ention two of the greatest.
Milton gave the Violet a chief place in the beauties of the "Blissful
Bower" of our first parents in Paradise--

"Each beauteous flower,
Iris all hues, Roses, and Jessamin
Rear'd high their flourish't heads between, and wrought
Mosaic; underfoot the Violet,
Crocus and Hyacinth with rich inlay
Broidered the ground, more coloured than with stone
Of costliest emblem;"

_Paradise Lost_, book iv.

and Sir Walter Scott crowns it as the queen of wild flowers--

"The Violet in her greenwood bower,
Where Birchen boughs with Hazels mingle,
May boast itself the fairest flower
In glen, in copse, or forest dingle."

Yet favourite though it ever has been, it has no English name. Violet is
the diminutive form of the Latin Viola, which again is the Latin form
of the Greek +ion+. In the old Vocabularies Viola frequently occurs, and
with the following various translations:--"Ban-wyrt," _i.e._, Bone-wort
(eleventh century Vocabulary); "Cloefre," _i.e._, Clover (eleventh
century Vocabulary); "Viole, Appel-leaf" (thirteenth century
Vocabulary);[310:1] "Wyolet" (fourteenth century Vocabulary); "Vyolytte"
(fifteenth century Nominale); "Violetta, A{ce}, a Violet" (fifteenth
century Pictorial Vocabulary); and "Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt" (Durham
Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the
Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as "the Herb Viola purpurea;
(1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) for hardness of the maw"
(Cockayne's translation). In this last example it is most probable that
our sweet-scented Violet is the plant meant, but in some of the other
cases it is quite certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in
all. For Violet was a name given very loosely to many plants, so that
Laurembergius says: "Vox Violae distinctissimis floribus communis
est. Videntur mihi antiqui suaveolentes quosque flores generatim
Violas appellasse, cujuscunque etiam forent generis quasi vi
oleant."--_Apparat. Plant._, 1632. This confusion seems to have arisen
in a very simple way. Theophrastus described the Leucojum, which was
either the Snowdrop or the spring Snowflake, as the earliest-flowering
plant; Pliny literally translated Leucojum into Alba Viola. All the
earlier writers on natural history were in the habit of taking Pliny for
their guide, and so they translat