MECHANICAL POETRY-MAKING 177 



Some would have it that the generic title is from 

 a Celtic word, reub, signifying to tear ; however 

 that may be, we find the name Rubus applied to the 

 plant by Pliny and other venerable writers. Its 

 power of laceration is a very obvious property, as 

 hands and clothes testify readily enough after an 

 afternoon's energetic blackberrying. Poole, we see 

 in his " English Parnassus," a book published in 

 1657, applies to the bramble the following epithets : 

 scratching, sharp-hookt, idle, cumbrous, prickly, 

 entangling, briery, bushie, bristlie, biting, catching, 

 holding, rough, twisted, tearing, and rending a 

 formidable list. The book is a sort of mechanical 

 assistant to the poet in search of ideas, giving 

 alphabetically some hundreds of words and then 

 tagging to them what the author deemed appro- 

 priate prefixes. 1 Many of the noble blackberry 

 bushes that we find in the country hedges were 

 no doubt planted there, their prickly character 

 being their commendation. Thus Tusser, in his 

 advice to the farmer, tells him that he must in 

 February "ad bremble and hull" where he finds 



proceeding the boy defended it, declaring that his mother 

 would make raspberry jam of them. 



1 Thus the poet desirous of referring to the frog, if a little 

 rusty in his natural history, has at his option any one or 

 more of the following descriptive adjectives to give the 

 necessary vraisemblance : sprawling, croaking, loathsome, 

 fulsome, querulous, complaintful, noiseful, yellow, hoarse, 

 fen-haunting, shrill, babbling and gurgling. 



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