reapers, by dulling and turning the edges of their sicles in reaping of corne," a quality that would well entitle it to the epithet of "idle." The cyanus, though now infrequent, appears to have been very general in the Shaksperean age, for "it groweth," Gerard adds, "among wheat, rie, barley, and other graine."

CUCKOO-BUDS.

Shakspere's "cuckoo-buds," may safely be assumed to be the same as the "buttercups" of to-day, especially the Ranunculus acris, usually, after the great Lingua of the waterside, the tallest of its race. For there are three quite distinct species:—the acris, or common meadow buttercup; the turnip-rooted, Ranunculus bulbosus; and the creeping buttercup, Ranunculus repens. All three are extremely common, but only the two first-named are apt to give a character to the meads, and although they often grow intermingled, the acris is the most abundant in spring and early summer.

In gardens, from time immemorial, there has been a variety with double flowers, the analogue of the aconitifolius, familiarly "Fair maids of France." This double-blossomed form appears to be the rightful owner of the very old floricultural name "Bachelors' buttons." So, at least, it would appear from Lyte, who on p. 422 gives it as a second appellation of the double "gold-cup," the wild or single form of which, he adds, is very prone to change to the double state. If any other plant went commonly by

the same name in the Elizabethan age, it would be the double form of the wild red campion, Lychnis sylvestris. In any case, there can be little doubt that they were the flowers of the same ranunculus, when double, which under the contracted appellation of "buttons" were supposed in the Elizabethan age to have some magical influence upon the fortunes of lovers. A reference to them occurs in the Merry Wives of Windsor, iii., 2, "He capers, he dances, he has eyes of youth, he writes verses, he speaks holiday, he smells April and May: he will carry it, he will carry it, 'tis in his buttons, he will carry it." "He speaks holiday" means in good and polished language, just as in King Henry the Fourth we have "with many holiday and lady terms." "He smells April and May" means like the flowers of those two months.

Chapter Eighth.

WILD-THYME.

Her voice was ever soft,

Gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.
King Lear, v., 3.

HAT dainty and fragrant little denizen of sunny hedgebanks, the Thymus Serpyllum, like the two or three preceding flowers, is mentioned by Shakspere only once. The lines in which the name Occurs

having been set to music, are better known perhaps to people in general than any others in his writings:

I know a bank whereon the wild thyme blows.

Midsummer Night's Dream, ii., 2.

How much it was prized in the Elizabethan age is shown by the allusion in Shakspere's great contemporary, Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, in whose essay "On Gardens," originally published in 1597, we have

the following:-" And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes, like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air, . and those which perfume the air most delightfully, not passed by as the rest, but trodden upon and crushed, are three, burnet, wild-thyme, and water-mint." Shakspere, we may be sure, had often noticed this plant, alike as successor of the oxlip and the violet, and when in autumn it strewed its purple for him over the green slopes of airy hills, swelling into those pretty little knolls and bloomy cushions which show the lightness of the soil beneath, or hanging in rosy curtains from the crevices of jutting crags, after the sweet old fashion which in England is so entirely and purely its own.

THE DOG-ROSE.

Shakspere was not unobservant of the dog-roses of the hedge and wilderness, where the tremulous sprays and arching wreaths, covered with little pink concaves, their young hearts golden, toss themselves out with the careless grace so characteristic of this beautiful wild-flower. He speaks of the plant, or its produce, upon four distinct occasions, though in no instance by the appellation of to-day, employing, in three instances, very curiously, the name of the grub which often occupies the heart of the flower-bud-the "canker" by which the petals are

consumed while still in embryo, and which furnishes him with so many apt comparisons. Thus,-

As the most forward bud

Is eaten by the canker ere it blow,
Even so by love the young and tender wit
Is turn'd to folly; blasting in the bud,
Losing his verdure even in the prime,

And all the fair effects of future hopes.

Two Gentlemen of Verona, i., I.

So again from the lips of unhappy Constance, in King John, iii., 4:

But now will canker sorrow eat my bud,

And chase the native beauty from his cheek,

And so he'll die.

How it happened that the name of the grub was passed on to the plant does not clearly appear. Mr. H. T. Riley, in Notes and Queries (First Series, x., 153), says there was a superstition that scratches inflicted by the prickles were peculiarly harmful and difficult to heal, causing, as it were, little cancers. Be this as it may, canker is the name thrice employed by Shakspere:

The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem,
For that sweet odour that doth in it live.
The canker blooms have full as deep a dye
As the perfumèd tincture of the roses,

but they

Die to themselves.

Sweet roses do not so;

Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made.

Sonnet, liv.

Then in the beautiful passage in Much Ado, i., 3, "I had rather be a canker in a hedge than a rose in his