PLANT-LORE OF SHAKESPEARE 
299 
cordial smell.” In Mrs. GaskelFs pretty tale, “ My Lady 
Ludlow,” the dying Strawberry leaves act an important part. 
“The great hereditary faculty on which my lady piqued 
herself, and with reason, for I never met with any other person 
who possessed it, was the power she had of perceiving the 
delicious odour arising from a bed of Strawberry leaves in the 
late autumn, when the leaves were all fading and dying.” The 
old lady quotes Bacon, and then says : “ ‘ Now the Hanburys 
can always smell the excellent cordial odour, and very delicious 
and refreshing it is. In the time of Queen Elizabeth the great 
old families of England were a distinct race, just as a cart¬ 
horse is one creature and very useful in its place, and Childers 
or Eclipse is another creature, though both are of the same 
species. So the old families have gifts and powers of a differ¬ 
ent and higher class to what the other orders have. My dear, 
remember that you try and smell the scent of dying Strawberry 
leaves in this next autumn, you have some of Ursula Hanbury’s 
blood in you, and that gives you a chance.’ ‘ But when October 
came I sniffed, and sniffed, and all to no purpose; and my 
lady, who had watched the little experiment rather anxiously, 
had to give me up as a hybrid’” (“Household Words,” xviii.). 
On this I can only say in the words of an old writer, “A rare 
and notable thing, if it be true, for I never proved it, and 
never tried it; therefore, as it proves so, praise it.” 1 Spenser 
also mentions the scent, but not of the leaves or fruit, but of 
the flowers— 
“ Comming to kisse her lyps (such grace I found), 
Me seem’d I smelt a garden of sweet flowres 
That dainty odours from them threw around : 
• •••••• 
Her goodly bosome, lyke a Strawberry bed, 
• • • • • • « 
Such fragrant flowres doe give most odorous smell.” 2 
Sonnet lxiv. 
1 “Quae neque confirmare argumentis neque refellere in animo est ; ex 
ingenio suo quisque demat vel addat fidem.”— Tacitus. 
2 The flowers of Fragaria htcida are slightly violet-scented, but I know 
of no Strawberry flower that can be said to “give most odorous smell.” 
