130 
SHAKESPEARE’S GARDEN 
well-known to be, and those who declared that this 
notion was absurd and impossible, among whom 
Bacon and Gerard ranked themselves. 
One other evergreen merits a place here, not only 
on account of its ancient reputation, when it shared 
as the predominant partner with ivy the honour of 
forming the poet’s crown, but on account of its 
graceful form and delicate fragrance, as well as its 
Christmastide usage — I mean the bay (Laurus 
nohilis , L.). 
It cannot be too much insisted upon that Shake¬ 
speare nowhere mentions the shrub grown so com¬ 
monly in our gardens and shrubberies to-day, that 
which we call the laurel, a name derived from the 
Latin laurellus , and applied, Prior tells us, to many 
evergreen shrubs, though originally solely to the 
classical laurel or bay. The common laurel of our 
gardens is Cerasus laurocerasus , D.C. ; the laurustinus 
( Viburnum Tinas, L.). In this connection can we help 
uttering a protest against such learned and august 
bodies as the trustees of Shakespeare’s birthplace, 
and others offering garlands of this foreign plum, 
which was not introduced until 1629, on such cere¬ 
monial occasions as the memorial service in Shake¬ 
speare’s church, or as a tribute to the memory of 
Goethe at his memorial festival ? 
The curious allusion in Richard II., II. iv. 7 when 
Salisbury says: 
’Tis thought the King is dead ; we will not stay, 
The bay-trees in our country are all withered, 
is difficult to understand, since there is no folk-saying 
of the kind known at the present day—at least, so far 
as the writer has seen. 
There is little difficulty with the second allusion: 
bays were and are used to crown the boar’s head at 
Winchester College, and were among the the ever- 
