OF FOREST-TREES. 



345 



anxious, and transitory life, which making so fair a show for a time, is BOOK IV, 

 not yet without its thorns and crosses. 



Of this kind, and the like antiquity, we could multiply instances ; nor 

 is the custom yet altogether extinct in my own native county of Surry, 

 and near my dwelling, where the maidens yearly plant and deck the 

 graves of their defunct sweethearts with rose-bushes ; of which I have 

 given account in the learned Mr. Gibson's edition of Camden ; and for 

 the rest, see Mr. Sumner, of Garden Burial, and the learned Dr. Cave's 

 Primitive Christianity. 



And now let not what I have said concerning the pious Dr. Ham- 

 mond's Paraphrase in the Text, of Hortulan Burial, be thought foreign 

 to my subject, since it takes in the custom of it in the groves, and shady 



^ " At Ockley, in Surry, there is a certain custom, observed time out of mind, of planting 

 Rose-trees upon the graves, especially by the young men and maids who have lost their 

 lovers, so that this church-yai'd is now full of them. It is the more remarkable, because we 

 may observe it to have been anciently used both among the Greeks and Romans, who were 

 so very religious in it, that we find it often annexed as a codicil to their wills, as appears by 

 an old inscription at Ravenna, and another at Milan, by which they ordered roses to be 

 yearly strewed and planted upon their graves. Hence that of Propertius, lib. i. el. 2. im- 

 plying the usage of burying amidst roses, Et tenera poneret ossa Rosa ; and old Anacreon, 

 speaking of it, says, that it does vevcoo;? ctfAwtiv, " protect the dead." Camd. Brit. Vol. I. p. 236. 



It is the universal practice in South Wales to strew roses and all kinds of flowers over the 

 graves of their departed friends. Shakspeare has put the following lines into the mouth of 

 a young prince, who had been educated, under the care of a supposed shepherd, in that part 

 of the ishnd : 



With fairest flowers. 



Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele, 

 I'll sweeten thy sad grave. Thou shalt not lack 

 The flow'r that's like thy face, pale Primrose ; nor 

 The azur'd Hare-bell, like thy veins ; no, nor 

 The leaf Eglantine ; which not to slander, 



Out-sweeten'd not thy breath. cymbeline. 



Morestellus cites an epitaph where Publia Cornelia Annia declares, that she would not 

 survive her husband to live in a desolate widowhood, but had therefore voluntarily shut 

 herself up in his sepulchre, to remain with him, with whom she had lived twenty years in 

 peace and happiness ; and then orders her freed-men and freed-women to come every year 

 to their sepulchre, to sacrifice there to Pluto and Proserpine, to adorn the sepulchre with 

 roseS) and to feast there upon the remainder of the sacrifice. 



