And so we are brought to the conclusion that in the passages quoted above in which Shakespeare speaks so lovingly and tenderly of his favourite flowers, these expressions are not to be put down to the fancy of the poet, but that he was faithfully describing what he daily saw or might have seen, and what no doubt he watched with that carefulness and exactness which could only exist in conjunction with a real affection for the objects on which he gazed, "the fresh and fragrant flowers," "the pretty flow'rets," "the sweet flowers," "the beauteous flowers," "the sweet summer buds," "the blossoms passing fair," "the darling buds of May."

II.—GARDENS.

(1) King (reads).

It standeth north-north-east and by east from the west corner of thy curious-knotted Garden.

Loves Labour's Lost, act i, sc. 1 (248).

(2) Isabella.

He hath a Garden circummured with brick, Whose western side is with a Vineyard back'd; And to that Vineyard is a planched gate That makes his opening with this bigger key: The other doth command a little door Which from the Vineyard to the garden leads.

Measure for Measure, act iv, sc. 1 (28).

(3) Antonio.

The Prince and Count Claudio, walking in a thick-pleached alley in my orchard, were thus much overheard by a man of mine.

Much Ado About Nothing, act i, sc. 2 (9).

(4) Iago.

Our bodies are our Gardens, &c.

(See HYSSOP.) Othello, act i, sc. 3 (323).

(5) 1st Servant.

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 ruin'd, Her knots disorder'd and her wholesome herbs Swarming with caterpillars?

Richard II, act iii, sc. 4 (40).

The flower-gardens of Shakespeare's time were very different to the flower-gardens of our day; but we have so many good descriptions of them in books and pictures that we have no difficulty in realizing them both in their general form and arrangement. I am now speaking only of the flower-gardens; the kitchen-gardens and orchards were very much like our own, except in the one important difference, that they had necessarily much less glass than our modern gardens can command. In the flower-garden the grand leading principle was uniformity and formality carried out into very minute details. "The garden is best to be square," was Lord Bacon's rule; "the form that men like in general is a square, though roundness be forma perfectissima," was Lawson's rule; and this form was chosen because the garden was considered to be a purtenance and continuation of the house, designed so as strictly to harmonize with the architecture of the building. And Parkinson's advice was to the same effect: "The orbicular or round form is held in its own proper existence to be the most absolute form, containing within it all other forms whatsoever; but few, I think, will chuse such a proportion to be joyned to their habitation. The triangular or three-square form is such a form also as is seldom chosen by any that may make another choise. The four-square form is the most usually accepted with all, and doth best agree with any man's dwelling."

This was the shape of the ideal garden—

"And whan I had a while goon, I saugh a gardyn right anoon, Full long and broad; and every delle Enclosed was, and walled welle With high walles embatailled.

* * * * *

I felle fast in a waymenting By which art, or by what engyne I might come into that gardyne; But way I couthe fynd noon Into that gardyne for to goon.

* * * * *

Tho' gan I go a fulle grete pas, Environyng evene in compas, The closing of the square walle, Tyl that I fonde a wiket smalle So shett that I ne'er myght in gon, And other entre was ther noon."

Romaunt of the Rose.

This square enclosure was bounded either by a high wall—"circummured with brick," "with high walles embatailled,"—or with a thick high hedge—"encompassed on all the four sides with a stately arched hedge." These hedges were made chiefly of Holly or Hornbeam, and we can judge of their size by Evelyn's description of his "impregnable hedge of about 400ft. in length, 9ft. high, and 5ft. in diameter." Many of these hedges still remain in our old gardens. Within this enclosure the garden was accurately laid out in formal shapes,[343:1] with paths either quite straight or in some strictly mathematical figures—

"And all without were walkes and alleyes dight With divers trees enrang'd in even rankes; And here and there were pleasant arbors pight, And shadie seats, and sundry flowring bankes, To sit and rest the walkers' wearie shankes."

F. Q., iv, x, 25.

The main walks were not, as with us, bounded with the turf, but they were bounded with trees, which were wrought into hedges, more or less open at the sides, and arched over at the top. These formed the "close alleys," "coven alleys," or "thick-pleached alleys," of which we read in Shakespeare and others writers of that time. Many kinds of trees and shrubs were used for this purpose; "every one taketh what liketh him best, as either Privit alone, or Sweet Bryer and White Thorn interlaced together, and Roses of one, two, or more sorts placed here and there amongst them. Some also take Lavender, Rosemary, Sage, Southernwood, Lavender Cotton, or some such other thing. Some again plant Cornel trees, and plash them or keep them low to form them into a hedge; and some again take a low prickly shrub that abideth always green, called in Latin Pyracantha" (Parkinson). It was on these hedges and their adjuncts that the chief labour of the garden was spent. They were cut and tortured into every imaginable shape, for nothing came amiss to the fancy of the topiarist. When this topiary art first came into fashion in England I do not know, but it was probably more or less the fashion in all gardens of any pretence from very early times, and it reached its highest point in the sixteenth century, and held its ground as the perfection of gardening till it was driven out of the field in the last century by the "picturesque style," though many specimens still remain in England, as at Levens[344:1] and Hardwicke on a large scale, and in the gardens of many ancient English mansions and old farmhouses on a smaller scale. It was doomed as soon as landscape gardeners aimed at the natural, for even when it was still at its height Addison described it thus: "Our British gardeners, instead of humouring Nature, love to deviate from it as much as possible. Our trees rise in cones, globes, and pyramids; we see the mark of the scissors upon every plant and bush."

But this is a digression: I must return to the Elizabethan garden, which I have hitherto only described as a great square, surrounded by wide, covered, shady walks, and with other similar walks dividing the central square into four or more compartments. But all this was introductory to the great feature of the Elizabethan garden, the formation of the "curious-knotted garden." Each of the large compartments was divided into a complication of "knots," by which was meant beds arranged in quaint patterns, formed by rule and compass with mathematical precision, and so numerous that it was a necessary part of the system that the whole square should be fully occupied by them. Lawn there was none; the whole area was nothing but the beds and the paths that divided them. There was Grass in other parts of the pleasure grounds, and apparently well kept, for Lord Bacon has given his opinion that "nothing is more pleasant to the eye than green Grass kept finely shorn," but it was apparently to be found only in the orchard, the bowling-green, or the "wilderness;" in the flower-garden proper it had no place. The "knots" were generally raised above the surface of the paths, the earth being kept in its place by borders of lead, or tiles, or wood, or even bones; but sometimes the beds and paths were on the same level, and then there were the same edgings that we now use, as Thrift, Box, Ivy, flints, &c. The paths were made of gravel, sand, spar, &c., and sometimes with coloured earths: but against this Lord Bacon made a vigorous protest: "As to the making of knots or figures with divers coloured earths, that they may lie under the windows of the house on that side on which the garden stands they be but toys; you may see as good sights many times in tarts."

The old gardening books are full of designs for these knots; indeed, no gardening book of the date seems to have been considered complete if it did not give the "latest designs," and they seem to have much tried the wit and ingenuity of the gardeners, as they must have also sorely tried their patience to keep them in order; and I doubt not that the efficiency of an Elizabethan gardener was as much tested by his skill and experience in "knot-work," as the efficiency of a modern gardener is tested by his skill in "bedding-out," which is the lineal descendant of "knot-work." In one most essential point, however, the two systems very much differed. In "bedding-out" the whole force of the system is spent in producing masses of colours, the individual flowers being of no importance, except so far as each flower contributes its little share of colour to the general mass; and it is for this reason that so many of us dislike the system, not only because of its monotony, but more especially because it has a tendency "to teach us to think too little about the plants individually, and to look at them chiefly as an assemblage of beautiful colours. It is difficult in those blooming masses to separate one from another; all produce so much the same sort of impression. The consequence is people see the flowers on the beds without caring to know anything about them or even to ask their names. It was different in the older gardens, because there was just variety there; the plants strongly contrasted with each other, and we were ever passing from the beautiful to the curious. Now we get little of quaintness or mystery, or of the strange delicious thought of being lost or embosomed in a tall rich wood of flowers. All is clear, definite, and classical, the work of a too narrow and exclusive taste."—FORBES WATSON. The old "knot-work" was not open to this censure, though no doubt it led the way which ended in "bedding-out." The beginning of the system crept in very shortly after Shakespeare's time. Parkinson spoke of an arrangement of spring flowers which, when "all planted in some proportion as near one unto another as is fit for them will give such a grace to the garden that the place will seem like a piece of tapestry of many glorious colours, to encrease every one's delight." And again—"The Tulipas may be so matched, one colour answering and setting off another, that the place where they stand may resemble a piece of curious needlework or piece of painting." But these plants were all perennial, and remained where they were once planted, and with this one exception named by Parkinson, the planting of knot-work was as different as possible from the modern planting of carpet-beds. The beds were planted inside their thick margins with a great variety of plants, and apparently set as thick as possible, like Harrison's garden quoted above, with its 300 separate plants in as many square feet. These were nearly all hardy perennials,[347:1] with the addition of a few hardy annuals, and the great object seems to have been to have had something of interest or beauty in these gardens at all times of the year. The principle of the old gardeners was that "Nature abhors a vacuum," and, as far as their gardens went, they did their best to prevent a vacuum occurring at any time. In this way I think they surpassed us in their practical gardening, for, even if they did not always succeed, it was surely something for them to aim (in Lord Bacon's happy words), "to have ver perpetuum as the place affords."

Where the space would allow of it, the garden was further decorated with statues, fountains, "fair mounts," labyrinths, mazes,[347:2] arbours and alcoves, rocks, "great Turkey jars," and "in some corner (or more) a true Dial or Clock, and some Antick works" (Lawson). These things were fitting ornaments in such formal gardens, but the best judges saw that they were not necessaries, and that the garden was complete without them. "They be pretty things to look on, but nothing for health or sweetness." "Such things are for state and magnificence, but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden."

Such was the Elizabethan garden in its general outlines; the sort of garden which Shakespeare must have often seen both in Warwickshire and in London. According to our present ideas such a garden would be far too formal and artificial, and we may consider that the present fashion of our gardens is more according to Milton's idea of Eden, in which there grew—

"Flowers worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but Nature boon Poured forth profuse on hill and dale and plaine."

Paradise Lost, book iv.

None of us probably would now wish to exchange the straight walks and level terraces of the sixteenth century for our winding walks and undulating lawns, in the laying out of which the motto has been "ars est celare artem"—

"That which all faire workes doth most aggrace, The art, which all that wrought, appeareth in no place."

F. Q., ii, xii, 58.

Yet it is pleasant to look back upon these old gardens, and to see how they were cherished and beloved by some of the greatest and noblest of Englishmen. Spenser has left on record his judgment on the gardens of his day—

"To the gay gardens his unstaid desire Him wholly carried, to refresh his sprights; There lavish Nature, in her best attire, Poures forth sweete odors and alluring sights: And Arte, with her contending, doth aspire To excell the naturall with made delights; And all, that faire or pleasant may be found, In riotous excesse doth there abound.

* * * * *

There he arriving around about doth flie, From bed to bed, from one to other border; And takes survey, with curious busie eye, Of every flowre and herbe there set in order."

Muiopotmos.

Clearly in Spenser's eyes the formalities of an Elizabethan garden (for we must suppose he had such in his thoughts) did not exclude nature or beauty.

It was also with such formal gardens in his mind and before his eyes that Lord Bacon wrote his "Essay on Gardens," and commenced it with the well-known sentence (for I must quote him once again for the last time), "God Almighty first planted a garden, and indeed it is the purest of all human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man, without which buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegance, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely, as if gardening were the greater perfection." And, indeed, in spite of their stiffness and unnaturalness, there must have been a great charm in those gardens, and though it would be antiquarian affectation to attempt or wish to restore them, yet there must have been a stateliness about them which our gardens have not, and they must have had many points of real comfort which it seems a pity to have lost. Those long shady "covert alleys," with their "thick-pleached" sides and roof, must have been very pleasant places to walk in, giving shelter in winter, and in summer deep shade, with the pleasant smell of Sweet Brier and Roses. They must have been the very places for a thoughtful student, who desired quiet and retirement for his thoughts—

"And adde to these retired leisure That in trim gardens takes his pleasure"—

Il Penseroso.

and they must have been also "pretty retiring places for conference" for friends in council. The whole fashion of the Elizabethan garden has passed away, and will probably never be revived; but before we condemn it as a ridiculous fashion, unworthy of the science of gardening, we may remember that it held its ground in England for nearly two hundred years, and that during that time the gardens of England and the flowers they bore won not the cold admiration, but the warm affection of the greatest names in English history, the affection of such a queen as Elizabeth,[349:1] of such a grave and wise philosopher as Bacon, of such a grand hero as Raleigh, of such poets as Spenser and Shakespeare.

FOOTNOTES:

[343:1] These beds (as we should now call them) were called "tables" or "plots"—

"Mark out the tables, ichon by hem selve Sixe foote in brede, and xii in length is beste To clense and make on evey side honest."

Palladius on Husbandrie, i. 116.

"Note this generally that all plots are square."—LAWSON'S New Orchard, p. 60.

[344:1] For an account of Levens, with a plate of the Topiarian garden, see "Archaeological Journal," vol. xxvi.

[347:1] Including shrubs—

"'Tis another's lot To light upon some gard'ner's curious knot, Where she upon her breast (love's sweet repose), Doth bring the Queen of flowers, the English Rose."

BROWNE'S Brit. Past., i, 2.

[347:2] For a good account of mazes and labyrinths see "Archaeological Journal," xiv. 216.

[349:1] Queen Elizabeth's love of gardening and her botanical knowledge were celebrated in a Latin poem by an Italian who visited England in 1586, and wrote a long poem under the name of "Melissus."—See Archaeologia, vol. vii. 120.

III.—GARDENERS.

(1) Queen.

But stay, here come the gardeners; Let's step into the shadow of these trees.

* * * * *

Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this garden, How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this unpleasing news? What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested thee To make a second fall of cursed man? Why dost thou say King Richard is deposed? Darest thou, thou little better thing than earth, Divine his downfal?

Richard II, act iii, sc. 4 (24, 72).

(2) Clown.

Come, my spade. There is no ancient gentlemen but gardeners, ditchers, and grave-makers; they hold up Adam's profession.

Hamlet, act v, sc. 1 (34).

Very little is recorded of the gardeners of the sixteenth century, by which we can judge either of their skill or their social position. Gerard frequently mentions the names of different persons from whom he obtained plants, but without telling us whether they were professional or amateur gardeners or nurserymen; and Hakluyt has recorded the name of Master Wolfe as gardener to Henry VIII. Certainly Richard II.'s Queen did not speak with much respect to her gardener, reproving him for his "harsh rude tongue," and addressing him as a "little better thing than earth"—but her angry grief may account for that. Parkinson also has not much to say in favour of the gardeners of his day, but considers it his duty to warn his readers against them: "Our English gardeners are all, or the most of them, utterly ignorant in the ordering of their outlandish (i.e., exotic) flowers as not being trained to know them. . . . And I do wish all gentlemen and gentlewomen, whom it may concern for their own good, to be as careful whom they trust with the planting and replanting of their fine flowers, as they would be with so many jewels, for the roots of many of them being small and of great value may soon be conveyed away, and a clean tale fair told, that such a root is rotten or perished in the ground if none be seen where it should be, or else that the flower hath changed his colour when it hath been taken away, or a counterfeit one hath been put in the place thereof; and thus many have been deceived of their daintiest flowers, without remedy or true knowledge of the defect." And again, "idle and ignorant gardeners who get names by stealth as they do many other things." This is not a pleasant picture either of the skill or honesty of the sixteenth-century gardeners, but there must have been skilled gardeners to keep those curious-knotted gardens in order, so as to have a "ver perpetuum all the year." And there must have been men also who had a love for their craft; and if some stole the rare plants committed to their charge, we must hope that there were some honest men amongst them, and that they were not all like old Andrew Fairservice, in "Rob Roy," who wished to find a place where he "wad hear pure doctrine, and hae a free cow's grass, and a cot and a yard, and mair than ten punds of annual fee," but added also, "and where there's nae leddy about the town to count the Apples."

IV.—GARDENING OPERATIONS.

A. PRUNING, ETC.

(1) Orlando.

But, poor old man, thou prunest a rotten tree, That cannot so much as a blossom yield In lieu of all thy pains and industry.

As you Like It, act ii, sc. 3 (63).

(2) Gardener.

Go, bind thou up yon dangling Apricocks, Which, like unruly children, make their sire Stoop with oppression of their prodigal weight: Give some supportance to the bending twigs. Go thou, and like an executioner, Cut off the heads of too-fast growing sprays, That look too lofty in our commonwealth: All must be even in our government. You thus employ'd, I would go root away The noisome weeds, which without profit suck The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers.

* * * * *

O, what pity is it, That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his land As we this garden! We at time of year Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit-trees, Lest, being over-proud in 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; superfluous branches We lop away, that bearing boughs may live: Had he done so, himself had borne the crown Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown down.

Richard II, act iii, sc. 4 (29).

This most interesting passage would almost tempt us to say that Shakespeare was a gardener by profession; certainly no other passages that have been brought to prove his real profession are more minute than this. It proves him to have had practical experience in the work, and I think we may safely say that he was no mere 'prentice hand in the use of the pruning knife.

The art of pruning in his day was probably exactly like our own, as far as regarded fruit trees and ordinary garden work, but in one important particular the pruner's art of that day was a for more laborious art than it is now. The topiary art must have been the triumph of pruning, and when gardens were full of castles, monsters, beasts, birds, fishes, and men, all cut out of Box and Yew, and kept so exact that they boasted of being the "living representations" and "counterfeit presentments" of these various objects, the hands and head of the pruner could seldom have been idle; the pruning knife and scissors must have been in constant demand from the first day of the year to the last. The pruner of that day was, in fact, a sculptor, who carved his images out of Box and Yew instead of marble, so that in an amusing article in the "Guardian" for 1713 (No. 173), said to have been written by Pope, is a list of such sculptured objects for sale, and we are told that the "eminent town gardener had arrived to such perfection that he cuts family pieces of men, women, and children. Any ladies that please may have their own effigies in Myrtle, or their husbands in Hornbeam. He is a Puritan wag, and never fails when he shows his garden to repeat that passage in the Psalms, 'Thy wife shall be as the fruitful Vine, and thy children as Olive branches about thy table.'"

B. MANURING, ETC.

Constable.

And you shall find his vanities forespent Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus, Covering discretion with a coat of folly; As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots That shall first spring and be most delicate.

Henry V, act ii, sc. 4 (36).

The only point that needs notice under this head is that the word "manure" in Shakespeare's time was not limited to its present modern meaning. In his day "manured land" generally meant cultured land in opposition to wild and barren land.[353:1] So Falstaff uses the word—

Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant.

2nd Henry IV, act iv, sc. 3 (126).

And in the same way Iago says—

Either to have it (a garden) sterile with idleness or manured with industry.

Othello, act i, sc. 3 (296).

Milton and many other writers used the word in this its original sense; and Johnson explains it "to cultivate by manual labour," according to its literal derivation. In one passage Shakespeare uses the word somewhat in the modern sense—

Carlisle. The blood of English shall manure the ground.

Richard II, act iv, sc. 1 (137).

But generally he and the writers of that and the next century expressed the operation more simply and plainly, as "covering with ordure," or as in the English Bible, "I shall dig about it and dung it."

C. GRAFTING.

(1) Buckingham.

Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants.

Richard III, act iii, sc. 7 (127).

(2) Dauphin.

O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us, The emptying of our fathers' luxury, Our scions, put in wild and savage stock, Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds, And overlook their grafters?

Henry V, act iii, sc. 5 (5).

(3) King.

His plausive words He scatter'd not in ears, but grafted them, To grow there and to bear.

All's Well that Ends Well, act i, sc. 2 (53).

(4) Perdita.

The fairest flowers o' the season Are our Carnations and streak'd Gillyvors, Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind Our rustic garden's barren; I care not To get slips of them.

Polixenes.

Wherefore, gentle maiden, Do you neglect them?

Perdita. For I have heard it said There is an art which in their piedness shares With great creating Nature.

Polixenes.

Say there be; Yet Nature is made better by no mean, But Nature makes that mean: so, over that art Which you say adds to Nature, is an art That Nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry A gentle scion to the wildest stock, And make conceive a bark of baser kind By bud of nobler race: this is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature.

Perdita.

So it is.

Polixenes.

Then make your garden rich in Gillyvors, And do not call them bastards.

Perdita.

I'll not put The dibble in the earth to set one slip of them.

Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 4 (81).

The various ways of propagating plants by grafts, cuttings, slips, and artificial impregnation (all mentioned in the above passages), as used in Shakespeare's day, seem to have been exactly like those of our own time, and so they need no further comment.

FOOTNOTES:

[353:1] The Act 31 Eliz. c. 7, enacts that "noe person shall within this Realme of England make buylde or erect any Buyldinge or Howsinge . . . . as a Cottage for habitation . . . . unlesse the same person do assigne and laye to the same Cottage or Buyldinge fower acres of Grounde at the least . . . to be contynuallie occupied and manured therewith." Gerard's Chapter on Vines is headed, "Of the manured Vine."

V.—GARDEN ENEMIES.

A. WEEDS.

(1) Hamlet.

How weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable Seem to me all the uses of this world! Fye on it, ah fye! 'tis an unweeded garden That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature Possess it merely.

Hamlet, act i, sc. 2 (133).

(2) Titus.

Such withered herbs as these Are meet for plucking up.

Titus Andronicus, act iii, sc. 1 (178).

(3) York.

Grandam, one night, as we did sit at supper, My Uncle Rivers talk'd how I did grow More than my brother. "Ay," quoth my Uncle Glo'ster, "Small herbs have grace, great weeds do grow apace;" And since, methinks, I would not grow so fast, Because sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste.

Richard III, act ii, sc. 4 (10).

(4) Queen.

Now 'tis the spring, and weeds are shallow-rooted; Suffer them now, and they'll o'ergrow the garden, And choke the herbs for want of husbandry.

2nd Henry VI, act iii, sc. 1 (31).

(5)

Unruly blasts wait on the tender spring, Unwholesome weeds take root with precious flowers.

Lucrece (869).

(6) K. Henry.

Most subject is the fattest soil to weeds.

2nd Henry IV, act iv, sc. 4 (54).

The weeds of Shakespeare need no remark; they were the same as ours; and, in spite of our improved cultivation, our fields and gardens are probably as full of weeds as they were three centuries ago.

B. BLIGHTS, FROSTS, ETC.

(1) York.

Thus are my blossoms blasted in the bud, And caterpillars eat my leaves away.

2nd Henry VI, act iii, sc. 1 (89).

(2) Montague.

But he, his own affection's counsellor, Is to himself—I will not say, how true— But to himself so sweet and close, So far from sounding and discovery, As is the bud bit with an envious worm, Ere he can spread his sweet leaves to the air, Or dedicate his beauty to the sun.

Romeo and Juliet, act i, sc. 1 (153).

(3) Imogene.

Comes in my father, And like the tyrannous breathing of the north Shakes all our buds from growing.

Cymbeline, act i, sc. 3 (35).

(4) Bardolph.

A cause on foot Lives so in hope as in an early spring We see the appearing buds—which to prove fruit, Hope gives not so much warrant as despair That frost will bite them.

2nd Henry IV, act i, sc. 3 (37).

(5) Violet.

She never told her love, But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud, Feed on her damask cheek.

Twelfth Night, act ii, sc. 4 (113).

(6) Proteus.

Yet writers say, as in the sweetest bud The eating canker dwells, so eating love Inhabits in the finest wits of all.

Valentine.

And writers say as the most forward bud Is eaten by the canker ere it blow, Even so by love the young and tender wit Is turn'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, act i, sc. 1 (42).

(7) Capulet.

Death lies on her like an untimely frost Upon the sweetest flower of the field.

Romeo and Juliet, act iv, sc. 5 (28).

(8) Lysimachus.

O sir, a courtesy Which if we should deny, the most just gods For every graff would send a caterpillar, And so afflict our province.

Pericles, act v, sc. 1 (58).

(9) Wolsey.

This is the state of man: to-day he puts forth The tender leaves of hopes, 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 His greatness is a-ripening, nips his root, And then he falls, as I do.

Henry VIII, act iii, sc. 2 (352).

(10) Saturninus.

These tidings nip me, and I hang the head As Flowers with frost, or Grass beat down with storms.

Titus Andronicus, act iv, sc. 4 (70).

(11)

No man inveigh against the withered flower, But chide rough winter that the flower hath kill'd; Not that devour'd, but that which doth devour, Is worthy blame.

Lucrece (1254).

(12)

For never-resting time leads summer on To hideous winter, and confounds him there; Sap check'd with frost and lusty leaves quite gone, Beauty o'ersnow'd, and bareness everywhere; Then, were not summer's distillation left, A liquid prisoner pent in walls of glass, Beauty's effect with beauty were bereft, Nor it, nor no remembrance what it was; But flowers distill'd, though they with winter meet, Leese but their show; their substance still lives sweet.[357:1]

Sonnet v.

With this beautiful description of the winter-life of hardy perennial plants, I may well close the "Plant-lore and Garden-craft of Shakespeare." The subject has stretched to a much greater extent than I at all anticipated when I commenced it, but this only shows how large and interesting a task I undertook, for I can truly say that my difficulty has been in the necessity for condensing my matter, which I soon found might be made to cover a much larger space than I have given to it; for my object was in no case to give an exhaustive account of the flowers, but only to give such an account of each plant as might illustrate its special use by Shakespeare.

Having often quoted my favourite authority in gardening matters, old "John Parkinson, Apothecary, of London," I will again make use of him to help me to say my last words: "Herein I have spent my time, pains, and charge, which, if well accepted, I shall think well employed. And thus I have finished this work, and have furnished it with whatsoever could bring delight to those that take pleasure in those things, which how well or ill done I must abide every one's censure; the judicious and courteous I only respect; and so Farewell."

FOOTNOTES:

[357:1]

"Flowers depart To see their mother-root, when they have blown; Where they together, All the hard weather Dead to the world, keep house unknown."

G. HERBERT, The Flower.



APPENDIX I.

THE DAISY:

ITS HISTORY, POETRY, AND BOTANY.

There's a Daisy.—Ophelia.

Daisies smel-lesse, yet most quaint.

Two Noble Kinsmen, Introd. song.

The following Paper on the Daisy was written for the Bath Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, and read at their meeting, January 14th, 1874. It was then published in "The Garden," and a few copies were reprinted for private circulation. I now publish it as an Appendix to the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare," with very few alterations from its original form, preferring thus to reprint it in extenso than to make an abstract of it for the illustration of Shakespeare's Daisies.



THE DAISY.

I almost feel that I ought to apologize to the Field Club for asking them to listen to a paper on so small a subject as the Daisy. But, indeed, I have selected that subject because I think it is one especially suited to a Naturalists' Field Club. The members of such a club, as I think, should take notice of everything. Nothing should be beneath their notice. It should be their province to note a multitude of little facts unnoticed by others; they should be "minute philosophers," and they might almost take as their motto the wise words which Milton put into the mouth of Adam, after he had been instructed to "be lowlie wise" (especially in the study of the endless wonders of sea, and earth, and sky that surrounded him)—

"To know That which before us lies in daily life, Is the prime wisdom."—Paradise Lost, viii. (192).

I do not apologize for the lowness and humbleness of my subject, but, with "no delay of preface" (Milton), I take you at once to it. In speaking of the Daisy, I mean to confine myself to the Daisy, commonly so-called, merely reminding you that there are also the Great or Ox-eye, or Moon Daisy (Chrysanthemum leucanthemum), the Michaelmas Daisy (Aster), and the Blue Daisy of the South of Europe (Globularia). The name has been also given to a few other plants, but none of them are true Daisies.

I begin with its name. Of this there can be little doubt; it is the "Day's-eye," the bright little eye that only opens by day, and goes to sleep at night. This, whether the true derivation or not, is no modern fancy. It is, at least, as old as Chaucer, and probably much older. Here are Chaucer's well-known words—

"Men by reason well it calle may The Daisie, or else the Eye of Day, The Empresse and the flowre of flowres all."

And Ben Jonson boldly spoke of them as "bright Daye's-eyes."

There is, however, another derivation. Dr. Prior says: "Skinner derives it from dais or canopy, and Gavin Douglas seems to have understood it in the sense of a small canopy in the line:

"The Daisie did unbraid her crounall small.

"Had we not the A.-S. daeges-eage, we could hardly refuse to admit that this last is a far more obvious and probable explanation of the word than the pretty poetical thought conveyed in Day's-eye." This was Dr. Prior's opinion in his first edition of his valuable "Popular Names of British Plants;" but it is withdrawn in his second edition, and he now is content with the Day's-eye derivation. Dr. Prior has kindly informed me that he rejected it because he can find no old authority for Skinner's derivation, and because it is doubtful whether the Daisy in Gavin Douglas's line does not mean a Marigold, and not what we call a Daisy. The derivation, however, seemed worth a passing notice. Its other English names are Dog Daisy, to distinguish it from the large Ox-eyed Daisy; Banwort, "because it helpeth bones[362:1] to knit agayne" (Turner); Bruisewort, for the same reason; Herb Margaret, from its French name; and in the North, Bairnwort, from its associations with childhood. As to its other names, the plant seems to have been unknown to the Greeks, and has no Greek name, but is fortunate in having as pretty a name in Latin as it has in English. Its modern botanical name is Bellis, and it has had the name from the time of Pliny. Bellis must certainly come from bellus (pretty), and so it is at once stamped as the pretty one even by botanists—though another derivation has been given to the name, of which I will speak soon. The French call it Marguerite, no doubt for its pearly look, or Pasquerette, to mark it as the spring flower; the German name for it is very different, and not easy to explain—Gaenseblume, i.e., Goose-flower; the Danish name is Tusinfryd (thousand joys); and the Welsh, Sensigl (trembling star).

As Pliny is the first that mentions the plant, his account is worth quoting. "As touching a Daisy," he says (I quote from Holland's translation, 1601), "a yellow cup it hath also, and the same is crowned, as it were, with a garland, consisting of five and fifty little leaves, set round about it in manner of fine pales. These be flowers of the meadow, and most of such are of no use at all, no marvile, therefore, if they be namelesse; howbeit, some give them one tearme and some another" (book xxi. cap. 8). And again, "There is a hearbe growing commonly in medows, called the Daisie, with a white floure, and partly inclining to red, which, if it is joined with Mugwort in an ointment, is thought to make the medicine farre more effectual for the King's evil" (book xxvi. cap. 5).

We have no less than three legends of the origin of the flower. In one legend, not older, I believe, than the fourteenth century (the legend is given at full length by Chaucer in his "Legende of Goode Women"), Alcestis was turned into a Daisy. Another legend records that "this plant is called Bellis, because it owes its origin to Belides, a granddaughter to Danaus, and one of the nymphs called Dryads, that presided over the meadows and pastures in ancient times. Belides is said to have encouraged the suit of Ephigeus, but whilst dancing on the grass with this rural deity she attracted the admiration of Vertumnus, who, just as he was about to seize her in his embrace, saw her transformed into the humble plant that now bears her name." This legend I have only seen in Phillips's "Flora Historica." I need scarcely tell you that neither Belides or Ephigeus are classical names—they are mediaeval inventions. The next legend is a Celtic one; I find it recorded both by Lady Wilkinson and Mrs. Lankester. I should like to know its origin; but with that grand contempt for giving authorities which lady-authors too often show, neither of these ladies tells us whence she got the legend. The legend says that "the virgins of Morven, to soothe the grief of Malvina, who had lost her infant son, sang to her, 'We have seen, O! Malvina, we have seen the infant you regret, reclining on a light mist; it approached us, and shed on our fields a harvest of new flowers. Look, O! Malvina. Among these flowers we distinguish one with a golden disk surrounded by silver leaves; a sweet tinge of crimson adorns its delicate rays; waved by a gentle wind, we might call it a little infant playing in a green meadow; and the flower of thy bosom has given a new flower to the hills of Cromla.'" Since that day the daughters of Morven have consecrated the Daisy to infancy. "It is," said they, "the flower of innocence, the flower of the newborn." Besides these legends, the Daisy is also connected with the legendary history of St. Margaret. The legend is given by Chaucer, but I will tell it to you in the words of a more modern poet—

"There is a double flouret, white and rede, That our lasses call Herb Margaret In honour of Cortona's penitent; Whose contrite soul with red remorse was rent. While on her penitence kind Heaven did throwe The white of puritie surpassing snowe; So white and rede in this faire floure entwine, Which maids are wont to scatter on her shrine."

Catholic Florist, Feb. 22, St. Margaret's Day.

Yet, in spite of the general association of Daisies with St. Margaret, Mrs. Jameson says that she has seen one, and only one, picture of St. Margaret with Daisies.

The poetry or poetical history of the Daisy is very curious. It begins with Chaucer, whose love of the flower might almost be called an idolatry. But, as it begins with Chaucer, so, for a time, it almost ends with him. Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton scarcely mention it. It holds almost no place in the poetry of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; but, at the close of the eighteenth century, it has the good luck to be uprooted by Burns's plough, and he at once sings its dirge and its beauties; and then the flower at once becomes a celebrity. Wordsworth sings of it in many a beautiful verse; and I think it is scarcely too much to say that since his time not an English poet has failed to pay his homage to the humble beauty of the Daisy. I do not purpose to take you through all these poets—time and knowledge would fail me to introduce you to them all. I shall but select some of those which I consider best worth selection. I begin, of course, with Chaucer, and even with him I must content myself with a selection—

"Of all the floures in the mede, Then love I most those floures white and redde; Such that men callen Daisies in our town. To them I have so great affection, As I said erst when comen is the Maye, That in my bedde there dawneth me no daie, That I n'am up and walking in the mede To see this floure against the sunne sprede. When it upriseth early by the morrow, That blessed sight softeneth all my sorrow. So glad am I, when that I have presence Of it, to done it all reverence— As she that is of all floures the floure, Fulfilled of all virtue and honoure; And ever ylike fair and fresh of hue, And ever I love it, and ever ylike new, And ever shall, till that mine heart die, All swear I not, of this I will not lye. There loved no wight hotter in his life, And when that it is eve, I run blithe, As soon as ever the sun gaineth west, To see this floure, how it will go to rest. For fear of night, so hateth she darkness, Her cheer is plainly spread in the brightness Of the sunne, for there it will unclose; Alas, that I ne had English rhyme or prose Suffisaunt this floure to praise aright."

I could give you several other quotations from Chaucer, but I will content myself with this, for I think unbounded admiration of a flower can scarcely go further than the lines I have read to you.

In an early poem published by Ritson is the following—

"Lenten ys come with love to toune With blosmen ant with briddes roune That al thys blisse bryngeth; Dayeseyes in this dales, Notes suete of nyghtegales Vch foul song singeth."

Ancient Songs and Ballads, vol. i, p. 63.

Stephen Hawes, who lived in the time of Henry VII., wrote a poem called the "Temple of Glass." In that temple he tells us—

"I saw depycted upon a wall, From est to west, fol many a fayre image Of sundry lovers. . . . ."

And among these lovers—

"And Alder next was the freshe quene, I mean Alceste, the noble true wife, And for Admete howe she lost her life, And for her trouthe, if I shall not lye, How she was turned into a Daysye."

We next come to Spenser. In the "Muiopotmos," he gives a list of flowers that the butterfly frequents, with most descriptive epithets to each flower most happily chosen. Among the flowers are—

"The Roses raigning in the pride of May, Sharp Isope good for greene woundes' remedies, Faire Marigoldes, and bees-alluring Thyme, Sweet Marjoram, and Daysies decking prime."

By "decking prime" he means they are the ornament of the morning.[366:1] Again he introduces the Daisy in a stanza of much beauty, that commences the June Eclogue of the "Shepherd's Calendar."

"Lo! Colin, here the place whose pleasaunt syte From other shades hath weand my wandring minde. Tell me, what wants me here to work delyte? The simple ayre, the gentle warbling winde, So calm, so cool, as no where else I finde; The Grassie ground, with daintie Daysies dight; The Bramble bush, where byrdes of every kinde To the waters' fall their tunes attemper right."

From Spenser we come to Shakespeare, and when we remember the vast acquaintance with flowers of every kind that he shows, and especially when we remember how often he almost seems to go out of his way to tell of the simple wild flowers of England, it is surprising that the Daisy is almost passed over entirely by him. Here are the passages in which he names the flowers. First, in the poem of the "Rape of Lucrece," he has a very pretty picture of Lucrece as she lay asleep—

"Without the bed her other faire hand was On the green coverlet, whose perfect white Showed like an April Daisy on the Grass."

In "Love's Labour's Lost" is the song of Spring, beginning—

"When Daisies pied, and Violets blue; And Lady-smocks all silver-white, And Cuckoo-buds of yellow hue Do paint the meadows with delight."

In "Hamlet" Daisies are twice mentioned in connection with Ophelia in her madness. "There's a Daisy!" she said, as she distributed her flowers; but she made no comment on the Daisy as she did on her other flowers. And, in the description of her death, the Queen tells us that—

"There with fantastick garlands did she come Of Crow-flowers, Nettles, Daisies, and Long Purples."

And in "Cymbeline" the General Lucius gives directions for the burial of Cloten—

"Let us Find out the prettiest Daisied plot we can, And make him with our pikes and partisans A grave."

And in the introductory song to the "Two Noble Kinsmen," which is claimed by some as Shakespeare's, we find among the other flowers of spring—

"Daisies smel-lesse, yet most quaint."

These are the only places in which the Daisy is mentioned in Shakespeare's plays, and it is a little startling to find that of these six one is in a song for clowns, and two others are connected with the poor mad princess. I hope that you will not use Shakespeare's authority against me, that to talk of Daisies is only fit for clowns and madmen.

Contemporary with Shakespeare was Cutwode, who in the "Caltha Poetarum," published in 1599, thus describes the Daisy—

"On her attends the Daisie dearly dight that pretty Primula of Lady Ver As handmaid to her Mistresse day and night so doth she watch, so waiteth she on her, With double diligence, and dares not stir, A fairer flower perfumes not forth in May Then is this Daisie or this Primula.

About her neck she wears a rich wrought ruffe, with double sets most brave and broad bespread, Resembling lovely Lawn or Cambrick stuffe pind up and prickt upon her yealow head, Wearing her haire on both sides of her shead; And with her countenance she hath acast Wagging the wāton with each wynd and blast."

Stanza 21, 22.

Drayton, in the "Polyolbion," 15th Song, represents the Naiads engaged in twining garlands for the marriage of Tame and Isis, and considering that he—

"Should not be dressed with flowers to garden that belong (His bride that better fitteth), but only such as spring From the replenisht meads and fruitful pasture neere,"

they collect among other wild flowers—

"The Daysie over all those sundry sweets so thick As nature doth herself, to imitate her right; Who seems in that her pearle so greatly to delight That every plaine therewith she powdereth to beholde."

And to the same effect, in his "Description of Elysium"—

"There Daisies damask every place, Nor once their beauties lose, That when proud Phoebus turns his face, Themselves they scorn to close."

Browne, contemporary with Shakespeare, has these pretty lines on the Daisy—

"The Daisy scattered on each mead and down, A golden tuft within a silver crown; (Fair fall that dainty flower! and may there be No shepherd graced that doth not honour thee!)."

Brit. Past., ii. 3.

And the following must be about the same date—

"The pretty Daisy which doth show Her love to Phoebus, bred her woe; (Who joys to see his cheareful face, And mournes when he is not in place)— 'Alacke! alacke! alacke!' quoth she, 'There's none that ever loves like me.'"

The Deceased Maiden's Lover—Roxburghe Ballads, i, 341.

I am not surprised to find that Milton barely mentions the Daisy. His knowledge of plants was very small compared to Shakespeare's, and seems to have been, for the most part, derived from books. His descriptions of plants all savour more of study than the open air. I only know of two places in which he mentions the Daisy. In the "l'Allegro" he speaks of "Meadows trim with Daisies pied," and in another place he speaks of "Daisies trim." But I am surprised to find the Daisy overlooked by two such poets as Robert Herrick and George Herbert. Herrick sang of flowers most sweetly, few if any English poets have sung of them more sweetly, but he has little to say of the Daisy. He has one poem, indeed, addressed specially to a Daisy, but he simply uses the little flower, and not very successfully, as a peg on which to hang the praises of his mistress. He uses it more happily in describing the pleasures of a country life—

"Come live with me and thou shalt see The pleasures I'll prepare for thee, What sweets the country can afford, Shall bless thy bed and bless thy board. . . . Thou shalt eat The paste of Filberts for thy bread, With cream of Cowslips buttered; Thy feasting tables shall be hills, With Daisies spread and Daffodils."

And again—

"Young men and maids meet, To exercise their dancing feet, Tripping the comely country round, With Daffodils and Daisies crowned."

George Herbert had a deep love for flowers, and a still deeper love for finding good Christian lessons in the commonest things about him. He delights in being able to say—

"Yet can I mark how herbs below Grow green and gay;"

but I believe he never mentions the Daisy.

Of the poets of the seventeenth century I need only make one short quotation from Dryden—

"And then the band of flutes began to play, To which a lady sang a tirelay: And still at every close she would repeat The burden of the song—'The Daisy is so sweet, The Daisy is so sweet'—when she began The troops of knights and dames continued on The consort; and the voice so charmed my ear And soothed my soul that it was heaven to hear."

I need not dwell on the other poets of the seventeenth century. In most of them a casual allusion to the Daisy may be found, but little more. Nor need I dwell at all on the poets of the eighteenth century. In the so-called Augustan age of poetry, the Daisy could not hope to attract any attention. It was the correct thing if they had to speak of the country to speak of the "Daisied" or "Daisy-spangled" meads, but they could not condescend to any nearer approach to the little flower. If they had they would have found that they had chosen their epithet very badly. I never yet saw a "Daisy-spangled" meadow.[370:1] The flowers may be there, but the long Grasses effectually hide them. And so I come per saltum to the end of the eighteenth century, and at once to Burns, who brought the Daisy again into notice. He thus regrets the uprooting of the Daisy by his plough—

"Wee, modest, crimson-tipped flower, Thou'st met me in an evil hour; For I must crush amongst the stour Thy slender stem. To spare thee now is past my power, Thou bonny gem.

Cold blew the bitter, biting north, Upon thy humble birth, Yet cheerfully thou venturest forth Amid the storm, Scarce reared above the Parent-earth Thy tender form.

The flaunting flowers our gardens yield High sheltering woods and walks must shield; But thou, between the random bield Of clod or stone, Adorn'st the rugged stubble field, Unseen, alone.

There, in thy scanty mantle clad, Thy snowy bosom sunward spread, Thou lift'st thy unassuming head In humble guise; But now the share uptears thy bed, And low thou lies!"

With Burns we may well join Clare, another peasant poet from Northamptonshire, whose poems are not so much known as they deserve to be. His allusions to wild flowers always mark his real observation of them, and his allusions to the Daisy are frequent; thus—

"Smiling on the sunny plain The lovely Daisies blow, Unconscious of the careless feet That lay their beauties low."

Again, alluding to his own obscurity—

"Green turfs allowed forgotten heap, Is all that I shall have, Save that the little Daisies creep To deck my humble grave."

Again, in his description of evening, he does not omit to notice the closing of the Daisy at sunset—

"Now the blue fog creeps along, And the birds forget their song; Flowers now sleep within their hoods, Daisies button into buds."

And so we come to Wordsworth, whose love of the Daisy almost equalled Chaucer's. His allusions and addresses to the Daisy are numerous, but I have only space for a small selection. First, are two stanzas from a long poem specially to the Daisy—

"When soothed awhile by milder airs, Thee Winter in the garland wears, That thinly shades his few gray hairs, Spring cannot shun thee. While Summer fields are thine by right, And Autumn, melancholy wight, Doth in thy crimson head delight When rains are on thee.

Child of the year that round dost run Thy course, bold lover of the sun, And cheerful when thy day's begun As morning leveret. Thy long-lost praise thou shalt regain, Dear shalt thou be to future men, As in old time, thou not in vain Art nature's favourite."

The other poem from Wordsworth that I shall read to you is one that has received the highest praise from all readers, and by Ruskin (no mean critic, and certainly not always given to praises) is described as "two delicious stanzas, followed by one of heavenly imagination."[372:1] The poem is "An Address to the Daisy"—

"A nun demure—of holy port; A sprightly maiden—of love's court, In thy simplicity the sport Of all temptations. A queen in crown of rubies drest, A starveling in a scanty vest, Are all, as seems to suit thee best, Thy appellations.

I see thee glittering from afar, And then thou art a pretty star, Not quite so fair as many are In heaven above thee. Yet like a star with glittering crest, Self-poised in air thou seem'st to rest; Let peace come never to his rest Who shall reprove thee.

Sweet flower, for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast. Sweet silent creature, That breath'st with me in sun and air; Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature."

With these beautiful lines I might well conclude my notices of the poetical history of the Daisy, but, to bring it down more closely to our own times, I will remind you of a poem by Tennyson, entitled "The Daisy." It is a pleasant description of a southern tour brought to his memory by finding a dried Daisy in a book. He says—

"We took our last adieu, And up the snowy Splugen drew, But ere we reached the highest summit, I plucked a Daisy, I gave it you, It told of England then to me, And now it tells of Italy."

Thus I have picked several pretty flowers of poetry for you from the time of Chaucer to our own. I could have made the posy fifty-fold larger, but I could, probably, have found no flowers for the posy more beautiful, or more curious, than these few.

I now come to the botany of the Daisy. The Daisy belongs to the immense family of the Compositae, a family which contains one-tenth of the flowering plants of the world, and of which nearly 10,000 species are recorded. In England the order is very familiar, as it contains three of our commonest kinds, the Daisy, the Dandelion, and the Groundsel. It may give some idea of the large range of the family when we find that there are some 600 recorded species of the Groundsel alone, of which eleven are in England. I shall not weary you with a strictly scientific description of the Daisy, but I will give you instead Rousseau's well-known description. It is fairly accurate, though not strictly scientific: "Take," he says, "one of those little flowers, which cover all the pastures, and which every one knows by the name of Daisy. Look at it well, for I am sure you would never have guessed from its appearance that this flower, which is so small and delicate, is really composed of between two and three hundred other flowers, all of them perfect, that is, each of them having its corolla, stamens, pistil, and fruit; in a word, as perfect in its species as a flower of the Hyacinth or Lily. Every one of these leaves, which are white above and red underneath, and form a kind of crown round the flower, appearing to be nothing more than little petals, are in reality so many true flowers; and every one of those tiny yellow things also which you see in the centre, and which at first you have perhaps taken for nothing but stamens, are real flowers. . . . Pull out one of the white leaves of the flower; you will think at first that it is flat from one end to the other, but look carefully at the end by which it was fastened to the flower, and you will see that this end is not flat, but round and hollow in the form of a tube, and that a little thread ending in two horns issues from the tube. This thread is the forked style of the flower, which, as you now see, is flat only at top. Next look at the little yellow things in the middle of the flower, and which, as I have told you, are all so many flowers; if the flower is sufficiently advanced, you will see some of them open in the middle and even cut into several parts. These are the monopetalous corollas. . . . . This is enough to show you by the eye the possibility that all these small affairs, both white and yellow, may be so many distinct flowers, and this is a constant fact" (Quoted in Lindley's "Ladies' Botany," vol. i.)[374:1]

But Rousseau does not mention one feature which I wish to describe to you, as I know few points in botany more beautiful than the arrangement by which the Daisy is fertilized. In the centre of each little flower is the style surrounded closely by the anthers. The end of the style is divided, but, as long as it remains below among the anthers, the two lips are closed. The anthers are covered, more or less, with pollen; the style has its outside surface bristling with stiff hairs. In this condition it would be impossible for the pollen to reach the interior (stigmatic) surfaces of the divided style, but the style rises, and as it rises it brushes off the pollen from the anthers around it. Its lips are closed till it has risen well above the whole flower, and left the anthers below; then it opens, showing its broad stigmatic surface to receive pollen from other flowers, and distribute the pollen it has brushed off, not to itself (which it could not do), but to other flowers around it. By this provision no flower fertilizes itself, and those of you who are acquainted with Darwin's writings will know how necessary this provision may be in perpetuating flowers. The Daisy not only produces double flowers, but also the curious proliferous flower called Hen and Chickens, or Childing Daisies, or Jackanapes on Horseback. These are botanically very interesting flowers, and though I, on another occasion, drew your attention to the peculiarity, I cannot pass it over in a paper specially devoted to the Daisy. The botanical interest is this: It is a well-known fact in botany, that all the parts of a plant—root, stem, flowers and their parts, thorns, fruits, and even the seeds, are only different forms of leaves, and are all interchangeable, and the Hen and Chickens Daisy is a good proof of it. Underneath the flowerhead of the Daisy is a green cushion, composed of bracts; in the Hen and Chickens Daisy some of these bracts assume the form of flowers, and are the chickens. If the plant is neglected, or does not like its soil, the chickens again become bracts.

The only other point in the botany of the Daisy that occurs to me is its geographical range. The old books are not far wrong when they say "it groweth everywhere." It does not, however, grow in the Tropics. In Europe it is everywhere, from Iceland to the extreme south, though not abundant in the south-easterly parts. It is found in North America very sparingly, and not at all in the United States. It is also by no means fastidious in its choice of position—by the river-side or on the mountain-top it seems equally at home, though it somewhat varies according to its situation, but its most chosen habitat seems to be a well-kept lawn. There it luxuriates, and defies the scythe and the mowing machine. It has been asserted that it disappears when the ground is fed by sheep, and again appears when the sheep are removed, but this requires confirmation. Yet it does not lend itself readily to gardening purposes. It is one of those—

"Flowers, worthy of Paradise, which not nice art In beds and curious knots, but Nature's boon Pour'd forth profuse on hill, and dale, and plain, Both where the morning sun first warmly smote The open field, and where the unpierc'd shade Imbrown'd the noontide bowers."

Paradise Lost, iv, 240.

Under cultivation it becomes capricious; the sorts degenerate and require much care to keep them true. As to its time of flowering it is commonly considered a spring and summer flower; but I think one of its chief charms is that there is scarcely a day in the whole year in which you might not find a Daisy in flower.

I have now gone through something of the history, poetry, and botany of the Daisy, but there are still some few points which I could not well range under either of these three heads, yet which must not be passed over. In painting, the Daisy was a favourite with the early Italian and Flemish painters, its bright star coming in very effectively in their foregrounds. Some of you will recollect that it is largely used in the foreground of Van Eyck's grand picture of the "Adoration of the Lamb," now at St. Bavon's, in Ghent. In sculpture it was not so much used, its small size making it unfit for that purpose. Yet you will sometimes see it, both in the stone and wood carvings of our old churches. In heraldry it is not unknown. When Philip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, was about to marry Margaret of Flanders, he instituted an order of Daisies; and in Chifflet's Lilium Francicum (1658) is a plate of his arms, France and Flanders quarterly surrounded by a collar of Daisies. A family named Daisy bear three Daisies on their coat of arms. In an old picture of Chaucer, a Daisy takes the place in the corner usually allotted to the coat of arms in mediaeval paintings. It was assumed as an heraldic cognizance by St. Louis of France in honour of his wife Margaret; by the good Margaret of Valois, Queen of Navarre; by Margaret of Anjou, the unfortunate wife of our Henry VI.; while our Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of our Henry VII., and dear to Oxford and Cambridge as the foundress of the Margaret Professorships, and of Christ College in Cambridge, bore three Daisies on a green turf.

To entomologists the Daisy is interesting as an attractive flower to insects; for "it is visited by nine hymenoptera, thirteen diptera, three coleoptera, and two lepidoptera—namely, the least meadow-brown and the common blue butterflies."[377:1]

In medicine, I am afraid, the Daisy has so lost its virtues that it has no place in the modern pharmacopoeia: but in old days it was not so. Coghan says "of Deysies, they are used to be given in potions in fractures of the head and deep wounds of the breast. And this experience I have of them, that the juyce of the leaves and rootes of Deysies being put into the nosethrils purgeth the brain; they are good to be used in pottage."[377:2] Gerard says, "the Daisies do mitigate all kinds of paines, especially in the joints, and gout proceeding from a hot or dry humoure, if they be stamped with new butter, unsalted, and applied upon the pained place." Nor was this all. In those days, doctors prescribed according to the so-called "doctrines of signatures," i.e., it was supposed that Nature had shown, by special marks, for what special disease each plant was useful; and so in the humble growth of the little low-growing Daisy the doctors read its uses, and here they are. "It is said that the roots thereof being boyled in milk, and given to little puppies, will not suffer them to grow great."—COLE'S Adam in Eden. One more virtue. Miss Pratt says that "an author, writing in 1696, tells us that they who wish to have pleasant dreams of the loved and absent, should put 'Dazy roots under their pillow.'"

On the English language, the Daisy has had little influence, though some have derived "lackadaisy" and "lackadaisical" from the Daisy, but there is, certainly, no connection between the words. Daisy, however, was (and, perhaps, still is) a provincial adjective in the eastern counties. A writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, ix. 261) says that Samuel Parkis, in a letter to George Chalmers, dated February 16, 1799, notices the following provincialisms: "Daisy: remarkable, extraordinary excellent, as 'She's a Daisy lass to work,' i.e., 'She is a good working girl.' 'I'm a Daisy body for pudding,' i.e., 'I eat a great deal of pudding.'"

And I must not leave the Daisy without noticing one special charm, that it is peculiarly the flower of childhood. The Daisy is one of the few flowers of which the child may pick any quantity without fear of scolding from the surliest gardener. It is to the child the herald of spring, when it can set its little foot on six at once, and it readily lends itself to the delightful manufacture of Daisy chains.

"In the spring and play-time of the year, . . . . the little ones, a sportive team, Gather king-cups in the yellow mead, And prank their hair with Daisies."—COWPER.

It is then the special flower of childhood, but we cannot entirely give it up to our children. And I have tried to show you that the humble Daisy has been the delight of many noble minds, and may be a fit subject of study even for those children of a larger growth who form the "Bath Field Club."

FOOTNOTES:

[362:1] "In the curious Treatise of the Virtues of Herbs, Royal MS. 18, a. vi, fol. 72 b, is mentioned: 'Brysewort, or Bonwort, or Daysye, consolida minor, good to breke bocches.'"—Promptorium Parvulorum, p. 52, note. See also a good note on the same word in "Babee's Book," p. 185.

[366:1] This is the general interpretation, but "decking prime" may mean the ornament of spring.

[370:1] This statement has been objected to, but I retain it, because in speaking of a meadow, I mean what is called a meadow in the south of England, a lowland, and often irrigated, pasture. In such a meadow Daisies have no place. In the North the word is more loosely used for any pasture, but in the South the distinction is so closely drawn that hay dealers make a great difference in their prices for "upland" or "meadow hay."

[372:1] "Modern Painters," vol. ii. p. 186.

[374:1] In the "Cornhill Magazine" for January, 1878, is a pleasant paper on "Dissecting a Daisy," treating a little of the Daisy, but still more of the pleasures that a Daisy gives to different people, and the different reasons for the different sorts of pleasure. See also on the same subject the "Cornhill" for June, 1882.

[377:1] Boulger in "Nature," Aug., 1878. The insects are given in Herman Muller's "Befructting der Blumen."

[377:2] "Haven of Health," 1596, p. 83.



APPENDIX II.

THE SEASONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

Biron. I like of each thing that in season grows.

Love's Labour's Lost, act i, sc. 1.

This paper was read to the New Shakespeare Society in June, 1880, and to the Bath Literary Club in the following November. The subject is so closely connected with the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare," that I add it as an Appendix.



THE SEASONS OF SHAKESPEARE'S PLAYS.

In this paper I do not propose to make any exhaustive inquiry into the seasons of Shakespeare's plays, but (at Mr. Furnivall's suggestion) I have tried to find out whether in any case the season that was in the poet's mind can be discovered by the flowers or fruits, or whether, where the season is otherwise indicated, the flowers and fruits are in accordance. In other words, my inquiry is simply confined to the argument, if any, that may be derived from the flowers and fruits, leaving out of the question all other indications of the seasons.

The first part of the inquiry is, what plants or flowers are mentioned in each play? They are as follows:—

COMEDIES.

Tempest. Apple, crab, wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, peas, briar, furze, gorse, thorns, broom, cedar, corn, cowslip, nettle, docks, mallow, filbert, heath, ling, grass, nut, ivy, lily, piony, lime, mushrooms, oak, acorn, pignuts, pine, reed, saffron, sedges, stover, vine.

Two Gentlemen of Verona. Lily, roses, sedges.

Merry Wives. Pippins, buttons (?), balm, bilberry, cabbage, carrot, elder, eringoes, figs, flax, hawthorn, oak, pear, plums, prunes, potatoes, pumpion, roses, turnips, walnut.

Twelfth Night. Apple, box, ebony, flax, nettle, olive, squash, peascod, codling, roses, violet, willow, yew.

Measure for Measure. Birch, burs, corn, garlick, medlar, oak, myrtle, peach, prunes, grapes, vine, violet.

Much Ado. Carduus benedictus, honeysuckle, woodbine, oak, orange, rose, sedges, willow.

Midsummer Night's Dream. Crab, apricots, beans, briar, red rose, broom, bur, cherry, corn, cowslip, dewberries, oxlip, violet, woodbine, eglantine, elm, ivy, figs, mulberries, garlick, onions, grass, hawthorn, nuts, hemp, honeysuckle, knot-grass, leek, lily, peas, peas-blossom, oak, acorn, oats, orange, love-in-idleness, primrose, musk-rose buds, musk-roses, rose, thistle, thorns, thyme, grapes, violet, wheat.

Love's Labour's Lost. Apple, pomewater, crab, cedar, lemon, cockle, mint, columbine, corn, daisies, lady-smocks, cuckoo-buds, ebony, elder, grass, lily, nutmeg, oak, osier, oats, peas, plantain, rose, sycamore, thorns, violets, wormwood.

Merchant of Venice. Apple, grass, pines, reed, wheat, willow.

As You Like It. Acorns, hawthorn, brambles, briar, bur, chestnut, cork, nuts, holly, medlar, moss, mustard, oak, olive, palm, peascod, rose, rush, rye, sugar, grape, osier.

All's Well. Briar, date, grass, nut, marjoram, herb of grace, onions, pear, pomegranate, roses, rush, saffron, grapes.

Taming of Shrew. Apple, crab, chestnut, cypress, hazel, oats, onion, love-in-idleness, mustard, parsley, roses, rush, sedges, walnut.

Winter's Tale. Briars, carnations, gillyflower, cork, oxlips, crown imperial, currants, daffodils, dates, saffron, flax, lilies, flower-de-luce, garlick, ivy, lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, marigold, nettle, oak, warden, squash, pines, prunes, primrose, damask-roses, rice, raisins, rosemary, rue, thorns, violets.

Comedy of Errors. Balsam, ivy, briar, moss, rush, nut, cherrystone, elm, vine, grass, saffron.

HISTORIES.

King John. Plum, cherry, fig, lily, rose, violet, rush, thorns.

Richard II. Apricots, balm, bay, corn, grass, nettles, pines, rose, rue, thorns, violets, yew.

1st Henry IV. Apple-john, pease, beans, blackberries, camomile, fernseed, garlick, ginger, moss, nettle, oats, prunes, pomegranate, radish, raisins, reeds, rose, rush, sedges, speargrass, thorns.

2nd Henry IV. Aconite, apple-john, leathercoats, aspen, balm, carraways, corn, ebony, elm, fennel, fig, gooseberries, hemp, honeysuckle, mandrake, olive, peach, peascod, pippins, prunes, radish, rose, rush, wheat.

Henry V. Apple, balm, docks, elder, fig, flower-de-luce, grass, hemp, leek, nettle, fumitory, kecksies, burs, cowslips, burnet, clover, darnel, strawberry, thistles, vine, violet, hemlock.

1st Henry VI. Briar, white and red rose, corn, flower-de-luce, vine.

2nd Henry VI. Crab, cedar, corn, cypress, fig, flax, flower-de-luce, grass, hemp, laurel, mandrake, pine, plums, damsons, primrose, thorns.

3d Henry VI. Balm, cedar, corn, hawthorn, oaks, olive, laurel, thorns.

Richard III. Balm, cedar, roses, strawberry, vines.

Henry VIII. Apple, crab, bays, palms, broom, cherry, cedar, corn, lily, vine.

TRAGEDIES.

Troilus and Cressida. Almond, balm, blackberry, burs, date, nut, laurels, lily, toadstool, nettle, oak, pine, plantain, potato, wheat.

Timon of Athens. Balm, balsam, oaks, briars, grass, medlar, moss, olive, palm, rose, grape.

Coriolanus. Crab, ash, briars, cedar, cockle, corn, cypress, garlick, mulberry, nettle, oak, orange, palm, rush, grape.

Macbeth. Balm, chestnut, corn, hemlock, insane root, lily, primrose, rhubarb, senna (cyme), yew.

Julius Caesar. Oak, palm.

Antony and Cleopatra. Balm, figs, flag, laurel, mandragora, myrtle, olive, onions, pine, reeds, rose, rue, rush, grapes, wheat, vine.

Cymbeline. Cedar, violet, cowslip, primrose, daisies, harebell, eglantine, elder, lily, marybuds, moss, oak, acorn, pine, reed, rushes, vine.

Titus Andronicus. Aspen, briars, cedar, honeystalks, corn, elder, grass, laurel, lily, moss, mistletoe, nettles, yew.

Pericles. Rosemary, bay, roses, cherry, corn, violets, marigolds, rose, thorns.

Romeo and Juliet. Bitter-sweeting, dates, hazel, mandrake, medlar, nuts, popering pear, pink, plantain, pomegranate, quince, roses, rosemary, rush, sycamore, thorn, willow, wormwood, yew.

King Lear. Apple, balm, burdock, cork, corn, crab, fumiter, hemlock, harlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, darnel, flax, hawthorn, lily, marjoram, oak, oats, peascod, rosemary, vines, wheat, samphire.

Hamlet. Fennel, columbine, crow-flower, nettles, daisies, long purples or dead-men's-fingers, flax, grass, hebenon, nut, palm, pansies, plum-tree, primrose, rose, rosemary, rue, herb of grace, thorns, violets, wheat, willow, wormwood.

Othello. Locusts, coloquintida, figs, nettles, lettuce, hyssop, thyme, poppy, mandragora, oak, rose, rue, rush, strawberries, sycamore, grapes, willow.

Two Noble Kinsmen. Apricot, bulrush, cedar, plane, cherry, corn, currant, daffodils, daisies, flax, lark's heels, marigolds, narcissus, nettles, oak, oxlips, plantain, reed, primrose, rose, thyme, rush.

This I believe to be a complete list of the flowers of Shakespeare arranged according to the plays, and they are mentioned in one of three ways—first, adjectively, as "flaxen was his pole," "hawthorn-brake," "barley-broth," "thou honeysuckle villain," "onion-eyed," "cowslip-cheeks," but the instances of this use by Shakespeare are not many; second, proverbially or comparatively, as "tremble like aspen," "we grew together like to a double cherry seeming parted," "the stinking elder, grief," "thou art an elm, my husband, I a vine," "not worth a gooseberry." There are numberless instances of this use of the names of flowers, fruits, and trees, but neither of these uses give any indication of the seasons; and in one or other of these ways they are used (and only in these ways) in the following plays:—Tempest, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Measure for Measure, Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Taming of the Shrew, Comedy of Errors, Macbeth, King John, 1st Henry IV., 2nd Henry VI., 3rd Henry VI., Henry VIII., Troilus and Cressida, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, Pericles, Othello. These therefore may be dismissed at once. There remain the following plays in which indications of the seasons intended either in the whole play or in the particular act may be traced. In some cases the traces are exceedingly slight (almost none at all); in others they are so strongly marked that there is little doubt that Shakespeare used them of set purpose and carefully:—Merry Wives, Twelfth Night, Much Ado, Midsummer Night's Dream, Love's Labour's Lost, As You Like It, All's Well, Winter's Tale, Richard II., 1st Henry IV., Henry V., 2nd Henry VI., Richard III., Timon of Athens, Antony and Cleopatra, Cymbeline, Titus Andronicus, Romeo and Juliet, King Lear, Hamlet, and Two Noble Kinsmen.

Merry Wives. Herne's oak gives the season intended—

"Herne the hunter, Sometime a keeper here in Windsor forest, Doth all the winter time at still midnight Walk round about an oak with ragged horns."

If Shakespeare really meant to place the scene in mid-winter, there may be a fitness in Mrs. Quickly's looking forward to "a posset at night, at the latter end of a sea-coal fire," for it was a "raw rheumatick day" (act iii, sc. 1), in Pistol's—

"Take heed, ere summer comes, or cuckoo birds do sing,"

in Ford's "birding" and "hawking," and in the concluding words—

"Let us every one go home, And laugh this sport o'er by a country fire" (act v, sc. 5);

but it is not in accordance with the literature of the day to have fairies dancing at midnight in the depth of winter.

Twelfth Night. We know that the whole of this play occupies but a few days, and is chiefly "matter for a May morning." This gives emphasis to Olivia's oath, "By the roses of the Spring . . . I love thee so" (act ii, sc. 4).

Much Ado. The season must be summer. There is the sitting out of doors in the "still evening, hushed on purpose to grace harmony;" and it is the time of year for the full leafage when Beatrice might

"Steal into the pleached bower, Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun, Forbid the sun to enter" (act iii, sc. 1).

Midsummer Night's Dream. The name marks the season, and there is a profusion of flowers to mark it too. It may seem strange to us to have "Apricocks" at the end of June, but in speaking of the seasons of Shakespeare and others it should be remembered that their days were twelve days later than ours of the same names; and if to this is added the variation of a fortnight or three weeks, which may occur in any season in the ripening of a fruit, "apricocks" might well be sometimes gathered on their Midsummer day. But I do not think even this elasticity will allow for the ripening of mulberries and purple grapes at that time, and scarcely of figs. The scene, however, being laid in Athens and in fairyland, must not be too minutely criticized in this respect. But with the English plants the time is more accurately observed. There is the "green corn;" the "dewberries," which in a forward season may be gathered early in July; the "lush woodbine" in the fulness of its lushness at that time; the pansies, or "love-in-idleness," which (says Gerard) "flower not onely in the spring, but for the most part all sommer thorowe, even untill autumne;" the "sweet musk-roses and the eglantine," also in flower then, though the musk-roses, being rather late bloomers, would show more of the "musk-rose buds" in which Titania bid the elves "kill cankers" than of the full-blown flower; while the thistle would be exactly in the state for "Mounsieur Cobweb" to "kill a good red-hipped humble bee on the top of it" to "bring the honey-bag" to Bottom. Besides these there are the flowers on the "bank where the wild thyme blows; where oxlips and the nodding violet grows," and I think the distinction worth noting between the "blowing" of the wild thyme, which would then be at its fullest, and the "growing" of the oxlips and the violet, which had passed their time of blowing, but the living plants continued "growing."[386:1]

Love's Labour's Lost. The general tone of the play points to the full summer, the very time when we should expect to find Boyet thinking "to close his eyes some half an hour under the cool shade of a sycamore" (act v, sc. 2).

All's Well that Ends Well. There is a pleasant note of the season in—

"The time will bring on summer, When briars will have leaves as well as thorns, And be as sweet as sharp" (act iv, sc. 4);

but probably that is only a proverbial expression of hopefulness, and cannot be pushed further.

Winter's Tale. There seems some little confusion in the season of the fourth act—the feast for the sheep-shearing, which is in the very beginning of summer—yet Perdita dates the season as "the year growing ancient"—

"Nor yet on summer's death, nor on the birth Of trembling winter"—

and gives Camillo the "flowers of middle summer." The flowers named are all summer flowers; carnations or gilliflowers, lavender, mints, savory, marjoram, and marigold.

Richard II. There are several marked and well-known dates in this play, but they are not much marked by the flowers. The intended combat was on St. Lambert's day (17th Sept.), but there is no allusion to autumn flowers. In act iii, sc. 3, which we know must be placed in August, there is, besides the mention of the summer dust, King Richard's sad strain—

"Our sighs, and they (tears) shall lodge the summer corn,"

and in the same act we have the gardener's orders to trim the rank summer growth of the "dangling apricocks," while in the last act, which must be some months later, we have the Duke of York speaking of "this new spring of time," and the Duchess asking—

"Who are the violets now That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?"

and though in both cases the words may be used proverbially, yet it seems also probable that they may have been suggested by the time of year.

2nd Henry IV. There is one flower-note in act ii, sc. 4, where the Hostess says to Falstaff, "Fare thee well! I have known thee these twenty-five years come peascod time," of which it can only be said that it must have been spoken at some other time than the summer.

Henry V. The exact season of act v, sc. 1, is fixed by St. David's day (March 1) and the leek.

1st Henry VI. The scene in the Temple gardens (act ii, sc. 4), where all turned on the colour of the roses, must have been at the season when the roses were in full bloom, say June.

Richard III. Here too the season of act ii, sc. 4, is fixed by the ripe strawberries brought by the Bishop of Ely to Richard. The exact date is known to be June 13, 1483.

Timon of Athens. An approximate season for act iv, sc. 3, might be guessed from the medlar offered by Apemantus to Timon. Our medlars are ripe in November.

Antony and Cleopatra. The figs and fig-leaves brought to Cleopatra give a slight indication of the season of act v.[388:1]

Cymbeline. Here there is a more distinct plant-note of the season of act i, sc. 3. The queen and her ladies, "whiles yet the dew's on ground, gather flowers," which at the end of the scene we are told are violets, cowslips, and primroses, the flowers of the spring. In the fourth act Lucius gives orders to "find out the prettiest daisied plot we can," to make a grave for Cloten; but daisies are too long in flower to let us attempt to fix a date by them.

Hamlet. In this play the season intended is very distinctly marked by the flowers. The first act must certainly be some time in the winter, though it may be the end of winter or early spring—"The air bites shrewdly, it is very cold." Then comes an interval of two months or more, and Ophelia's madness must be placed in the early summer, i.e., in the end of May or the beginning of June; no other time will all the flowers mentioned fit, but for that time they are exact. The violets were "all withered;" but she could pick fennel and columbines, daisies and pansies in abundance, while the evergreen rosemary and rue ("which we may call Herb of Grace on Sundays") would be always ready. It was the time of year when trees were in their full leafage, and so the "willow growing aslant the brook would show its hoar leaves in the glassy stream," while its "slivers," would help her in making "fantastic garlands" "of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples," or "dead men's fingers," all of which she would then be able to pick in abundance in the meadows, but which in a few weeks would be all gone. Perhaps the time of year may have suggested to Laertes that pretty but sad address to his sister,

"O Rose of May! Dear maid, kind sister, sweet Ophelia!"

Titus Andronicus. There is a plant-note in act ii, sc. 2—

"The trees, though summer, yet forlorn and lean, O'ercome with moss and baleful mistletoe."

Romeo and Juliet. A slight plant-note of the season may be detected in the nightly singing of the nightingale in the pomegranate tree in the third act.

King Lear. The plants named point to one season only, the spring. At no other time could the poor mad king have gone singing aloud,

"Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds, With harlock, hemlocks, nettles, cuckoo-flowers, And darnel."

I think this would also be the time for gathering the fresh shoots of the samphire; but I do not know this for certain.[389:1]

Two Noble Kinsmen. Here the season is distinctly stated for us by the poet. The scene is laid in May, and the flowers named are all in accordance—daffodils, daisies, marigolds, oxlips, primrose, roses, and thyme.

I cannot claim any great literary results from this inquiry into the seasons of Shakespeare as indicated by the flowers named; on the contrary, I must confess that the results are exceedingly small—I might almost say, none at all—still I do not regret the time and trouble that the inquiry has demanded of me. In every literary inquiry the value of the research is not to be measured by the visible results. It is something even to find out that there are no results, and so save trouble to future inquirers. But in this case the research has not been altogether in vain. Every addition, however small, to the critical study of our great Poet has its value; and to myself, as a student of the Natural History of Shakespeare, the inquiry has been a very pleasant one, because it has confirmed my previous opinion, that even in such common matters as the names of the most familiar every-day plants he does not write in a careless hap-hazard way, naming just the plant that comes uppermost in his thoughts, but that they are all named in the most careful and correct manner, exactly fitting into the scenes in which they are placed, and so giving to each passage a brightness and a reality which would be entirely wanting if the plants were set down in the ignorance of guess-work. Shakespeare knew the plants well; and though his knowledge is never paraded, by its very thoroughness it cannot be hid.

FOOTNOTES:

[386:1] If "the rite of May" (act iv, sc. 1) is to be strictly limited to May-Day, the title of a "Midsummer Night's Dream" does not apply. The difficulty can only be met by supposing the scene to be laid at any night in May, even in the last night, which would coincide with our 12th of June.

[388:1] "The Alexandrine figs are of the black kind having a white rift or Chanifre, and are surnamed Delicate. . . . Certain figs there be, which are both early and also lateward; . . . . they are ripe first in harvest, and afterwards in time of vintage; . . . . also some there be which beare thrice a year" (Pliny, Nat. Hist. b. xv., c. 18, P. Holland's translation, 1601).

[389:1] The objection to fixing the date of the play in spring is that Cordelia bids search to be made for Lear "in every acre of the high-grown field." If this can only refer to a field of corn at its full growth, there is a confusion of seasons. But if the larger meaning is given to "field," which it bears in "flowers of the field," "beasts of the field," the confusion is avoided. The words would then refer to the wild overgrowth of an open country.



APPENDIX III.

NAMES OF PLANTS.

Juliet.

What's in a name? That which we call a Rose By any other name would smell as sweet.

Romeo and Juliet, act ii, sc. 2.



NAMES OF PLANTS.

Finding that many are interested in the old names of the plants named by Shakespeare, I give in this appendix the names of the plants, showing at one view how they were written and explained by different writers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The list might have been very largely increased, especially by giving the forms used at an earlier date, but my object is to show the forms of the names in which they were (or might have been) familiar to Shakespeare. The authors quoted are these:

1440. "Promptorium Parvulorum." 1483. "Catholicon Anglicum." 1548. Turner's "Names of Herbes," and "Herbal," 1568. 1597. Gerard's "Herbal." 1611. Cotgrave's "Dictionarie."[393:1]

ACONITUM.

Turner. Aconitum.

Gerard. Of Wolfes-banes and Monkeshoods.

Cotgrave. Aconit; Aconitum, A most venemous hearbe, of two principall kindes; viz., Libbard's-bane, and Wolfe-bane.

ACORN.

Promptorium. Accorne, or archarde, frute of the oke; Glans.

Catholicon. An Acorne; haec glans dis, hec glandicula.

Cotgrave. Gland; An Acorne; Mast of Oakes or other trees.

ALMOND.

Promptorium. Almaund, frute; Amigdalum.

Catholicon. An Almond tre; amigdalus.

Turner. The Almon tree.

Gerard. The Almond tree.

Cotgrave. Amygdales; Almonds.

ALOES.

Turner. Aloe.

Gerard. Of Herbe Aloe, or Sea Houseleeke.

Cotgrave. Aloes; The hearbe Aloes, Sea Houseleeke, Sea aigreen.

APPLE.

Promptorium. Appule, frute; Pomum, malum.

Catholicon. An Appylle; pomum, malum, pomulum.

Turner. Apple tree.

Gerard. The Apple tree.

Cotgrave. Pomme; An Apple.

APRICOTS.

Turner. Abricok.

Gerard. The Aprecocke or Abrecocke tree.

Cotgrave. Abricot; The Abricot, or Apricocke Plum.

ASH.

Promptorium. Asche tre; Fraxinus.

Turner. Ashe tree.

Gerard. The Ash tree.

Cotgrave. Fraisne; An Ash tree.

ASPEN.

Promptorium. Aspe tre; Tremulus.

Turner. Asp tree.

Gerard. The Aspen tree.

Cotgrave. Tremble; An Aspe or Aspen tree.

BALM AND BALSAM.

Promptorium. Bawme, herbe or tre; Balsamus, melissa, melago.

Catholicon. Balme; balsamum, colo balsamum, filo balsamum, opobalsamum.

Turner. Baume.

Gerard. Balme or Balsam tree.

Cotgrave. Basme; Balme, balsamum, or more properly the balsamum tree, from which distils our Balme.

BARLEY.

Promptorium. Barlycorne; Ordeum, triticum.

Catholicon. Barly; Ordeum, ordeolum.

Turner. Barley.

Gerard. Of Barley.

Cotgrave. Orge; Barlie.

BARNACLE.

Catholicon. A Barnakylle; avis est.

Gerard. Of the Goose tree, Barnacle tree, or the tree bearing geese.

Cotgrave. Bernaque; The foule called a Barnacle.

BAY.

Promptorium. Bay, frute; Bacca.

Catholicon. A Bay; bacca, est fructus lauri et olive.

Turner. Bay tree.

Gerard. Of the Bay or Laurel tree.

Cotgrave. Laurier; A Laurell or Bay tree.

BEANS.

Promptorium. Bene corne; Faba.

Catholicon. A Bene; faba, fabella.

Turner. Beane.

Gerard. Beane and his kinds.

Cotgrave. Febue; A Beane.

BILBERRY.

Catholicon. A Blabery.

Cotgrave. Hurelles; Whoortle berries, wyn-berries, Bill-berries, Bull-berries.

BIRCH.

Promptorium. Byrche tre; Lentiscus, cinus.

Catholicon. Byrke; Lentiscus.

Turner. Birch tree; Birke tree.

Gerard. Of the Birch tree.

Cotgrave. Bouleau; Birche.

BLACKBERRIES.

Turner. Blake bery bush.

Gerard. Blacke-berry.

Cotgrave. Meuron; A blacke, or bramble berrie.

BOX.

Promptorium. Box tre; Buxus.

Catholicon. A Box tre; buxus buxum.

Turner. Box.

Gerard. Of the Box tree.

Cotgrave. Blanc bois; Box, &c.

BRAMBLE.

Promptorium. Brymbyll.

Turner. Bramble bushe.

Gerard. Of the Bramble or blacke-berry bush.

Cotgrave. Ronce; A Bramble or Brier.

BRIER.

Promptorium. Brere or Brymmeylle; Tribulus, vepris.

Catholicon. A Brere; carduus, tribulus, vepres, veprecula.

Turner. Brier tree.

Gerard. The Brier or Hep tree.

Cotgrave. See BRAMBLE.

BROOM.

Promptorium. Brome, brusche; Genesta, mirica.

Catholicon. Brune; genesta, merica, tramarica.

Turner. Broume.

Gerard. Broome.

Cotgrave. Genest; Broome.

BULRUSH.

Promptorium. Holrysche or Bulrysche; Papirus.

Cotgrave. Jonc; A Rush, or Bulrush.

BURS AND BURDOCK.

Catholicon. A Burre; bardona, glis, lappa, paliurus.

Turner. Clote Bur.

Gerard. Clote Burre, or Burre Docke.

Cotgrave. Bardane la grande; The burre-dock, clote, bur, great burre.

BURNET.

Turner. Burnet.

Gerard. Burnet.

Cotgrave. Pimpinelle; Burnet.

CABBAGE.

Turner. Colewurtes.

Gerard. Cabbage or Colewort.

Cotgrave. Chou Cabu; Cabbage, White Colewort, headed Colewort, leafed Cabbage, round Cabbage Cole.

CAMOMILE.

Promptorium. Camamilla.

Catholicon. Camomelle; Camomillum.

Turner. Camomyle.

Gerard. Of Cammomill.

Cotgrave. Camomille; The hearbe Camamell or Camomill.

CARNATIONS.

Gerard. Some are called Carnations.

CARRAWAYS.

Promptorium. Caraway herbe; Carwy, sic scribitur in campo florum.

Turner. Caruways.

Gerard. Of Caruwaies.

Cotgrave. Carvi; Caroways, or Caroway seed.

CARROT.

Turner. Carot.

Gerard. Of Carrots.

Cotgrave. Carote; The Carrot (root or hearbe).

CEDAR.

Promptorium. Cedyr tree; Cedrus.

Catholicon. A Cedir tre; Cedrus, Cedra; Cedrinus.

Gerard. Of the Cedar tree.

Cotgrave. Cedre; The Cedar tree.

CHERRY.

Promptorium. Chery, or Chery frute; Cerasum.

Catholicon. A Chery; Cerasum.

Gerard. The Cherry tree.

Cotgrave. Cerise; A Cherrie.

CHESTNUTS.

Promptorium. Castany, frute or tre; idem, Castanea.

Catholicon. A Chestan; balanus, Castanea.

Turner. Chesnut tree.

Gerard. The Chestnut tree.

Cotgrave. Chastaignier; A Chessen, or Chestnut, tree.

CLOVER.

Turner. Claver.

Gerard. Three-leaved grass; Claver.

Cotgrave. Treffle; Trefoil, Clover, Three-leaved Grasse.

CLOVES.

Promptorium. Clowe, spyce; Gariofolus.

Catholicon. A Clowe; garifolus, species est.

Gerard. The Clove tree.

Cotgrave. Girofle, cloux de Girofle; Cloves.

COCKLE.

Promptorium. Cokylle, wede; Nigella, lollium, zizania.

Catholicon. Cokylle; quaedam aborigo, zazannia.

Turner. Cockel.

Gerard. Cockle.

COLOQUINTIDA.

Turner. Coloquintida.

Gerard. The wilde Citrull, or Coloquintida.

Cotgrave. Coloquinthe; The wilde and fleme-purging Citrull Coloquintida.

COLUMBINE.

Promptorium. Columbyne, herbe; Columbina.

Catholicon. Columbyne; Columbina.

Gerard. Columbine.

Cotgrave. Colombin; The hearbe Colombine.

CORK.

Promptorium. Corkbarke; Cortex.

Catholicon. Corke.

Gerard. The Corke Oke.

Cotgrave. Liege; Corke.

CORN.

Promptorium. Corne; Granum, gramen.

Catholicon. Corn; Granum, bladum, annona, seges.

Gerard. Corne.

Cotgrave. Grain; Graine, Corne.

COWSLIP.

Promptorium. Cowslope, herbe; Herba petri, herba paralysis, ligustra.

Catholicon. A Cowslope; ligustrum, vaccinium.

Turner. Cowslop, Cowslip.

Gerard. Cowslips.

Cotgrave. Prime-vere; . . . a Cowslip.

CRABS.

Promptorium. Crabbe, appule or frute; Macianum.

Catholicon. A Crab of ye wod; acroma ab acritudine dictum.

Gerard. The wilding or Crabtree.

Cotgrave. Pommier Sauvage; A Crab Tree.

CROW-FLOWERS.

Promptorium. Crowefote, herbe; amarusca vel amarusca emeroydarum, pes corvi.

Turner. Crowfote.

Gerard. Crowfloures or Wilde Williams.

Cotgrave. Hyacinthe; The blew, or purple Jacint, or Hyacinth flower; we call it also, Crow-toes.

CROWN IMPERIAL.

Gerard. The Crowne Imperiall.

Cotgrave. Couronne Imperiale; The Imperial Crowne; (a goodlie flower).

CUCKOO-FLOWERS.

Gerard. Wild Water Cresses or Cuckow-floures.

Cotgrave. See LADY-SMOCKS.

CURRANTS.

Catholicon. Rasyns of Coran; uvapassa.

Turner. Rasin tree.

Gerard. Corans or Currans, or rather Raisins of Corinth.

Cotgrave. Raisins de Corinthe; Currans, or small Raisins.

CYPRESS.

Promptorium. Cypresse, tre; Cipressus.

Catholicon. A Cipirtre; cipressus, cipressimus.

Turner. Cypresse tree.

Gerard. The Cypresse tree.

Cotgrave. Cypres; The Cyprus Tree; or Cyprus wood.

DAFFODILS.

Promptorium. Affodylle herbe; Affodillus, albucea.