20 THE FRUITS OF THE COUNTRY-SIDE 



plant,^ has a basis of very distinct prose indeed ; to tear 

 one's clothes, to lacerate one's fingers, being proceedings 

 that carry very little suggestion of sentiment with them. 



Sweet is the rose, but grows upon a brere, 

 Sweet is the eglantine, but pricketh nere,' 



The plant was often transplanted to the garden, thus 

 Spenser tells us how 



Art striving to compayre 



With Nature did an arber green dispred, 



and in this goodly bower of " wanton yvie " and other 

 plants, a place of honour was bestowed on 



The fragrant Eglantine which spred 



Her prickling armes, embrayled with roses red. 



Which daintie odours round about them threw ; 



And all within with flowres was garnished, 



That when wild Zephyrus amongst them blew. 



Did breth out bounteous smels, and painted colours shew. 



Chaucer, too, writes of one who sat embowered, not in 

 "wanton yvie," but in a cool recess of which " greene laurey 

 tree " was a notable feature, but which yielded also 



A delicious smell. 



According to the eglentere full well. 



In another passage in the same poem, 'The Flowre and 

 the Leafe, we find that 



' The Latin word for a prickle is aculcus. Softened in old French into the 

 adjective aiglent, from aailentus, covered with prickles, we arrive by easy 

 stages to aigleniier and the modern French eglantier. We must remember 

 that after the Norman Conquest French was the language of culture in 

 England for centuries. 



' Spenser. Sonnet 26. 



