2 FAMILIAR WILD FLOH'JtS. 



Under its older name of eglantine we find its praises 

 sung by many poets. . The botanist may possibly at times 

 in his analysis and dissection run some little risk of losing 

 the sense of the living beauty of the blossom that he 

 demolishes in his search after structure and systematised 

 facts, while the poet and artist, less concerned with techni- 

 calities, and often really ignorant of much that is wonderful 

 in the adaptations of means to ends, do, nevertheless, by 

 a few touches, picture to us this living beauty. How 

 redolent and appreciative, for example, are these lines of 

 Shenstone : 



" Come, gentle air ! and while the thickets bloom 

 * # * * 



Convey the woodbine's rieh perfume, 

 Nor spare the sweet-leaved eglantine." 



How we find them recalling to us some woodland glade, 

 blossoming in all the wealth of the summer, and the 

 scarcely moving air bearing to us the rich fragrance of 

 the honeysuckle clusters ! In Spenser, too, we read 

 " Sweet is the eglantine ; " and Drayton again calls it 

 "sweetest eglantine." Milton, in one very familiar 

 passage, introduces the plant not only by its two names, 

 but as though two distinct flowers were intended 



" At my window bid good-morrow, 

 Through the sweet-briar, or the vine, 

 Or the twisted eglantine." 



Here, we are afraid, with all deference to so great a 

 poet, we can only feel that he has fallen into an error 

 the " twisted " woodbine or honeysuckle being probably 

 intended, as its long rope-like stems, twining round 

 each other, would make the epithet he uses a very appro- 

 priate one. Shakespeare introduces the two plants very 



