m. He is
a Puritan wag, and never fails when he shows his garden to repeat that
passage in the Psalms, 'Thy wife shall be as the fruitful Vine, and thy
children as Olive branches about thy table.'"

B. MANURING, ETC.

_Constable._

And you shall find his vanities forespent
Were but the outside of the Roman Brutus,
Covering discretion with a coat of folly;
As gardeners do with ordure hide those roots
That shall first spring and be most delicate.

_Henry V_, act ii, sc. 4 (36).

The only point that needs notice under this head is that the word
"manure" in Shakespeare's time was not limited to its present modern
meaning. In his day "manured land" generally meant cultured land in
opposition to wild and barren land.[353:1] So Falstaff uses the word--

Hereof comes it that Prince Harry is valiant; for the cold
blood he did naturally inherit of his father, he hath, like
lean, sterile and bare land, manured, husbanded, and tilled
with excellent endeavour of drinking good and good store of
fertile sherris, that he is become very hot and valiant.

_2nd Henry IV_, act iv, sc. 3 (126).

And in the same way Iago says--

Either to have it (a garden) sterile with idleness or manured
with industry.

_Othello_, act i, sc. 3 (296).

Milton and many other writers used the word in this its original sense;
and Johnson explains it "to cultivate by manual labour," according to
its literal derivation. In one passage Shakespeare uses the word
somewhat in the modern sense--

_Carlisle._ The blood of English shall manure the ground.

_Richard II_, act iv, sc. 1 (137).

But generally he and the writers of that and the next century expressed
the operation more simply and plainly, as "covering with ordure," or as
in the English Bible, "I shall dig about it and dung it."

C. GRAFTING.

(1) _Buckingham._

Her royal stock graft with ignoble plants.

_Richard III_, act iii, sc. 7 (127).

(2) _Dauphin._

O Dieu vivant! shall a few sprays of us,
The emptying of our fathers' luxury,
Our scions, put in wild and savage stock,
Spirt up so suddenly into the clouds,
And overlook their grafters?

_Henry V_, act iii, sc.