2 
LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS. 
Shakspeare has evinced in several of his plays 
a knowledge and a love of flowers, hut in no in¬ 
stance has he shewn his taste and judgment in 
the selection of them with greater effect than in 
forming the coronal wreath of the lovely maniac, 
Ophelia. The Queen describes the garland as 
composed of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and 
long-purples ; and there can he no question that 
Shakspeare intended them all to have an em¬ 
blematic meaning. 
The crow-flower is a species of lychnis, alluded 
to by Drayton in his Polyolbion. The common 
English name is meadow lychnis, or meadow 
campion. It is sometimes found double in our 
hedge-rows, hut more commonly in France; 
and in this form we are told by Parkinson it 
was called The Fayre Mayde of France. It is 
to this name and to this variety that Shakspeare 
alludes in Hamlet. 
The long-purples are commonly called dead 
men’s hands, or fingers. 
“ Our cold maids do dead men’s fingers call them.” 
The daisy (or day’s eye) imports the pure 
virginity or spring of life, as being itself the 
virgin bloom of the year. 
