1889 MARRIAGE OF HIS YOUNGEST DAUGHTER 101 



To Mr. W. F. Collier 



4 Maklborotjgh Place, 

 Jan. 24, 1889, 



Many thanks for your kind letter. I have as strong 

 an affection for Jack as if he were my own son, and I 

 have felt very keenly the ruin we involuntarily brought 

 upon him — by our poor darling's terrible illness and 

 death. So that if I had not already done my best to aid 

 and abet other people in disregarding the disabilities im- 

 posed by the present monstrous state of the law, I should 

 have felt bound to go as far as I could towards mending 

 his life. Ethel is just suited to liim. . . Of course I 

 could have wished that she should be spared the petty 

 annoyances which she must occasionally expect. But I 

 know of no one less likely to care for them. 



Your Shakespere parable ^ is charming — but I am afraid 

 it must be put among the endless things that are read in 

 to the "divine Williams" as the Frenchman called him. 



There was no knowledge of the sexes of plants in 

 Shakespere's time, barring some vague suggestion about 

 figs and dates. Even in the 18th century, after Linnaeus, 

 the observations of Sprengel, who was a man of genius, 

 and first properly explained the action of insects, were 

 set aside and forgotten. 



I take it that Shakespere is really alluding to the 

 " enforced chastity " of Dian (the moon). The poets 

 ignore that little Endymion business when they like ! 



I have recovered in such an extraordinary fashion 



^ The second part of the letter replies to the question whether 

 Shakespeare had any notion of the existence of the sexes in plants 

 and the part played in their fertilisation by insects, which, of 

 course, would be prevented from visiting them by rainy weather, 

 when he wrote in the Midsummer Night's Dream — 



The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye, 

 And when she weeps, weeps every little flower 

 Lamenting some enforced chastity. 



