270 
PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
in Holborn in 24 Edw. I, the only flowers named are Roses, of 
which a quantity was sold, producing three shillings and two¬ 
pence.”— Hudson Turner. 
My space forbids me to enter more largely into any account 
of these old species, or to say much of the many very interesting 
points in the history of the Rose, but two or three points con¬ 
nected with Shakespeare’s Roses must not be passed over. 
First, its name. He says through Juliet (No. 36) that the 
Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But the whole 
world is against him. Rose was its old Latin name corrupted 
from its older Greek name, and the same name, with slight and 
easily-traced differences, has clung to it in almost all European 
countries. 
Shakespeare also mentions its uses in Rose-water and Rose- 
cakes, and it was only natural to suppose that a flower so 
beautiful and so sweet was meant by Nature to be of great use 
to man. Accordingly we find that wonderful virtues were 
attributed to it, 1 and an especial virtue was attributed to the 
dewdrops that settled on the full-blown Rose. Shakespeare 
alludes to these in Nos, 22 and 27 ; and from these were made 
cosmetics only suited to the most extravagant. 
“ The water that did spryng from ground 
She would not touch at all, 
But washt her hands with dew of Heaven 
That on sweet Roses fall.” 
The Lamentable Fall of Queen Ellinor .—Roxburghe Ballads. 
And as with their uses, so it was also with their history. 
Such a flower must have a high origin, and what better origin 
than the pretty mediaeval legend told to us by Sir John Man- 
deville ?—“ At Betheleim is the Felde Floridus, that is to seyne, 
the Feld florischcd; for als moche as a fayre mayden was 
blamed with wrong and sclaundered, for whiche cause sche 
was demed to the Dethe, and to be brent in that place, to the 
whiche she was ladd ; and as the Fyre began to brent about 
hire, sche made hire preyeres to oure Lord, that als wissely as 
“A Rose beside his beauty is a cure.”—G. Herbert, Providence, 
