of the proprytees of
thynges."

The seventeenth book of _De Proprietatibus Rerum_ is on herbs and
their uses, and it is full of allusions to the classical writers on
herbs--Aristotle, Dioscorides and Galen--but the descriptions of the
plants themselves are original and charming.

There is no record to show that Bartholomew the Englishman was a
gardener, but we can hardly doubt that the man who described flowers
with such loving care possessed a garden and worked in it. The
_Herbarius zu Teutsch_ might have been written in a study, but there
is fresh air and the beauty of the living flowers in Bartholomew's
writings. Of the lily he says: "The Lely is an herbe wyth a whyte
floure. And though the levys of the floure be whyte yet wythen shyneth
the lyknesse of golde." Bartholomew may have known nothing of the
modern science of botany, but he knew how to describe not only the
lily, but also the atmosphere of the lily, in a word-picture of
inimitable simplicity and beauty. One feels instinctively that only a
child or a great man could have written those lines. And is there not
something unforgettable in these few words on the unfolding of a
rose--"And wh[=a]ne they [the petals] ben full growen they sprede
theymselues ayenst the sonne rysynge"?

The chapter on the rose is longer than most, and is so delightful that
I quote a considerable part of it. "The rose of gardens is planted and
sette and tylthed as a vyne. And if it is forgendred and not shred and
pared and not clensed of superfluyte: th[=e]ne it gooth out of kynde
and chaungeth in to a wylde rose. And by oft chaunging and tylthing
the wylde rose torneth and cha[=u]gith into a very rose. And the rose
of ye garden and the wylde rose ben dyuers in multitude of floures:
smelle and colour: and also in vertue. For the leves of the wylde rose
ben fewe and brode and whytyssh: meddlyd wyth lytyll rednesse: and
smellyth not so wel as the tame rose, nother is so vertuous in
medicyn. The tame rose hath many leuys sette nye togyder: and ben all
red, other almost white: w{t} wonder good smell.... And the more they
ben brused and broken: the vertuo[=u]ser they ben and the better
smellynge. And springeth out of a thorne that is harde and rough:
netheles the Rose folowyth not the kynde of the thorne: But she
arayeth her thorn wyth fayr colour and good smell. Whan ye rose
begynneth to sprynge it is closed in a knoppe wyth grenes: and that
knoppe is grene. And wha[=n]e it swellyth t