136 THE MUSIC OF WILD FLOWERS 



distinct, and so far as this country is concerned is con- 

 fined to certain localities in East Anglia, of which 

 Saffron Walden seems to be the headquarters. 



I know of one wood or spinney in Essex, a favourite 

 haunt of my early days, where the oxlip is the character- 

 istic plant. So abundant is it in May that the spinney 

 might not inappropriately be called Oxlip Spinney. 

 Not but what other species are to be found there. The 

 primrose, it is true, is absent, as is often the case in 

 those places where the oxlip dwells, but the ordinary 

 spring flowers are abundant. Sheets of bluebells may 

 be seen, and the twayblade and the purple orchis and 

 the delicate little wood-sorrel, and there, if I remember 

 rightly, I found my first bird's-nest orchis. But the 

 pride of the spinney is the oxlip. It is a wood, more- 

 over, of literary associations. Turning the other day 

 to my old copy of Quarles' Emblems, I noticed that one 

 set of commendatory verses, placed at the beginning of 

 the volume, were written by the eccentric poet, Edward 

 Benlowes, and that he dated his strange Latin effusion 

 from " Brent Hall," in the year 1634. Brent Hall was 

 the paternal seat of the Benlowes, and the oxlip spinney 

 is situated just beyond the old family mansion and 

 formed part of the ancestral estate. It is interesting 

 to associate the wood with Quarles and Benlowes. The 

 two poets were intimate friends, and Quarles often 

 stayed at Brent Hall. He dedicated the Emblems to 

 his " mucK honoured and no less truly beloved friend, 

 Edward Benlowes, Esq re ," and according to tradition 

 he wrote many of the verses at Brent Hall. It will, 

 moreover, be remembered by lovers of old books that 

 in one early edition of the Emblems there is a quaint 

 illustration of the terrestrial globe, on which four place 



