The Botany of Shakespeare 223 



have used them unless he had so done, and then at last, 

 far from envying the creatures of the royal bounty, he 

 seems the rather to smile at all their pomp, as if in hold- 

 ing up the little flower he said again ' ' Even Solomon 

 in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. ' ' 



The same accuracy of detail is evinced in many other 

 places. Take, for instance, Shakespeare's description of 

 the violet all the way through. It moves him chiefly by 

 its odor: 



' ' To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, 

 To throw a perfume on the violet, 

 To smooth the ice, to add another hue 

 Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light 

 To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, 

 Is wasteful and ridiculous excess. " 



King John, iv : ii, 11. 



Nevertheless, we have violets dim, and violets blue, and 

 purple violets, and more particularly ' * blue-veined ' ' vio- 

 lets, as if the poet looked with a lens into the very throat 

 of the flower which Frenchmen call ' ' a thought. " " And 

 there is pansies that's for thoughts. " 

 His description of the elm is equally exact : 



"So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle 

 Gently entwist; the female ivy so 

 Enrings the barky fingers of the elm. " 



A Midsummer-Night 's Dream, iv : i, 47. 



There is nothing better than that, as you may prove by 

 examining the twigs of even some of our American 

 species; the cork elm, for instance. The hawthorn, the 

 cedar, and the pine and the oak especially, are most nat- 



