ime, drawn with all the
freshness and simplicity that can only come from a real love of the
subject.

"Flowers I noted," is his own account of himself (Sonnet xcix.), and
with what love he noted them, and with what carefulness and faithfulness
he wrote of them, is shown in every play he published, and almost in
every act and every scene. And what I said of his notices of particular
flowers is still more true of his general descriptions--that they are
never laboured, or introduced as for a purpose, but that each passage is
the simple utterance of his ingrained love of the country, the natural
outcome of a keen, observant eye, joined to a great power of faithful
description, and an unlimited command of the fittest language. It is
this vividness and freshness that gives such a reality to all
Shakespeare's notices of country life, and which make them such pleasant
reading to all lovers of plants and gardening.

These notices of the "Garden-craft of Shakespeare" I now proceed to
quote; but my quotations in this part will be made on a different plan
to that which I adopted in the account of his "Plant-lore." I shall not
here think it necessary to quote all the passages in which he mentions
different objects of country life, but I shall content myself with such
passages as throw light on his knowledge of horticulture, and which to
some extent illustrate the horticulture of his day, and these passages I
must arrange under a few general heads. In this way the second part of
my subject will be very much shorter than my first, but I have good
reasons for hoping that those who have been interested in the long
account of the "Plant-lore of Shakespeare" will be equally interested in
the shorter account of his "Garden-craft," and will acknowledge that the
one would be incomplete without the other. I commence with those
passages which treat generally of--

I.--FLOWERS, BLOSSOMS, AND BUDS.

(1) _Quickly._

Fairies use flowers for their charactery.

_Merry Wives of Windsor_, act v, sc. 5 (77).

(2) _Oberon._

She his hairy temples then had rounded
With coronet of fresh and fragrant flowers;
And that same dew, which sometime in the buds
Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
Stood now within the pretty flowerets' eyes,
Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail.

_Midsummer Night's Dream_, act iv, sc. 1 (56).

(3) _Gaun