PREFACE. xxxv 



Either to be divided from the place 

 On which it grew, or to be left alone 

 To its own beauty." 



On some occasions it has been necessary not only to cast 

 aside the hedge-flowers of poetry, but also to pass by the 

 roses. Even Chaucer, so copious are his praises of some of 

 his favourite flowers, we could not venture to quote so in- 

 satiably as inclination would lead us. Most of our best 

 poets have touched upon the beauty of flowers, more 

 or less : Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and Shakspeare, the 

 great poetic luminaries of our island. 



the sages 



Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages," 



have all dwelt largely on them. Ben Jonson, too, and 

 Beaumont and Fletcher, Drayton, Dryden, Thomson, 

 Cowper, &c. In our own times, Wordsworth, Byron, 

 Moore, Hunt, Keats, Scott, Montgomery, Cornwall, and 

 Clare, have revelled in them like bees. It has been re- 

 marked as a defect in Pope, that he says little or nothing, 

 in his poems, of the works of nature ; and it does appear an 

 extraordinary thing in a poet, so tremblingly alive to beauty 

 in every shape as poets naturally are, and necessarily must 

 be. Pope was a poet for the drawing-room ; but there are 

 few even among ungifted individuals totally insensible to 

 the soothing influence of flowers and trees : 



" The enamelled earth, that from her verdant breast 

 Lavished spontaneously ambrosial flowers, 

 The very sight of which can soothe to rest 

 A thousand cares, and charm our sweetest hours." 



GARCILASSO. 



ce This lucid fount, whose murmurs fill tbs mind, 

 The verdant forests waving with the wind, 

 The odours wafted from the mead, the viewers 

 In which the wild bee sits and sings for hours ; 



