152 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
had some special plant in view, and there are two species 
which, from contemporary writers, seem to have been most 
celebrated in his day. The one is the pure White Lily (Lilium 
candidum ), a plant of which the native country is not yet quite 
accurately ascertained. It is reported to grow wild in abund¬ 
ance in Lebanon, and it probably came to England from the 
East in very early times. It was certainly largely grown in 
Europe in the Middle Ages, and was universally acknowledged 
by artists, sculptors, and architects, as the emblem of female 
elegance and purity, and none of us would dispute its claim to 
such a position. There is no other Lily which can surpass it, 
when well grown, in stateliness and elegance, with sweet- 
scented flowers of the purest white and the most graceful 
shape, and crowning the top of the long leafy stem with such 
a coronal as no other plant can show. On the rare beauties 
and excellences of the White Lily it would be easy to fill a 
volume merely with extracts from old writers, and such a 
volume would be far from uninteresting. Those who wish for 
some such account may refer to the “ Monographic Historique 
et Litteraire des Lis,” par Fr. de Cannart d’Hamale, 1870. 
There they will find more than fifty pages of the botany, literary 
history, poetry, and medical uses of the plant, together with its 
application to religious emblems, numismatics, heraldry, paint¬ 
ing, &c. Two short extracts will suffice here :—“ Le lis blanc, 
surnomme la fleur des fleurs, les delices de Venus, la Rose de 
Junon, qu’Anguillara designa sous le nom d’Ambrosia, pro- 
bablement a cause de son parfum suivant, et peut etre aussi de 
sa soidisante divine origine, se place tout naturellement a le 
tete de ce groupe splendide.” “ (Test le Lis classique, par 
excellence, et en meme temps le plus beau du genre.” 
The other is the large Scarlet or Chalcedonian Lily; and 
this also is one of the very handsomest, though its beauty is 
of a very different kind to the White Lily. The habit of the 
plant is equally stately, and is indeed very grand, but the 
colours are of the brightest and clearest red. These two 
plants were abundantly grown in Shakespeare’s time, but 
besides these there do not seem to have been more than about 
