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 perfumed 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

grace," which means, "I would rather live in privacy the simple and honest life of nature than be dependent on the favours of a prince." Lastly, in metaphorical use, in 1st Henry the Fourth, i., 3, we have

To put down Richard, that sweet, lovely rose,

And plant this thorn, this canker, Bolingbroke.

The remaining allusion is to the fruit, so rich and glowing in late October, when the fall of the leaf gives full view of the innumerable little urns:

The oaks bear mast, the briars scarlet hips.

Timon of Athens, iv., 3.

"Briar" always signifies, primarily, the plant before us, the common wild rose of the hedges. In two or three Shaksperean lines it denotes the garden or cultivated rose, as will be noticed in due course.

Occurring in

nearly a dozen places besides, with one exception, it points everywhere else, in part at least, to the Rosa canina.

THE EGLANTINE.

In the instance referred to, "briar" denotes that delightful species of Rosa which possesses, in addition to deephued flowers, the excellent recommendation of scented foliage, whence the familiar epithet of "sweet." In respect of this union of characters, the sweet-briar or eglantine (the latter name, through curious French descent, from the Latin aculeus, a prickle) has no rival among its kindred, and scarcely anywhere in botanical

nature. Being an indigenous plant, not rare in hedges and thickets, Shakspere quite probably knew it as such, though more commonly as an inmate of the garden, where it always had a place. The old poets introduce it constantly in their pictures of garden pleasures.* Chaucer gives the name of eglantine to one of his ladies. Twice in Shakspere himself, it comes in under the latter appellation, helping, in the Midsummer Night's Dream, to "over-canopy" the bank "whereon the wild thyme. blows;" and serving in Cymbeline for the beautiful comparison already quoted, when with Cytherea and the violet, here connected still more elegantly with Imogen—

Thou shalt not lack

The flower that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
The azur'd harebell, like thy veins; no, nor

The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweetened not thy breath.

The simpler name occurs in All's Well that Ends Well, that wonderful play which, if less abounding in sweet and grand poetic imagery and description than the other

* Thus

I would make cabinets for thee, my love-
Sweet-smelling arbours made of eglantine.

Barnfield. The Affectionate Shepherd.
Art, striving to compare

With Nature, did an arbour green dispread,
Framed of wanton Ivie, flow'ring faire,
Through which the fragrant Eglantine did spread
His prickling arms, entrayl'd with Roses red,
Which dainty odours round about them threw ;
And all within with flowers was garnished,

That, when mild Zephyrus amongst them blew,

Did breathe out bounteous smells, and painted colours shew.

Spenser. The Bower of Bliss.