48 THE OLD ENGLISH HERBALS 



There is no record to show that Bartholomew the EngHsh- 

 man was a gardener, but we can hardly doubt that the man 

 who described flowers with such loving care possessed a garden 

 and worked in it. The Herbarius zu Teutsch might have been 

 written in a study, but there is fresh air and the beauty of the 

 living flowers in Bartholomew's writings. Of the lily he says : 

 " The Lely is an herbe wyth a whyte floure. And though the 

 levys of the floure be whyte yet wythen shyneth the lyknesse 

 of golde." Bartholomew may have known nothing of the 

 modern science of botany, but he knew how to describe not only 

 the lily, but also the atmosphere of the lily, in a word-picture 

 of inimitable simplicity and beauty. One feels instinctively 

 that only a child or a great man could have written those lines. 

 And is there not something unforgettable in these few words on 

 the unfolding of a rose — " And whane they [the petals] ben 

 full growen they sprede theymselues ayenst the sonne rysynge " ? 



The chapter on the rose is longer than most, and is so 

 deUghtful that I quote a considerable part of it. '*The rose 

 of gardens is planted and sette and tylthed as a vyne. And if 

 it is forgendred and not shred and pared and not clensed of 

 superfluyte : thene it gooth out of kynde and chaungeth in to a 

 wylde rose. And by oft chaunging and tylthing the wylde rose 

 torneth and chaugith into a very rose. And the rose of ye 

 garden and the wylde rose ben dyuers in multitude of floures : 

 smelle and colour : and also in vertue. For the leves of the 

 wylde rose ben fewe and brode and whytyssh : meddlyd wyth 

 lytyll rednesse : and smellyth not so wel as the tame rose, 

 nother is so vertuous in medicyn. The tame rose hath many 

 leuys sette nye togyder : and ben all red, other almost white : 

 w* wonder good smell. . . . And the more they ben brused and 

 broken : the vertuouser they ben and the better smellynge. 

 And springeth out of a thorne that is harde and rough : netheles 

 the Rose folowyth not the kynde of the thorne : But she arayeth 

 her thorn wyth fayr colour and good smell. Whan ye rose 

 begynneth to sprynge it is closed in a knoppe wyth grenes : 



