224 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



ever before liim ; he is spellbound witli tlieir beauty. " England itself 

 is a sea-walled garden." Grammatical forms may vanish, if only 

 the flower may live. Compare Cymbeline, ii, 3 : 



" Hark, hark ! the lark at heaven's gate sings. 

 And Phoebus 'gins arise. 

 His steeds to water at those springs 

 On chaHced flowers that Zies." 



The image of the morning flowers, the fiery steeds that drink them 

 dry, shall fascinate us so that we forget the grammar. It will not 

 do to say lie; the word must rhyme with " arise," and further on 

 with '* eyes " : 



" And winking Mary-buds begin 

 To ope their golden eyes : 

 With everything that pretty is, 

 My lady sweet arise." 



For the Queen of the Fairies he spreads this sort of a couch : 



" I know a bank where the wild thyme blows. 

 Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows. 

 Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine. 

 With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine: 

 There sleeps Titania sometime of the night, 

 Lulled in these flowers with dances and delight," etc. 



Such cases reveal the impress, the healthy, happy impress which I^a- 

 ture could exercise on this the foremost man of all the world, the 

 harmony between ^Nature and Nature's child. All the plants in the 

 last quotation are wild flowers, except the musk-roses, and these are 

 so common in England as to be almost wild. The eglantine was the 

 sweetbrier, said to be wild in all the southern part of the island and 

 popular in the literature of all recorded centuries. Gerarde describes 

 as follows : " The leaves are glittering, of beautiful green color, of 

 smell most pleasant, i. . . The fruit when it is ripe maketh most 

 pleasant meats, and banqueting dishes, as tarts and such like, the 

 making whereof I commit to the cunning cook, and teeth to eat 

 them in the rich man's mouth." 



The sweetness of the leaf of the eglantine is referred to by Shakes- 

 peare in another passage which I venture to quote now for another 

 purpose, to show the accuracy of his description as applied to simple 

 flow'ers. The lines are from the scene quoted before. Arviragus 

 and Guidcrius would bury the swooning Imogen. They think her 

 dead (Cymbeline, iv, 2) : 



" I'll sweeten thy sad grave : thou shalt not lack 

 The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor 

 The azured harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor 

 The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander. 

 Out-sweetened not thy breath." 



