_Love's Labour's Lost_, act v, sc. 2 (633).[56:1]

As a mention of a vegetable product, I could not omit this passage, but
the reference is only to the imported spice and not to the tree from
which then, as now, the Clove was gathered. The Clove of commerce is the
unexpanded flower of the Caryophyllus aromaticus, and the history of its
discovery and cultivation by the Dutch in Amboyna, with the vain
attempts they made to keep the monopoly of the profitable spice, is
perhaps the saddest chapter in all the history of commerce. See a full
account with description and plate of the plant in "Bot. Mag.," vol. 54,
No. 2749.

FOOTNOTES:

[56:1] "But then 'tis as full of drollery as ever it can hold; 'tis like
an orange stuck with Cloves as for conceipt."--_The Rehearsal_, 1671,
act iii, sc. 1.

COCKLE.

(1) _Biron._

Allons! allons! sowed Cockle reap'd no Corn.

_Love's Labour's Lost_, act iv, sc. 3 (383).

(2) _Coriolanus._

We nourish 'gainst our senate
The Cockle of rebellion, insolence, sedition,
Which we ourselves have plough'd for, sow'd, and scatter'd,
By mingling them with us.

_Coriolanus_, act iii, sc. 1 (69).

In Shakespeare's time the word "Cockle" was becoming restricted to the
Corn-cockle (_Lychnis githago_), but both in his time, and certainly in
that of the writers before him, it was used generally for any noxious
weed that grew in corn-fields, and was usually connected with the Darnel
and Tares.[57:1] So Gower--

"To sowe Cockel with the Corn
So that the tilthe is nigh forlorn,
Which Crist sew first his owne hond--
Now stant the Cockel in the lond
Where stood whilom the gode greine,
For the prelats now, as men sain,
For slouthen that they shoulden tille."

_Confessio Amantis_, lib. quintus (2-190, Paulli).

Latimer has exactly the same idea: "Oh, that our prelates would bee as
diligent to sowe the corne of goode doctrine as Sathan is to sow Cockel
and Darnel." . . . "There was never such a preacher in England as he
(the devil) is. Who is able to tel his dylygent preaching? which every
daye and every houre laboreth to sowe Cockel and Darnel" (Latimer's
Fourth Sermon). And to the same effect Spenser--

"And thus of all my harvest-hope I have
Nought reaped but a weedie crop of care,
Which when I