286 FLORA DOMESTICA. 



" His garment was every dele 

 Ipurt-raied, and wrought with floures. 

 By divers medeling of coloures ; 

 Floures there were of inany gise 

 Iset by compace in a sise ; 

 There lacked no floure to my dome, 

 Ne not so moche as floure of brome, 

 Ne violet, ne eke pervinke, 

 Ne floure none that men can on thinke ; 

 And many a rose lefe full long 

 Was intennedlid there emong ; 

 And also on his hedde was set 

 Of roses redde a chapilet." 



The Romaunt of the Rose. 



Again in the same poem, the poet, in describing a gar- 

 den where flowers of all seasons are met together, gives a 

 place to the Perwinkle : 



" There sprange the violet al newe. 

 And fresh pervinke, rich of hewe. 

 And flouris yelowe, white, and rede ; 

 Suche plente grewe there ner in mede : 

 Ful gaie was all the grounde and queint. 

 And poudrid as men had it peint. 

 With many a freshe and sondry floure. 

 That castin up ful gode savour." 



Rousseau has, to his admirers, given the Perwinkle a 

 double interest. He tells us, that walking with Madame 

 Waren, she suddenly exclaimed, " There is the Perwinkle 

 yet in flower." Being too short-sighted to see the plant 

 on the earth without stooping, he had never observed the 

 Perwinkle : he gave it a, passing glance, and saw it no 

 more for thirty years. At the end of that period, as he 

 was walking with a friend, " having then begun," he 

 says, " to herborise a little, in looking among the bushes 

 by the way, I uttered a cry of joy : ' Ah, there is the Per- 

 winkle !' and it was so." He gives this as an instance of 

 the vivid recollection he had of every incident occurring 

 at a particular period of his life. The incident is so na- 

 tural, and told with so much simplicity, that, trifling as it 



