ROSES 3 



But even these are not all, for we find a reference to the Austrian 

 brier, the Japanese Rose, the Provence Rose, the Macartney Rose, 

 the Ayrshire Rose, and the Evergreen Rose. Then we come to 

 others more forbidding, because botanical Rosa multiflora, Rosa 

 IVichuraiana, and so forth. 



There are folk who like to know something of the different 

 classes, and particularly of the Roses of great poets such as Shake- 

 speare. The Red Rose of the Bard, and his Provencal Rose, are 

 supposed to be the same, our Cabbage Rose (Rosa centifolia of 

 botanists). 



His White Rose is supposed to have been a double form of 

 the wild w r hite Rose (Rosa arvensis). 



Warwick's prophecy in connection with the scene in the 

 Temple gardens, where the flowers were plucked as party badges, 

 was fulfilled : 



"This brawl to-day 



Grown to this faction, in the Temple garden, 

 Shall send, between the Red Rose and the White, 

 A thousand souls to death and deadly night." 



Sir John Mandeville's description of Damascus : " Non other 

 cytee is not lycke in comparison to it, of fayre Gardens, and of 

 fayre desportes," prepares us for the assurance that Shakespeare's 

 Damask Rose (Rosa Damascenes) came from Damascus. We may 

 well view this Rose with double favour, for it undoubtedly served 

 as one of the several parents of the greatest of all modern 

 classes of Rose the Hybrid Perpetual. 



The Musk Rose of Shakespeare is, of course, Rosa moschata, 

 which Hakluyt tells us in his l^oiages was "procured out of Italy," 

 but is not confined to that country, as it has been found native 

 on the opposite side of the Mediterranean. The reader will recall 

 Bacon's glowing praise of this old flower: "That which above all 

 others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the Violet, next to 

 that is the Musk Rose." 



