[328:2]

"The eugh obedient to the bender's will."--SPENSER, _F. Q._, i. 9.

"So far as eughen bow a shaft may send."--_F. Q._, ii. 11-19.

[328:3] There are, however, well-recorded instances of death from Yew
berries. The poisonous quality, such as it is, resides in the hard seed,
and not in the red mucilaginous skin, which is the part eaten by
children. (_See_ HEBENON.)

[329:1] "For eucheson we have non Olyfe that bereth grene leves we takon
in stede of hit Hew and Palmes wyth, and beroth abowte in procession and
so this day we callyn palme sonnenday."--_Sermon for "Dominica in ramis
palmarum," Cotton MSS._

PART II.

_THE GARDEN-CRAFT OF SHAKESPEARE._

"The flowers are sweet, the colours fresh and trim."

_Venus and Adonis._

"Retired Leisure
That in trim Gardens takes his pleasure."

MILTON, _Il Penseroso_.

GARDEN-CRAFT.

Any account of the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" would be very incomplete
if it did not include his "Garden-craft." There are a great many
passages scattered throughout his works, some of them among the most
beautiful that he ever wrote, in which no particular tree, herb, or
flower is mentioned by name, but which show his intimate knowledge of
plants and gardening, and his great affection for them. It is from these
passages, even more than from the passages I have already quoted, in
which particular flowers are named, that we learn how thoroughly his
early country life had influenced and marked his character, and how his
whole spirit was most naturally coloured by it. Numberless allusions to
flowers and their culture prove that his boyhood and early manhood were
spent in the country, and that as he passed through the parks, fields,
and lanes of his native county, or spent pleasant days in the gardens
and orchards of the manor-houses and farm-houses of the neighbourhood,
his eyes and ears were open to all the sights and sounds of a healthy
country life, and he was, perhaps unconsciously, laying up in his memory
a goodly store of pleasant pictures and homely country talk, to be
introduced in his own wonderful way in tragedies and comedies, which,
while often professedly treating of very different times and countries,
have really given us some of the most faithful pictures of the country
life of the Englishman of Queen Elizabeth's t