HOSE-BUSH. 383 



Rain-scented eglantine 



Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun." 



ENDYMIOK, p. 8. 



The Eglantine boasts that even in winter she has beauty : 



" Though of both leaf ami flower bereft, 

 Some ornaments to me are left 

 Rich store of scarlet hips is mine." 



WORDSWORTH. 



St. Pierre speaks of a sweet-briar in the land of Jesso 

 (mentioned in Thevenot's Collection of Voyages), with 

 fruit so large and nutritive, as to feed the inhabitants great 

 part of the year. 



Mr. Tighe, in the notes to his poem entitled The Plants, 

 says that some authors have supposed the common Wild 

 or Dog-rose to be the plant with which Jesus Christ was 

 crowned ; and also that it composed the bush in which the 

 angel of the Lord appeared to Moses as a flame*. 



The Eglantine has this advantage over Roses of higher 

 rank> that its foliage gives a perfume excelled by few 

 Jflowers. 



Spenser confers a distinction upon the Eglantine, or Sweet- 

 briar, which, in point of birth, would place it upon an 

 equality with the finest rose of Venus : addressing himself 

 to his indulgent father, Apollo, he says, after speaking of 

 his love for Daphne,- 



" So lovedst thou the lusty hyacinth, 

 So lovedst thou the fair Coronis dear ; 

 Yet both are of thy hapless hand extinct ; 

 Yet both in flowers do live, and love thee bear, 

 The one a paunce, the other a sweet-briar." 



Spenser's authority would certainly be sufficient in a 

 question of this kind, but that, with regard to the Pansy, 

 he is evidently mistaken ; contradicting authorities iimu- 



* See Tighe's Plants, p. 52. 



