^ Introduction (j£ 



And I love the passage in the Paradisus, where the lives 

 of ' vertuous men ' are compared to the fragrance of 

 flowers : ' That as many herbes and flowers with their 

 fragrant sweet smels doe comfort and as it were revive 

 the Spirits and perfume a whole house ; even so such men 

 as live vertuously, labouring to doe good, and to profit the 

 Church of God and the commonwealth doe as it were 

 send forth a pleasing savour of sweet instructions, not 

 only to that time wherein they live and are fresh, but 

 being drye, withered and dead, cease not in all after 

 ages to doe as much or more.' 



1 Farewell, dear flowers ; sweetly your time ye spent, 

 Fit, while ye lived, for smell or ornament, 



And after death for cures. 

 I follow straight, without complaints or grief ; 

 Since, if my scent be good, I care not if 



It be as short as yours.' 



' There be some flowers make a delicious Tussie-Mussie 

 or Nosegay both for sight and smell.' Thus John Parkin- 

 son in his Paradisus. Is there, I wonder, any part where 

 this pleasant and expressive old word for nosegay is still 

 used ? The word is suggestive of the generous bunches of 

 sweet-smelling flowers wherewith cottage- folk delight to 

 load their friends who have the misfortune to live in 

 towns. We all know those delicious bunches — in the 

 spring wallflowers and bunch primroses, honesty, colum- 

 bines, Solomon's seal and lilac ; in the summer a peony or 

 two, roses and pinks, gardener's garter, valerian, honey- 

 suckle, lad's love, ferns, sweet rocket and London pride, 

 and later roses again with pansies, thyme, marigolds, ber- 

 gamot, lavender, Aaron's rod and phlox. Who would 

 exchange one of these posies for the most faultlessly and 



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