et but one clear instance; it
is, however, an incontrovertible one, namely,

"Whoso spareth the _spring_ (_i. e._ rod, switch), spilleth his
children."--_Visions of Piers Plowman_, v. 2554., ed. Wright.

Perhaps this is also the meaning in--

"Shall, Antipholus,
Even in the spring of love thy _love-springs_ rot?"
_Com. of Errors_, Act III. Sc. 2.

and in "Time's Glory"--

"To dry the old oak's sap and cherish _springs_."
_Rape of Lucrece._

_Spring_ afterwards came to be used for underwood, &c. Perhaps it answered
to the present _coppice_, which is composed of the springs or shoots of the
growth which has been cut down:

"The lofty high wood and the lower _spring_."
Drayton's _Muses' Elysium_, 10.

"The lesser birds that keep the lower _spring_."
_Id._, note.

It was also used as equivalent to grove:

"Unless it were
The nightingale among the thick-leaved _spring_."
Fletcher's _Faith. Shep._, v. 1.

where, however, it may be the coppice.

"This hand Sibylla's golden boughs to guard them,
Through hell and horror, to the Elysian _springs_."
Massinger's _Bondman_, ii. 1.

In the following place Fairfax uses _spring_ to express the "salvatichi
soggiorni," i. e. _selva_ of his original:

"But if his courage any champion move
Too try the hazard of this dreadful _spring_."
_Godf. of Bull._, xiii. 31.

and in

"For you alone to happy end must bring
The strong enchantments of the charmed _spring_."
_Id._, xviii. 2.

it answers to _selva_.

When Milton makes his Eve say--

"While I
In yonder _spring_ of roses intermix'd
With _myrtles_ find what to redress till noon."
_Par. Lost_, ix. 217.

he had probably in his mind the _cespuglio_ in the first canto of the
_Orlando Furioso_; for _spring_ had not been used in the sense of thickets,
clumps, by any previous English poet. I am of opinion that _spring_ occurs
for the last time in our poetry in the following lines of Pope:

"See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings,
And heap'd with products of Sabaean _springs_."
_Messiah_, 93.

Johnson renders the last line--

"Cinnameos cumulos, Nabathaei munera _veris_;"

and this is probably the sense in which the place has generally been
u