356 THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE 
country talk, to be introduced in his own wonderful way in 
tragedies and comedies, which, while often professedly treating 
of very different times and countries, have really given us some 
of the most faithful pictures of the country life of the English¬ 
man of Queen Elizabeth’s time, drawn with all the freshness 
and simplicity that can only come from a real love of the 
subject. 
“Flowers I noted,” is his own account of himself (Sonnet 
xcix.), and with what love he noted them, and with what 
carefulness and faithfulness he wrote of them, is shown in 
every play he published, and almost in every act and every 
scene. And what I said of his notices of particular flowers 
is still more true of his general descriptions—that they are 
never laboured, or introduced as for a purpose, but that each 
passage is the simple utterance of his ingrained love of the 
country, the natural outcome of a keen, observant eye, joined 
to a great power of faithful description, and an unlimited 
command of the fittest language. It is this vividness and 
freshness that gives such a reality to all Shakespeare’s notices 
of country life, and which make them such pleasant reading to 
all lovers of plants and gardening. 
These notices of the “ Garden-craft of Shakespeare ” I now 
proceed to quote; but my quotations in this part will be made 
on a different plan to that which I adopted in the account of 
his “ Plant-lore.” I shall not here think it necessary to quote 
all the passages in which he mentions different objects of 
country life, but I shall content myself with such passages as 
throw light on his knowledge of horticulture, and which to 
some extent illustrate the horticulture of his day, and these 
passages I must arrange under a few general heads. In this 
way the second part of my subject will be very much shorter 
than my first, but I have good reasons for hoping that those 
who have been interested in the long account of the “Plant- 
lore of Shakespeare ” will be equally interested in the shorter 
account of his “ Garden-craft,” and will acknowledge that the 
one would be incomplete without the other. I commence 
with those passages which treat generally of— 
