with keeping it becomes resinous and golden yellow, 
 and is at all times so admirable for physicians' purposes, 
 that no wonder it took the place in language it has held 
 for three thousand years, or that of a metaphor for 
 kindliest soothing and consolation : — 
 
 'Twas whispered balm ; 'twas sunshine spoken ! 
 
 The trees are adverted to at the end of Othello: — 
 
 Drop tears as fast as the Arabian trees 
 Their medidnal gum. — (v., 2.) 
 
 The medicament appears, metaphorically, upon seven 
 or eight occasions : — 
 
 My pity hath been balm to heal their wounds. 
 
 3rd Henry the Sixth, iv., 8. 
 Balm of your age, 
 Most best, most dearest — King Lear, i., i. 
 
 Also upon three or four in the sense of the anointing 
 
 oil used in coronations, — 
 
 Not all the water in the rude, rough sea 
 Can wash the balm from an anointed king. 
 
 Richard the Second, iii., 2. 
 
 The Cypress. — ^The cypress had been introduced from 
 the Levant long before the time of Elizabeth. The very 
 remarkable spire-like figure, then without a parallel in 
 England, and the peculiar foliage, would hardly fail to 
 arrest the poef s attention, did he meet with it. Still, in 
 the Shaksperean references to this famous tree we have 
 
298 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 only ancient literature renewed, though perhaps indirectly, 
 through the Italian poets. In oriental countries the 
 cypress had been a favourite from very early times for 
 planting near tombs, whence Spenser's epithet, in the 
 Faery Queetu, "the cypress funereal," an association 
 which at once explains the line in 2nd Henry the Sixth, 
 iii., 2, when Suffolk, execrating his enemies, wishes 
 
 Their sweetest shade a grove of cypress-trees. 
 When, in the Taming of tJie Shrew, ii., i, Grumio says, 
 
 In ivory coffers I have stuffed my crowns, 
 In cypress chests my arras, 
 
 he refers to the very ancient reputation of cypress-wood 
 as something imperishable, therefore suited for the pro- 
 tection of valuables.* 
 
 The Laurel or Bay-tree. — ^These are two names for the 
 same plant, the celebrated Laurus nobilis, the leaves of 
 which, when rubbed or bruised, give out the odour 
 of cinnamon. Familiar to the ancients, the renown 
 begins, as every one knows, with the fable of the nymph 
 whose name was transferred to it. Daphne, the coy and 
 beautiful maid beloved of Apollo. The chase across 
 the meads, the flowing robe and the "careless locks" 
 tossed backwards by the wind, the failing strength, the 
 sense of the god's shadow at her feet, the mournful look, 
 
 * Cypress, or Cyprus, was the name also, in the Shaksperean 
 age, of some kind of woven fabric, black, it would seem, from the 
 reference in Autolycus' song, in the Winter's Tale, iv. , 3 ; and used 
 particularly for mourning, as indicated in the song in Twelfth Night, 
 ii., 4- 
 
The Bay-tree. 299 
 
 the piteous ciy, " Oh, father, help me ! " — these count 
 
 with the things that cannot perish. Upon these in turn 
 
 came the consecration of the tree to genius and victory, 
 
 and in echo of this it is that we find the laurel in Shak- 
 
 spere. Possibly, as above said, he may have been shown 
 
 it in some curious garden, but the allusions are in 
 
 every instance imitative. Such are "laurelled victory" 
 
 in Antony and Cleopatra, i., 3, the "laurel crown'' 
 
 adjudged to Warwick, 
 
 As likely to be blest in peace and war, 
 
 2rd Hairy the Sixth, iv., 6, 
 
 and that one contained in the beautiful line in Troilus 
 and Cressida, i., 2, 
 
 Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels. 
 "Bay," die English form of the French baie, a contraction 
 in turn of the Latin bacccB, berries, the purple and 
 aromatic fruit, which in the middle ages was much 
 esteemed, appears in Richard the Second, ii., 4: — 
 
 'Tis thought the king is dead, we will not stay. 
 The bay-trees in our country all are withered. 
 
 The expression is of course to be understood as a purely 
 figurative one. Perhaps, as the laurel is the emblem of 
 nobleness, it may be a metaphor for "all that was great 
 and good in the country has perished." Richard, 
 "weak in adversity, reckless in prosperity," had by his 
 favouritism done mischief that it took many long years 
 to repair, so that the metaphor would suit. More 
 probably, being associated with other prodigies, 
 
 These signs forerun the death or fall of kings, 
 
300 The Skakspere Flora. 
 
 the reference, as said on page 1 2, may be to some curious 
 superstition, now forgotten. For the flourishing of the 
 bay was a presage of good, and a guarantee of local 
 safety: — "Ne)fther falling sycknes, neyther devyll, wyl 
 infest or hurt one in that place whereas a bay-tree is. 
 The Romaynes called it the plant of the good angell."* 
 Withering and dying, without apparent physical cause, 
 would, on the converse, necessarily induce conditions 
 exactly opposite. 
 
 The pleasant odour of the bay recommended it in 
 olden times for garnishing dainty and stylish dishes on 
 the occasion of banquets. Hence the figurative phrase 
 in Pericles, iv., 6, shamelessly spiteful. 
 
 The Myrtle. — Nature holds few shrubs that in come- 
 liness and neatness rival the myrtle. The shining green 
 of the perennial foliage, the sweet and uncontested 
 delicacy of the white bloom, just touched with purple, 
 and the pleasant odour, with by and by agreeable fruit, 
 very early declared it a fitting emblem, as in Scripture, of 
 the Christian aifections. In secular poetry it quite 
 naturally passed on to the signification of love in general. 
 The Greek and Latin poets adduce it in this connection, 
 in very many places; Shakspere follows suit in the 
 Passionate Pilgrim, s.nd.in Veiius and Adofiis. In Antony 
 and Cliopatra, iii., 10, it enters into a fine comparison: — 
 
 I was of late as petty to his ends, 
 
 As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf 
 
 To his gi-and sea. 
 
 * Lupton. Notable Things; the Syxt Booke. 
 
The Palm. 301 
 
 In Measure for Measure, ii., 2, there is another, in which 
 a metaphor is simultaneously involved : — 
 
 Merciful heaven, 
 Thou rather, with thy sharp and sulphurous bolt, 
 Split'st the unwedgeable and gnarled oak, 
 Than the soft myrtle. 
 
 The Palm. — ^Excepting in one instance, Shakspere's 
 "palm" is the immemorial tree of Scripture and of 
 classical poetry, the source of dates, and the beautiful 
 s3mibol, in art, of Palestine and of the Orient in general. 
 Recommended for symbolical use by the columnar form 
 of the lofty and unbranched stem, the steady aspiration, 
 the majestic arching crown of huge evergreen leaves, and 
 its munificence as a fruit-bearer, the palm became the 
 synonym, at a very early period, of nobleness, virtue, 
 victory, and prosperity. Once established as a metaphor, 
 a word like "palm," possessed as it is of a certain happy 
 brevity, a certain pleasant ring or resonance, a certain 
 air of the picturesque, a welcome adaptedness to supply 
 a rhyme or sustain a metre, lives for ever. Men ask no 
 questions about the tree; they know what they mean 
 when they "bear the palm,'' and "carry the palm," and 
 that is enough. Shakspere certainly never saw a palm; 
 he simply adopts the metaphor, and this always in 
 pleasant fashion, as in Julius Casar, L, 2 ; Coriolanus, 
 v., 3; Timon of Athens, v., i; and Hamlet, v., 2. 
 
 When, in Henry the Eighth, iv., 2, the dying queen 
 has her beautiful vision of the angels, " clad in white 
 robes, wearing on their heads garlands of bays, and 
 
302 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 having palms in their hands," the latter part of the 
 imagery, it hardly needs the saying, is adopted from 
 the Apocalypse, the language of which is explained, in 
 turn, by the literal history contained in the fourth Gospel 
 "The branches of palms" mentioned by SL John, xiL, 13, 
 must not be understood, however, as palm-leaves pure 
 and simple, and newly cut for the occasion. The Jewish 
 custom was to prepare these leaves for ceremonial use 
 by trimming them, then binding with myrtle upon the 
 right, and citron upon the left. They were carefully laid 
 by for solemn occasions, and were now fetched out to do 
 honour to the entry into the holy city. 
 
 That the palm should become identified with Palestine, 
 and with Jerusalem in particular, was quite consistent 
 Hence the name of palmifer, shortened into " palmer," 
 given to pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre who had honour- 
 ably performed the journey, and had now returned, or 
 were returning, homewards, carrying a leaf, or a portion 
 of one, as attestation. The palmers of the middle ages 
 must not be confounded with pilgrims in general The 
 pilgrim — J>eregrinus—si\s out to any one of many 
 different places, according to the object in view; the 
 " palmer's " goal is purely the Holy Sepulchre. The 
 origin and historv- of the pilgrims, including the palmers, 
 constitutes one of the most interesting chapters in the 
 social life of Europe during the middle ages. The 
 Crusades may be regarded as a portion of it, expressed 
 upon a scale of consummate magnitude. Little by little 
 it leads on to pilgrimages to shrines and famous 
 
The Palm. 303 
 
 sanctuaries; the "Canterbury Tales" give an instance 
 of the actuating spirit, only with a dash of caricature. 
 Both pilgrims and palmers are several times mentioned 
 by Shakspere, as in AWs Well, iii., 5, when Helena 
 makes her appearance, dressed in the style that declares 
 her purpose : — 
 
 God save you, pilgrim ! Whither are you bound ? 
 Helena : Where do the palmers lodge, I do beseech you ? 
 
 The exceptional Shaksperean reference to the palm — 
 the date-palm not being intended — occurs in As You 
 Like It, iii., 2, when Rosalind, rejoicing over her verses, 
 exclaims, "See what I have found upon a palm-tree !" 
 She has sometimes been supposed to mean the palm- 
 willow, Salix Capma, the long and pliant twigs of which, 
 covered with opening catkins, have been used in England 
 for many ages, on Palm-sundays, as a substitute for the 
 branches of the Palestine plant. But there is no need of 
 conjecture of any kind, the signification and the source 
 whence the word was in the present instance derived 
 being plain. As You Like It had for its antetype a 
 novelette by Thomas Lodge, originally published in 
 1590, under the name of "Rosalynde, Euphues' Golden 
 Legacie." "Rosalynde," in turn, had for its antetype 
 the old poem of "Gamelyn," — authorship uncertain — so 
 hard is it to get at the actual beginning of anything. 
 Often graceful and musical, but full of quaint conceits, 
 the natural history of Lodge's tale is of the oddest,— a 
 circumstance not surprising when we note what is very 
 evident, that it was taken at random from another 
 
304 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 predecessor, the celebrated Bartholomew Glanville. 
 Glanville's book, styled De Proprietatibus Rerum, is a 
 very curious one, comprising a Herbal, a Gazetteer, a 
 Guide to Domestic Medicine, and some chapters upon 
 music. Composed about 1360, it was translated into 
 English by John de Trevisa, and originally printed by 
 WynkjTi de Worde, about 1494, from which time it 
 continued, for quite one hundred and fifty years, one of 
 the most popular of the volumes then read. Shakspere, 
 as well as Lodge, no doubt was well acquainted with it, 
 the latter picking out for his "Rosaljmde," the "mir-tree," 
 the "cypresse-tree,'' "lymons and citrons," the "fig,'' a 
 "hungry lyon," and finally the "palm." The tree meant by 
 Glanville is the famous "phoenix" of the Graeco-Egyptian 
 myth, reported to flower only once, perishing imme- 
 diately afterwards, though at once succeeded by another. 
 Hence, in Lodge, "Thou art old, father Adam, and 
 thy hair waxes white; the palme-tree is already full of 
 bloomes, and in the furrows of thy face appear the 
 Kalenders of death." Founded, like all other m)?ths, 
 upon a fact in nature, the curious old tale was without 
 doubt a mistaken history of the talipat-palm, CorypJia 
 umbraculifera, of Ceylon; with the merit also of being 
 designed to illustrate the grandest of physiological 
 realities,- — the Rejuvenescence of nature. Rosalind's 
 "palm," adopted by Shakspere from Lodge, is thus 
 nothing more than the Egyptian phoenix. The fable of 
 the tree got confounded, as well known, through similarity 
 of name, with that of the bird. Allusion to the latter 
 
TJie Olive. 305 
 
 is made by Sebastian in the Tempest, iii., 3, "One tree, 
 the phcenix' throne." It is mentioned also in Antony 
 and Cleopatra, iii., 2, and in Henry the Eighth, v., 4. 
 
 When, in Hamlet, Horatio says. 
 
 In the most high and palmy state of Rome, 
 it is questionable if the reference be not to something 
 very different The antlers of deer, fallow-deer, at all 
 events, when full grown, are called "pahns," and in 
 their maturity are said to be "palmate." The word is 
 employed in this sense in Chapman's translation of the 
 Iliad, iv., 124. Pope, Cowper, and, iu our own day. 
 Lord Derby, employ it in the same manner; and Shak- 
 spere, to whom the "dappled fools," were beloved 
 familiars, would be quite as likely to cite their perfection 
 as an emblem of imperial power, as to fall back upon 
 the stereotyped image of a tree he had never seen. 
 
 The Olive. — In two places in As You Like It the 
 olive-tree is mentioned as an element of living nature. 
 
 If you will know my house, 
 'Tis at the tuft of olives here hard by (iii., 5); 
 
 then in iv., 3, — 
 
 A sheep-cote fenced about with olive-trees. 
 
 In both, however, the name appears after the same 
 manner as Rosalind's "palm;" by adoption, that is to 
 say, from the novelette which supplied the original idea 
 of this beautiful play. Matchless Arden, though Shak- 
 spere gives us, in its leafy coverts, his own beloved 
 Warwickshire, is Fairyland all the same — Fairyland of 
 
3o6 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 the best and truest kind. It is the play in respect of 
 which, above all others, we are least entitled to press 
 for literal consistency in the natural history. If we are, 
 well then good-bye alike to the olive, to the "green 
 and gilded snake,'' to the lioness that "lay couching, 
 head on ground," 
 
 When that the sleeping man should stir; — 
 
 good-bye, in a word, to Rosalind. 
 
 Elsewhere the allusions to this famous plant corre- 
 spond with those to the laurel. They relate, in every 
 instance, to the very ancient symbolical or repre- 
 sentative use of the olive, which in Scripture, as well as 
 in classical verse, is constantly put for charity, peace, 
 and good -will. This, though he never saw an 
 olive, Shakspere knew quite well. In Twelfth Night, 
 " I bring," says Viola, " no overture of war, no taxation 
 of homage. I hold the olive in my hand; my words 
 are as full of peace as matter" (i., 5). So in 2nd Henry 
 the Fourth, iv., 4, — 
 
 There is not now a rebel's sword unsheatlied, 
 But peace puts forth her oUve everywhere. 
 
 Similar words occur in Antony and Cleopatra, iv., 6; 
 
 Timon of Athens, v., 5; 3rd Henry the Sixth, iv., 6; and 
 
 in Sonnet cvii. 
 
 The Pine. — The magnificent group of conifers so 
 
 well distinguished by the tesselated cones and long 
 
 acicular leaves, includes as its British representative 
 
 that one commonly called the "Scotch fir," the Pinus 
 
 sylvestris of the botanists. Whether Shakspere knew 
 
The Pine. 307 
 
 much, or indeed anything, of this tree, is very doubtfuL 
 Not a companion of the oak, preferring bleak mountains 
 to the plain and the sheltered valley, even if it existed 
 in Warwickshire when the plays were written, it would 
 not form a feature in the landscape. Neither would any 
 other conifer be conspicuous j the Norway spruce alone, 
 Abies excelsa, had been introduced, and this was not a 
 common plant. When, accordingly, we come upon 
 references to the "pine," the name must be understood 
 as one of those adopted from the classical poets, who 
 abound with allusions to the beautiful forms indigenous 
 to southern Europe, the Pinus Pinaster, the Pinus Picea, 
 the Pinus Laricio, and perhaps others, but without 
 discrimination of species. One or two of the references 
 are purely literal : — 
 
 Behind the tuft of pines I met them. — Winter's Tale, ii., i. 
 One or two others are figurative, — 
 
 Thus droops this lofty pine, and hangs his sprays. 
 
 znd Henry the Sixth, ii., 3. 
 
 The finest of all belong to the former class, as in that 
 
 most splendid picture, in its kind not excelled by any 
 
 poet ancient or modem, where the rising of the sun is 
 
 spoken of: — 
 
 But when from under this terrestrial ball 
 He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines. 
 
 Richard the Second, iii., 2. 
 
 The pines, that is to say, upon the mountain-crest, are 
 the first to be touched by the light, all golden, which at 
 sunset they are the last to surrender. One cannot but 
 
3o8 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 think of the "great god Pan," whose name denotes 
 universal nature, and whose brows were represented as 
 wreathed with pine-foHage, the poef s sweet way of sa3dng 
 that the mountain-outUnes of the world are fringed with 
 this glorious tree. Ym&<uood (possibly that of the Pinus 
 sylvestris) is referred to in Troilus and Cressida, i., 3: — 
 
 As knots, by the c6nflux of meeting sap. 
 Infect the sound pine, and divert his grain, 
 Tortive and errant, from his course of growth. 
 
 The knots induce, nevertheless, a rich and beautiful 
 variegation, plain enough when a slice is polished, — 
 
 Checks and disasters 
 Grow in the veins of actions highest reared, — 
 
 the sense of the whole being identical with the spirit of As 
 You Like It, and with the idea set forth in so many other 
 places, that men of noble heart learn in conflict with vicis- 
 situde, not "so much how weak they are, but how strong. 
 
 Pine-wood, charged with resin, is highly inflammable. 
 This is why Ceres, searching for her lost daughter, the 
 whirled-away in "Dis's wagon," from which were dropped 
 the immortal daffodils, restless even by night, kindled 
 "pines'' in the flame of ^tna to serve as torches. How 
 beautiful, too, the citation of the pine when forsaken 
 Medea, describing the fervour and rapidity with which 
 her affection had been kindled for Jason, compares it to 
 the sudden and brilliant ignition of a "pine-brand," 
 when lighted at a sacrifice to the gods. Is it permissible 
 to think that it may have been wood of the same tree 
 which was used for Prospero's hearth? Enough if the 
 
The Cedar. 309 
 
 thought transforms into the sound of the voice of charmed 
 Miranda, to whom self-sacrifice is heaven. These few 
 words show that the sweet "eye-wedlock" is complete: — 
 
 Alas now ! pray you. 
 
 Work not so hard ! I would the lightning had 
 
 Burnt up these logs, that you are enjoined to pile ; 
 
 Pray set it down, and rest you ; when this bums 
 
 'Twill weep for having wearied you. 
 Ferdinand : O most dear mistress. 
 
 The sun will set before I shall discharge 
 
 What I must strive to do ! 
 Miranda : If youll sit down, 
 
 I'U bear your logs the while. Pray give me that, 
 
 I'll carry it to the pile. — Tempest, iiL, i. 
 
 Coniferous trees supplied also, in ancient times, the 
 fiagrant wood burned as incense in sacred rituals. The 
 "woodrof-sacrifice" mentioned by Homer in his descrip- 
 tion of the enchanted island of friendly Calypso reappears 
 in the Apocal)fpse as " thyine-wood." In Shakspere 
 we have something of the same sort in the Taming of 
 t/te Shrew: — 
 
 Carry him gently to my fairest chamber, 
 
 And bum sweet wood to make the lodging sweet. 
 
 Indiution. 
 
 The Cedar. — By this name is* always understood in 
 literature, the immemorial cedar-of-Lebanon, Cedrus 
 Libani, so often employed in Scripture as an emblem of 
 kingly stateliness and magnificence. It was the scriptural 
 use which furnished Shakspere -vvith his ideas of the tree, 
 no mention being made of it by the classical authors, to 
 whom, indeed, the Libani would seem to have been 
 
3IO The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 unknown. As an object of nature, there is nothing 
 perhaps which in the aggregate is more imposing. The 
 quaUties, as with all other truly great and glorious things, 
 are such as not only catch the eye, but retain it. The 
 stature, the girth, the measured symmetry, the remark- 
 able and unique spread of the huge boughs, which 
 strike out in such a way as to form distinct horizontal 
 stages or terraces, are separately and independently 
 enough to confer nobleness; and in addition there is the 
 prophet's "shadowy shroud," no tree being more remark- 
 able for closely woven density of dark leafage, never lost 
 Shakspere introduces it upon twelve different occasions. 
 
 The sun ariseth in his majesty, 
 
 Who doth the world so gloriously behold, 
 
 That cedar-tops and hills seem burnished gold. 
 
 Venus and Adonis. 
 
 As on a mountain-top the cedar shows, 
 That keeps his leaves in spite of any storm. 
 
 2iid Henry the Sixth, v., i. 
 
 He shall flourish, 
 And like a mountain-cedar reach his branches 
 To all the plains about him. — Heiiry the Eighth, v., 4. 
 
 Sometimes it is used as^an image of grandeur: — 
 
 The lofty cedar, royal Cymbeline, 
 Personates thee. — Cymbeliiie, v., 5. 
 
 Marcus, we are but shrubs ; no cedars we. 
 
 Titus Andronicus, iv., 3. 
 
 Thus yields the cedar to the axe's edge. 
 Whose arms gave shelter to the princely eagle. 
 
 3rd Henry the Sixth, v. , 2. 
 
The Cedar. 311 
 
 Other examples, various in their kind, occur in the 
 Tempest, v., ij Lovis Labour's Lost, iv., 5; Richard the 
 Third, i., 3; Coriolanus, v., 3; Cymbeline, v., 4 (repeated 
 in v., 5); and the Rape of Lucrece. 
 
 No cedars existed in England during Shakspere's life- 
 time. The first individuals appear to have been raised 
 from seed by the celebrated Evelyn, author of the 
 Sylva, some time about 1680. ~The Warwick Castle 
 cedars, though popularly assigned to the Norman period, 
 are thus not yet two centuries old. As a matter of fact 
 they were planted only about 1740, by the grandfather of 
 the present earl They would then probably be vigorous 
 saplings of some few years' growth; and to the near 
 neighbourhood of the river, the shelter, and the soil, may 
 be ascribed the grand proportions they now exhibit 
 
 No slight privilege is it when visiting Shakspere's home 
 to find, within distance so easy, a feudal relic so grand, 
 and upon which his eyes must often have rested; — and 
 beside it, trees which, though he never beheld, were in 
 their storied kind so richly present to his imagination. 
 These Warwick Castle cedars are in a measure like him- 
 self, towers of grandeur reared in the past, more majestic 
 every day, and that wUl be stately and commanding as long 
 as it is possible for such things to endure. They reckon 
 with the things which awaken gratitude in its best forms. 
 It is counted fine to raise a splendid pile of stone or 
 marble, to paint a subhme picture, to compose a brilliant 
 opera. Perhaps the man who multiplies trees of glorious 
 sort, especially when, like these cedars, they compare 
 
312 The Shakspere Flora. 
 
 with epitaphs, achieves in his day quite as genuinely as 
 good an end. He makes the world richer than he found 
 it, a good that any man may be proud to accomplish. 
 He can hope, in any case, when the sun is sinking in 
 the west, that though his name may slide away and be 
 forgotten, the work he has done, or has essayed to do, 
 so that it has been honest and faithful, may not have 
 been altogether in vain; that it will give pleasure to a 
 thousand hearts yet unborn, and inspire a thousand more 
 to go and do likewise. I would rather be able to reflect 
 in my old age that I had been the originator of a 
 hundred oaks and cedars that in days to come shall help 
 to make my country glad and beautiful, than have it 
 recorded of me, simply and exhaustively, that my will 
 was "proved under a million," and leave no memorial 
 besides. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Aconite, 288. 
 Acoms, 29, 58. 
 Acorus Calamus, 262. 
 Adriana, 245. 
 Agnus castus, loi, 102. 
 Almond, 276. 
 Anachronisms, 248. 
 Angelica, 221. 
 Annunciation-lily, 160. 
 Apemantus, 26, 227. 
 Apothecary's shop, 287. 
 Apple, 183. 
 
 „ John, 183. 
 Apricot, 192. 
 Arctium, 222. 
 Ariel, 54, 240. 
 Arthur, 187. 
 
 Arundo Phragmites, 258. 
 Ascaunt, 35. 
 Ash-tree, 64. 
 Aspen, 48. 
 Aspersion, 217. 
 Asphodel, 123, 161. 
 As You Like It, 18, 305, 308. 
 Azure, 125. 
 
 B 
 
 Bachelors' Buttons, 135. 
 Balm, 205, 208. 
 
 Balm of Gilead, 296. 
 Balsam, 296. 
 Barley, 213. 
 Bavin, 240. 
 Bay-tree, 298. 
 Beans, 196. 
 
 Beatrice, 144, 204, 275. 
 Bees, 173. 
 
 Belch, Sir Toby, 226. 
 Benedick, 41, 294. 
 Berries, 235. 
 Bilberry, 265. 
 Bindweed, 147. 
 Birch-tree, 63. 
 Bitter-sweeting, 183. 
 Blackberry, 234. 
 Bluebell, 125. 
 Blushing Honours, 181. 
 Box-tree, 60. 
 Bracken, 241. 
 Brake, 241. 
 Bramble, 236. 
 Briar, 140. 
 Broom, 64, 237. 
 Burdock, 222. 
 Burnet, 214. 
 Burs, 222. 
 
 Bush, Good wine needs no, 247. 
 Buttercup, 135. 
 • Buttons, 136. 
 
314 
 
 Index. 
 
 Cabbage, 196. 
 
 Calendula officinalis, 165. 
 
 Calluna vulgaris, 238. 
 
 Caltha palustris, 167. 
 
 Canker, 138. ; 
 
 Caraways, 285. 
 
 Carduus lanceolatus, 223. 
 ,, nutans, 224. 
 
 Carnation, 168. 
 
 Carobs, 280. 
 
 Carpet, 78, 79. 
 
 Carrot, 195. 
 
 Cedar, 309. 
 
 Celia, 130, 223. 
 
 Centaurea Cyanus, 134, 
 
 Ceratonia Siliqua, 280.- 
 
 Chamomile, 206. 
 
 Chaplet, 78, 79, 171. 
 
 Cherry, 189. 
 „ pit, 191. 
 
 Chestnut, 193. 
 
 Christianity, Shakspere's, 109. 
 Circasa, 293. 
 Cleopatra, 291. 
 
 Clerk, 191: 
 Clip, To, 193. 
 Clover, 214. 
 Cloves, 283. 
 Cockle, 219, 220. 
 Colocynth, 288. 
 Coloquintida, 288. 
 Columbine, 172: 
 Commerce, Early English, 271. 
 Conium maculatum, 221. 
 Constance, 187. 
 Convolvulus Batatas, 2S2. 
 ,, sepium, 147. 
 
 Cork, 286. 
 Com, 211. 
 Corn-cockle, 219. 
 „ flower, 134. 
 ,, marigold, 219. 
 Comus sanguinea, 231. 
 Corollary, 172. 
 Coronation, 171. 
 
 Costard, 183. 
 Cowslip, 6, III. 
 Crab-apple, 230. 
 Crants, 80. 
 Crocus sativus, 284. 
 Crow-flower, 126. 
 Crown-imperial, 165. 
 Cuckoo-buds, 135. 
 „ flowers, 133. 
 hood, 134. 
 Currants, 272. 
 Cypress, 297. 
 Cytherea, 85. 
 
 Daffodil, 121. 
 Daisy, 119. 
 Damascene, 187. 
 Damask, 154. 
 
 „ rose, 154. 
 Damson, 187. 
 Dante, no. 
 Daphne, 298. 
 Darnel, 219, 220. 
 Dates, 273. 
 
 Dead men's fingers, 129. 
 Deracinate, 218. 
 Desdemona, 41, 290. 
 Dewberry, 236. 
 Diana, 234. 
 Dian's bud, loi. 
 Dido, 36, 40. 
 
 Differences, Heraldic, 204. 
 Dock, 224. 
 Dogberry, 231. 
 Dog-rose, 138. 
 Drowning, Death by, 34. 
 Drug, druggist, 288. 
 Duckweed, 267. 
 
 Ebony, 286. 
 Eglantine, 140. 
 Elder, 66. 
 Elinor, 187. 
 Elm, 65. 
 
Index. 
 
 315 
 
 Enchanters' nightshade, 293. 
 Kryngoes, 281. 
 Exogens and endogens, 154. 
 Euphues, 206. 
 Euphuists, The, 206. 
 
 Faery Queene, Spenser's, 233. 
 
 Fairies, 100. 
 
 Fair maids of France, 135. 
 
 Fairy-rings, II, 255- 
 
 Falstaff, 183, 199. 
 
 Fancy, 98. 
 
 Favour, 89. 
 
 Female plants, 244. 
 
 Fennel, 199, 207. 
 
 Feni-seed, 242. 
 
 Fig, 191. 
 
 Filbert, 234. 
 
 Fine, 94. 
 
 First Folio, 6, 176. 
 
 Flag, The vagabond, 267. 
 
 Flax, 286. 
 
 Flem- de-lis, 163. 
 
 Floure-gentle, 171. 
 
 Flower-de-luce, 163. 
 
 Forward, 89. 
 
 Fruit-trees, i8r. 
 
 Fumitory, 225. 
 
 Furze, 237. 
 
 Galeobdolon luteum, 128. 
 Garlic, 198. 
 Garter, The, 257. 
 Gilliflower, 168. 
 Ginger, 283. 
 Githago segetum, 219. 
 Glanville, 304. 
 Gold-cup, 135. 
 Golds, 219. 
 Gonzalo, 237, 239. 
 Goolds, 219. 
 Gooseberry, 193. 
 Gorse, 240. 
 Goss, 240. 
 
 Grace, 203. 
 Grapes, 192. 
 Grass, 209, 
 
 „ (salad) 198. 
 Greene, 248. 
 Greens, 196. 
 Greensome, 256. 
 Green-sour, 256. 
 
 H 
 
 Hamlet, 88. 
 
 Hanmer, Sir Thomas, 237. 
 Hardock, 222. 
 Hardwicke, Elizabeth, 83. 
 Harebell, 124. 
 Hawthom, 55. 
 Hazel-nut, 232. 
 Heartsease, 95. 
 Heath, 237. 
 Hebenon, 46. 
 Hedgerows, The, 229. 
 Helena (All's WeU), 142. 
 „ (Midsummer Night's 
 Dream), 19, 241. 
 Helichryson, 167. 
 Heliotropion, 166. 
 Hemlock, 220. 
 Hemp, 286. 
 Henbane, 222. 
 Herb o' Grace, 203. 
 Hermione, 249. 
 Heme the Hunter, 27. 
 Hero, 144, 293. 
 Holiday, 136. 
 Holly, 62. 
 Holy Thistle, 293. 
 Honeystalks, 214. 
 Honeysuckle, 143. 
 Horse-beans, 214. 
 Hyacinth, 125. 
 Hj'ssop, 205, 207, 227. 
 
 lago, 227, 2S9. 
 Idle, 96. 
 Imogen, 251. 
 
3i6 
 
 Index. 
 
 Impurities in Shakspere, 176. 
 
 Insane-root, 222. 
 
 Iris, 163. 
 
 It and its, 188. 
 
 Ivy, 243. 
 
 Juncus efiusus, 262. 
 Juno, 84. 
 
 K 
 Kate, 232. 
 Kecksies, 221. 
 Knot-grass, 224. 
 Knots, 151. 
 
 Ladies' meat, 59.. 
 Lady, Our, 131. 
 
 ,, smock, 9, 131. 
 Launcelot, 177. 
 Laurel, 298. 
 Lavender, 205. 
 Leathercoat, .183. 
 Leek, 196. 
 Lemna minor, 267. 
 Lemon, 279. 
 Let, 218. 
 
 Lettuce, 199, 227. 
 Liberal, 130. 
 Lichens, 250. 
 Lilies of the New Testament, 
 
 161. 
 Lily, 159. 
 Lime-tree, 51. 
 Linden, 52. 
 Line, 51. 
 Ling, 237. 
 Locusts, 280. 
 Lodge, Thos., 303. 
 Lolium temulentum, 219. 
 Long-purples, 129. 
 Lorenzo, 177. 
 Love-in-idleness, 96. 
 Lyly, John, 206. 
 
 M 
 Mab, Queen, 233. 
 Macbeth, no. 
 Mace, 283. 
 Mallows, 224. 
 Malva sylvestris, 224. 
 Mandragora, 288. 
 Mandrake, 292. 
 Margaret, 144. 
 Maria, 226. 
 Marigold, 165. 
 Marina, 77, 190. 
 Marjoram, 199. 
 Maiybuds, 167. 
 Medlar, 186. 
 Mercutio, 171, 186, 232. 
 Mermaid, 33. 
 Mich, To, 235. 
 Middle summer's spring, 21, 
 
 182. 
 Milfoil, 266. 
 Milton, 4, no. 
 Mint, 199. 
 
 Miranda, 54, 239, 308. 
 Mistletoe, 249. 
 Moss, 249. 
 Mulberry, 193. 
 Mushrooms, 256. 
 Music, 270. 
 Musk-rose, 159. 
 Mustard, 285. 
 Myrtle, 300. 
 
 N 
 Nettle, 225. 
 
 „ Ophelia's, 1 28. 
 Nose-bleed, 266. 
 Nuts, 233. 
 
 Nut-brown Mayde, The, 232. 
 Nutmeg, 283. 
 
 O 
 
 Oak-tree, 23. 
 Oaten-pipes, 212. 
 Oats, 213. 
 Officinalis, 2SS. 
 
Index. 
 
 317 
 
 Old maids, 273. 
 Olive, 305. 
 Olivia, 158. 
 Onion, 198. 
 Ononis spinosa, 237. 
 Ophelia, 34, S7, 93, 200, 203. 
 Opium, 288. 
 Orange, 276. 
 Orchard, 183. 
 Orchis mascula, 129. 
 Organ, The, 259. 
 Osiers, 35, 36. 
 Othello, 289. 
 Ox-eye daisy, 84. 
 ,, eyed Juno, 84. 
 Oxlip, 116. 
 
 Paint, To, 1 32. 
 Palm, 301. 
 
 „ Rosalind's, 303. 
 Palmers, 302. 
 Palmy, 305. 
 Pan, 212, 259, 307. 
 Pansy, 91. 
 Parmaceti, 267. 
 ParoUes, 234, 273. 
 Parsley, 199. 
 Pastry, 184. 
 Patines, 177. 
 Peach, 192. 
 Pear, 184. 
 Peas, 195. 
 Peascod, 195. 
 Pensioners, 114. 
 Pepper, 283. 
 Perdita, 106, 249. 
 Petruchio, 232. 
 Phoenix, 304. 
 Pied, 120. 
 Pig-nuts, 265. 
 Pilgrims, 302. 
 Pine-tree, 306. 
 Pinks, 159, 171. 
 Pinus sylvestris, 306. 
 Pioned and twilled, 133. 
 
 Pipes of com, 212. 
 Pipes, The Pandean, 259. 
 Pippin, 183. 
 Plane-tree, 69. 
 Plantage, 267. 
 Plantain, 267. 
 Plum, 187. 
 Prunes, 187. 
 Pomegranate, 279. 
 Pomewater, 183. 
 Pompion, 199. 
 Poppy, 288. 
 Portia, 27 J. 
 Potato, 282. 
 Presence, The, 261. 
 Prime, primy, 88. 
 Primrose, 102. 
 Prospero, 53. 
 Provincial roses, 159. 
 Pteris Aquilina, 241. 
 
 Q 
 
 Queen Mab, 233. 
 Quibbles in Shakspere, 177. 
 Quill, 278. ■ 
 
 Quince, 184. 
 
 R 
 Radish, 199. 
 Raisins, 272. 
 Rank, 225. 
 Reeds, 257. 
 Rhubarb, 288. 
 Rice, 286. 
 Root, 222. 
 Rosalind, 20, 29, 58, 186, 223, 
 
 247, 275. 
 Rosalynde, 303. 
 Rose, 155. 
 
 ,, and lily, 152. 
 Rosemary, 201. 
 Roses, Wars of the, 156. 
 Rubus fruticosus, 236. 
 Rue, 203, 207. 
 Rushes, 259, 
 Rye, 213. 
 
3i8 
 
 Index. 
 
 SafiFron, 283. 
 Salad, 199. 
 Salix Caprea, 303. 
 Samphire, 281. 
 Savory, 199. 
 Scotch-fir, 306. 
 Sedge, 264, 
 Senna, 288. 
 Sentiment, 253. 
 Shamrock, 197. 
 Shepherd's-purse, 266. 
 Sops, 170. 
 
 ,, in wine, 170. 
 Spear-grass, 266. 
 Spiritual Body of Man, The, 
 
 4S- 
 Springs of love, 182. 
 Squash, 195. 
 Squirrel, 233. 
 Strawberry, 193. 
 Sweet Anne Page, 276. 
 
 ,, south, 86. 
 
 „ wood, 309. 
 Sycamore, 67. 
 
 Take, To, 124. 
 Teem, To, 218. 
 Thistles, 223, 
 Thorns, 237. 
 Thyme, 227. 
 
 „ ivild, 136. 
 Turnip, 195. 
 T^viggen bottle, 35. 
 
 Ursula, 144. 
 
 U 
 
 V 
 
 Venice, 271. 
 Verges, 231-. 
 Verjuice, 231. 
 Vetches, 214. 
 Vine, 192. 
 Vineyard, 192. 
 Viola (heroine), 35. 
 
 ,, tricolor, 91. 
 Violet, 74. 
 
 W 
 
 Walnut, 193. 
 Warden-pies, 184. 
 Warwick Castle, 311. 
 Weed (dress), 227. 
 Weeds, 214. 
 Wheat, 213. 
 Wild thyme, 136. 
 Willow, 31. 
 
 „ cabin, 35. 
 
 ., cage, 35. 
 
 „ of the Psalms, 36. 
 Winter's Tale, The, 248. 
 Wolsey, Cardinal, 181, 263. 
 Woodbine, 143-147. 
 Wormwood, 205, 207. 
 Wort, 196. 
 Worts, 196. 
 
 Yew-tree, 42. 
 
 Palmer and Howe, Printers, Princess Street, Manchester.