THE BOTANY OF SHAKESPEARE. 223 



" Under an oak, whose boughs were mossed with age 

 And high top bald with dry antiquity." 



Then again he simply touches them, but in such a way as to re- 

 veal his full appreciation of their beauty, as in Cymbeline, iv, 2. 

 For the decoration of Imogen's grave the ruddock would bring 

 flowers 



"... bring thee all this ; 



Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none, 

 To winter-ground thy corse." 



The " furred moss " to " winter-ground thy corse " is exquisite. 



Ferns, though so much larger, so handsome, and in our day so 

 all-attractive, failed generally to impress our fathers. 



Butler, writing in 1670, has this to say: 



" They spring like fern, that infant weed, 

 Equivocally without a seed, 

 And have no possible foundation 

 But merely in th' imagination." 



Now, as far as Shakespeare was concerned, ferns answered his pur- 

 pose without seed just as well as with. such, visible means of perpe- 

 tuity. His only reference is I Henry, iv, where Gadshill says : 



" We have the receipt of fern-seed, we walk invisible " ; 

 and Chamberlain replies : 



" Nay, by my faith, I think you are more belonging to the 

 Night than to fern-seed for your walking invisible." 



In this connection Ellacombe suggests the doctrine of signatures. 

 The God of Nature had written for us his human children prescrip- 

 tions all over the leafy world. The remedy indicated by its form its 

 own application. Thus a heart-shaped leaf was good medicine for 

 cardiac troubles, a lung-like leaf was good for consumption, a lung- 

 wort in fact, and so a liverwort, a spleenwort, and the like. Gerarde, 

 and, in fact, all the old medical writers throughout the centuries, are 

 full of this. Now, what more natural than that a plant which could 

 thus perpetuate itself age after age by means invisible should be able 

 to confer the much-sought gift of invisibility, the power to disap- 

 pear and reappear at pleasure? Many people so believed. Shakes- 

 peare appears to have been skeptical. 



Turn we now to the flowering plants : the amount of material at 

 our disposal, as already indicated, is immense. Shakespeare was evi- 

 dently a great lover of flowers simply as such. His pages from first 

 to last are ornate with color, almost redolent of roses, lilies, eglantine, 

 with every conceivable metaphor and trope " the bud of love," the 

 " nettle of danger," the " flower of safety." Their lovely shapes are 



