In My Vicarage Garden 



of the other there are some very interesting 

 points. 



It would be very interesting if we could find 

 out when this rose first appeared in England. 

 There is no certain record of it, but I am inclined 

 to think that it was not seen in English gardens 

 before the latter part of the sixteenth century. 

 Before that time all roses are described as either 

 red or white. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, in the 

 fourteenth century, distinctly says that all English 

 roses were so, entirely red or very white (omnino 

 rubra vel omnino albissima) ; and this is curiously 

 shown by the fact that in all the descriptions of 

 female beauty before that time the pink of the 

 face and lips is always derived from the rose, but 

 the white from the lily, but after that time the 

 variegated rose is naturally used (as by Shake- 

 speare) for the more perfect similitude. The only 

 poet or writer, as far as I know, that mentions 

 the red and white rose earlier than Shakespeare 

 is the Scotch poet, Dunbar, who wrote at the end 

 of the fifteenth and beginning of the sixteenth 

 century, and he says : 



Nor hold none other flower in sic dainty 

 As the fresh rose of color red and white. 



Dunbar was a traveller, and may have seen the 

 rose in foreign countries, but I think it doubtful, 

 and think the " rose of color red and white " may 

 mean red and white roses, and not red and white 

 in one rose. But towards the end of the century 



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