78 Fruits and Fruit-Trees. 



wild form of the tree. In the Elizabethan age the fruit 

 was so common that the boys had a game they called 

 " cherry-pit," played with the stones. Shakspere gives it 

 a worthier place than is allowed to any other. The allu- 

 sions to fruits are almost always found in lines written 

 not from his own rich heart these we always know on 

 the instant by their wisdom and grace but in such as 

 stage necessities demanded, the lines required by that 

 mean section of mankind which cares only to be made 

 laugh. Not so when we come to the cherry. Here he is 

 jocular no longer, but in every instance delicate if not 

 poetical. How lovely the picture painted by Helena, in 

 the Midsummer Night's Dream, when delineating the 

 mutual love between herself and Hermia in the days of 

 their girlhood, now so sadly discomposed. If one senti- 

 ment more than another was specially dear to Shakspere 

 it was the sanctity of friendship : 



"O, and is all forgot ? 



All schooldays' friendship, childhood innocence ? 

 We, Hermia, like two artificial* gods, 

 Have with our neelds created both one flower, 

 Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion, 

 Both warbling of one song, both in one key, 

 As if our hands, our sides, voices, and minds 

 Had been incorporate. So we grew, together, 

 Like to a double cherry, seeming parted, 

 But yet a union in partition ; 

 Two lovely berries moulded on one stem ; 

 So, with two seeming bodies, but one heart, 



*" Artificial," here curiously employed in the sense of skilful, 

 ingenious. 



