but they have none of them produced anything more beautiful than the following. It occurs in the scene in Henry V, where the young King and his council discuss the foreign policy of the kingdom; the Archbishop speaks of the order and obedience of the body politic, and thus compares it

For so work the honey bees;
Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach
The act of order to a peopled kingdom.
They have a king, and officers of sorts:
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home;
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad;
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings,
Make boot upon the summer's velvet buds ;

Which pillage they with merry march bring home
To the tent-royal of their emperor:

Who, busied in his majesty, surveys

The singing masons building roofs of gold;
The civil citizens kneading up the honey;
The poor mechanick porters crowding in
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate;
The sad-ey'd justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o'er to éxecutors pale
The lazy yawning drone.*

Flowers are so often introduced in Shakspeare's plays, that it has been suggested that his original calling was that of a gardener. I think, however, that he as frequently brings in the wild flowers of the fields and the woods, the village maiden's wreaths and posies, as those of the highly cultivated garden. Wherever they appear, they give proof that they are more the offspring of nature than of art. For instance, in the Winter's Tale, at the sheep shearing feast, where Perdita receives the guests and gives them flowers, she says—

Here's flowers for you;

Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises weeping; these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think, they are given
To men of middle age.

*Henry V, Act i, Scene 2.

daffodils,

That come before the swallow dares, and take
The winds of March with beauty; violets dim
But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold
Bright Phoebus in his strength; bold oxlips, and
The crown imperial; lilies of all kinds,

The flower-de-luce being one! O, these, I lack,
To make you garlands of.*

Poor Ophelia, the sometime rose of May, her mind overpowered by her father's death, her head fantastically crowned with flowers, presents us with a scene which Shakspeare evidently painted from the life. "There's rosemary, that's "for remembrance; pray you, love, remember; and there is pansies, that's for thoughts. There's fennel for you, and columbines:—there's rue for you; and here's some for me:we may call it, herb of grace o' Sundays:-you may wear your rue with a difference.-There's a daisy :--I would give you some violets; but they withered all, when my father "died."t

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Again, in the lines describing Ophelia's death, we have a very pretty piece of floral scenery, which has probably been suggested to Shakspeare by some actual scene.

There is a willow grows ascaunt the brook,
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream;
There with fantastick garlands did she make
Of crow-flowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
And on the pendent boughs her coronet weeds,
Clambering to hang, an envious sliver broke,
When down her weedy trophies, and herself,
Fell in the weeping brook.

Lear, his poor brain cracked by his elder daughters' unkindness and by the bodily sufferings he had undergone, replaces the royal crown he had lost by one of another kind.

* Winter's Tale, Act iv, Scene 3. Hamlet, Act iv, Scene 7.

+ Hamlet, Act iv, Scene 5.

As mad as the vex'd sea: singing aloud;
Crown'd with rank fumiter, and furrow weeds,
With harlocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow

In our sustaining corn.*

When the sons of Cymbeline find Imogen, as they suppose, dead, they lament her loss, and, to show their grief, propose to scatter flowers over her tomb.

With fairest flowers,

Whilst summer lasts, and I live here, Fidele,
I'll sweeten thy sad grave: Thou shalt not lack
The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose; nor
The azur'd hare-bell, like thy veins; no, nor
The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
Out-sweeten'd not thy breath: the rudduck would
With charitable bill, bring thee all this;

Yea, and furr'd moss besides, when flowers are none,
To winter-ground thy corse.+

From these passages it is curious to see how much Shakspeare has associated flowers with sorrow: he has brought them in to give a tone and colouring to some picture of human melancholy, quite as often as to deck some festive scene or occasion for rejoicing.

He seems to have been really fond of employing figures taken from the common weeds of the field. For instance, when the angry Hotspur broods over the rebellion he is plotting, he exclaims, "but I tell you, my lord fool, out of "this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety." Again, in Henry V, when the grave bishops discuss the character of their new king and his previous riotous career, Ely says

The strawberry grows underneath the nettle;
And wholesome berries thrive and ripen best,
Neighbour'd by fruit of baser quality.§

I will now quote two or three of the most beautiful passages

* Lear, Act iv, Scene 4.

1 Henry IV, Act ii, Scene 3.

+ Cymbeline, Act iv, Scene 2.

§ Henry V, Act i, Scene 1.

in which Shakspeare makes use of flowers. One certainly is in the Twelfth Night, where the love-sick Duke speaks of music:

That strain again;

O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south,
That breathes upon a bank of violets,

Stealing, and giving odour.*

Another in Henry VIII, when Queen Katherine retorts on the two legates who come to offer her their insidious aid:

Like the lily,

That once was mistress of the field, and flourish'd,

I'll hang my head and perish.+

There is a beautiful simile in Antony and Cleopatra which I cannot help quoting. It is where the ambassador from Antony says—

I was of late as petty to his ends,

As is the morn-dew on the myrtle leaf

To his grand sea.‡

So much for our poet's love of nature; now let us regard the sports of the greenwood. Shakspeare chiefly makes use of the woodland from its connexion with the chase. It was before the period when the fowling-piece and the rifle were ordinarily used for field sports; the cloth yard shaft and the bolt of the cross-bow were still employed in hunting and venerie. Nor was the chase confined to the stronger sex,

and to

The bold outlaw

Whose cheer was the deer

And his only friend the bow.§

The ladies of that age took pleasure in the sport and killed their stags without compunction. There are several records

+ Henry VIII, Act iii, Scene 1.

* Twelfth Night, Act i, Scene 1.
Antony and Cleopatra, Act iii, Scene 10.
§ Bow Meeting Song by Bishop Heber.

of the kind in the life of Queen Elizabeth; whilst in the time of her successor, a most remarkable accident is recorded. Archbishop Abbott, a man of strong Puritan tendencies, whilst hunting with Lord Zouch, shot one of the keepers instead of the deer, for which he was for a time suspended from his spiritual office. From the scene in Love's Labour's Lost, where the Princess kills a deer, and the schoolmaster and the curate discuss what they term the " "sport," in most pedantic terms—

very reverent

The praiseful princess pierc'd and prick'd a pretty pleasing pricket—* it is evident that Shakspeare was well acquainted with everything connected with the sport. Washington Irving's Master Simon in Bracebridge Hall would have been charmed with the learning of their discourse.

The scene in Henry VI, where the King was taken captive by the keepers in the forest, shows how the deer was often shot with the cross-bow and that the sport much resembled Highland deer-stalking.

First Keeper.-Under this thick-grown brake we'll shroud ourselves;
For through this laund anon the deer will come;

And in this covert will we make our stand,
Culling the principal of all the deer.

Second Keeper.-I'll stay above the hill, so both may shoot.
First Keeper.-That cannot be; the noise of thy cross-bow
Will scare the herd, and so my shoot is lost.+

Deer were more frequently hunted with dogs; and the chase has furnished the substance of the last speech made by Talbot, when the French army were pressing him and his gallant band to the death:

How are we park'd, and bounded in a pale;
A little herd of England's timorous deer,
Maz'd with a yelping kennel of French curs!
If we be English deer, be then in blood:

Love's Labour's Lost, Act i1, Scene 2. + 3 Henry VI, Act iii, Scene 1.