suffice. Sir Thomas Wyatt's poems are
all professedly about the country--they abound in woods and vales,
shepherds and swains--yet in all his poems there is scarcely a single
allusion to a flower in a really natural way. And because Shakespeare
only introduces flowers in their right place, and in the most purely
natural way, there is one necessary result. I shall show that the number
of flowers he introduces is large, but the number he omits, and which he
must have known, is also very large, and well worth noting.[4:1] He has
no notice, under any name, of such common flowers as the Snowdrop, the
Forget-me-Not, the Foxglove, the Lily of the Valley,[4:2] and many
others which he must have known, but which he has not named; because
when he names a plant or flower, he does so not to show his own
knowledge, but because the particular flower or plant is wanted in the
particular place in which he uses it.

Another point of interest in the Plant-lore of Shakespeare is the wide
range of his observation. He gathers flowers for us from all sorts of
places--from the "turfy mountains" and the "flat meads;" from the "bosky
acres" and the "unshrubbed down;" from "rose-banks" and "hedges
even-pleached." But he is equally at home in the gardens of the country
gentlemen with their "pleached bowers" and "leafy orchards." Nor is he a
stranger to gardens of a much higher pretension, for he will pick us
famous Strawberries from the garden of my Lord of Ely in Holborn; he
will pick us White and Red Roses from the garden of the Temple; and he
will pick us "Apricocks" from the royal garden of Richard the Second's
sad queen. I propose to follow Shakespeare into these many pleasant
spots, and to pick each flower and note each plant which he has thought
worthy of notice. I do not propose to make a selection of his plants,
for that would not give a proper idea of the extent of his knowledge,
but to note every tree, and plant, and flower that he has noted. And as
I pick each flower, I shall let Shakespeare first tell us all he has to
say about it; in other words, I shall quote every passage in which he
names the plant or flower; for here, again, it would not do to make a
selection from the passages, my object not being to give "floral
extracts," but to let him say all he can in his own choice words. There
is not much difficulty in this, but there is difficulty in determining
how much or how little to quote. On the one hand, it often seems cruel
to c