THE BOTANY OF SHAKESPEARE. 225 



Primroses when pale are the palest of all withering plants. The 

 flowers change color with maturity, especially after fertilization. 

 The paleness of the primrose is the pallor of decay. But the azure 

 harebell — behold it waving on its slender stipe beneath the shade of 

 some great rock — ^who can look into its delicate cerulean cup again 

 and not bethink him of the blue-veined eyelid sleep that falls upon 

 our human flowers ! 



The same accuracy of detail is evinced in many other places. 

 Take, for instance, Shakespeare's description of the violet all the 

 way through. It moves him chiefly by its odor (King John, iv, 2) : 



" To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 

 To throw a perfume on the violet. 

 To smooth the ice, to add another hue 

 Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 

 To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish. 

 Is wasteful and ridiculous excess." 



Nevertheless, we have violets dim, and violets blue, and purple 

 violets, and more particularly " blue-veined " violets, as if the poet 

 looked with a lens into the very throat of the flower which French- 

 men call a thought. " And there is pansies — that's for thoughts." 

 His description of the elm is equally exact (Midsummer-Night's 

 Dream, iv, 1, 47-49) : 



" So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 

 Gently en twist ; the female ivy so 

 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm." 



There is nothing better than that, as you may prove by examining 

 the twigs of even some of our American species; the cork elm, for 

 instance. The hawthorn, the cedar, and the pine and the oak espe- 

 cially, are most naturally treated. These are Shakespeare's familiar 

 trees. The cedar of Shakespeare is the cedar of Lebanon, com- 

 monly planted throughout Europe since the time of the Crusades. 

 Shakespeare had probably seen specimens in England. He uses it 

 as the type of all that is great and fine. One author thinks he 

 copies Ezekiel, chapter xxxi. The pine was beside him all the 

 while. He knew the secret of the pine knot, and well describes it 

 (Troilus and Cressida, i, 3): 



"... checks and disasters 

 Grow in the veins of actions highest reared, 

 As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap, 

 Deflect the sound pine and divert his grain 

 Tortive and errant from his course of growth." 



Any one who has ever examined the case, or even one who has 

 handled knotty lumber, has seen the wood fiber run around the per- 

 sistent base of some dead limb, and can appreciate these lines. 



VOL. LV. 18 



