Not yet on summer's death, nor on the birth
Of trembling winter,-the fairest flowers o' the

season

Are our carnations, and streak'd gillyflowers,
Which some call nature's bastards: of that kind
Our rustick garden's barren; and I care not
To get slips of them.

POL.

Do you neglect them?

PER.

Wherefore, gentle maiden,

For I have heard it said 5,

There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares
With great creating nature 6.

POL.

Say, there be;
Yet nature is made better by no mean,

But nature makes that mean: so, o'er that art,
Which, you say, adds to nature, is an art

That nature makes. You see, sweet maid, we marry

A gentler scion to the wildest stock;

And make conceive a bark of baser kind

By bud of nobler race; This is an art

Which does mend nature,—change it rather: but The art itself is nature.

POL. Then make your garden rich in gillyflowers",

And do not call them bastards.

5 FOR I have heard it said,] For, in this place, signifies-because that. So, in Chaucer's Clerke's Tale, Mr. Tyrwhitt's edit. v. 8092:

"She dranke, and for she wolde vertue plese,
She knew wel labour, but non idel ese."

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6 There is an art, which, in their piedness, shares

STEEVENS.

With great creating nature.] That is, as Mr. T. Warton observes, There is an art which can produce flowers, with as great a variety of colours as nature herself."

This art is pretended to be taught at the ends of some of the old books that treat of cookery, &c. but, being utterly impracticable, is not worth exemplification. STEEVENS.

PER.

I'll not put

8

The dibble in earth to set one slip of them:
No more than, were I painted, I would wish

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7 - in GILLYFLOWers,] There is some further conceit relative to gilly flowers than has yet been discovered. The old copy; (in both instances where this word occurs,) reads-Gilly'vors, a term still used by low people in Sussex, to denote a harlot. In A Wonder, or a Woman never vex'd, 1632, is the following passage: A lover is behaving with freedom to his mistress as they are going into a garden, and after she has alluded to the quality of many herbs, he adds: You have fair roses, have you not?" "Yes, sir, (says she,) but no gilliflowers." Meaning, perhaps, that she would not be treated like a gill-flirt, i. e. wanton, a word often met with in the old plays, but written flirt-gill in Romeo and Juliet. I suppose gill-flirt to be derived, or rather corrupted, from gilly-flower or carnation, which, though beautiful in its appearance, is apt, in the gardener's phrase, to run from its colours, and change as often as a licentious female.

Prior, in his Solomon, has taken notice of the same variability in this species of flowers:

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the fond carnation loves to shoot

"Two various colours from one parent root."

In Lyte's Herbal, 1578, some sorts of gilliflowers are called small honesties, cuckoo gillofers, &c. And in A. W.'s Commendation of Cascoigne and his Posies, is the following remark on this species of flower:

"Some think that gilliflowers do yield a gelous smell." See Gascoigne's Works, 1587. STEEVENS,

The following line in The Paradise of daintie Devises, 1578, may add some support to the first part of Mr. Steevens's note:

"Some jolly youth the gilly-flower esteemeth for his joy."

MALONE.

The solution of the riddle in these lines that has embarrassed Mr. Steevens is probably this. The gilly-flower or carnation is streaked, as every one knows, with white and red. In this respect it is a proper emblem of a painted or immodest woman; and therefore Perdita declines to meddle with it. She connects the gardener's art of varying the colours of the above flowers with the art of painting the face, a fashion very prevalent in Shakspeare's time. This conclusion is justified by what she says in her next speech but one. DOUCE.

8

dibble-] An instrument used by gardeners to make holes in the earth for the reception of young plants. See it in Minsheu. STEEVENS.

This youth should say, 'twere well; and only there

fore

Desire to breed by me.—Here's flowers for you ;
Hot lavender, mints, savory, marjoram ;

The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,
And with him rises 9 weeping; these are flowers
Of middle summer, and, I think, they are given
To men of middle age: You are very welcome.
CAM. I should leave grazing, were I of your
flock,

And only live by gazing.

PER.

Out, alas! You'd be so lean, that blasts of January

Would blow you through and through.-Now, my fairest friend,

I would, I had some flowers o' the spring, that might

Become your time of day; and yours, and yours; That wear upon your virgin branches yet

Your maidenheads growing :-O Proserpina,

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's waggon'! daffodils,

9 The marigold, that goes to bed with the sun,

And with him rises-] Hence, says Lupton, in his Sixth Book of notable Things: "Some calles it, Sponsus Solis, the Spowse of the Sunne; because it sleepes and is awakened with

m."

STEEVENS.

- O Proserpina,

STEEVENS.

For the flowers now, that, frighted, thou let'st fall From Dis's waggon!] So, in Ovid's Metam. b. v. : ut summa vestem laxavit ab ora, Collecti flores tunicis cecidere remissis. The whole passage is thus translated by Golding, 1587: "While in this garden Proserpine was taking her pastime, "In gathering either violets blew, or lillies white as lime,Dis spide her, lou'd her, caught hir up, and all at once well

66

neere.

"The ladie with a wailing voice afright did often call

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 2,

2

"And as she from the upper part hir garment would have rent,

"By chance she let her lap slip downe, and out her flowers went." RITSON.

violets, dim,

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes,] I suspect that our author mistakes Juno for Pallas, who was the goddess of blue eyes. Sweeter than an eye-lid is an odd image: but perhaps he uses sweet in the general sense, for delightful. JOHNSON.

It was formerly the fashion to kiss the eyes as a mark of extraordinary tenderness. I have somewhere met with an account of the first reception one of our kings gave to his new queen, where he is said to have kissed her fayre eyes. So, in Chaucer's Troilus and Cresseide, v. 1358:

"This Troilus full of her eyen two

"Gan for to kisse," &c.

Thus also in the sixteenth Odyssey, 15, Eumæus kisses both the eyes of Telemachus:

Κύσσε δέ μιν κεφαλήν τε, και αμφω φάεα καλά,

The same line occurs in the following book, v. 39, where Penelope expresses her fondness for her son.

Again, in an ancient MS. play of Timon of Athens, in the possession of Mr. Strutt, the engraver:

"O Juno, be not angry with thy Jove,

"But let me kisse thine eyes my sweete delight." p. 6. b. Another reason, however, why the eyes were kissed instead of the lips, may be found in a very scarce book entitled A courtlie Controversy of Cupids Cautels: Conteyning Fiue tragicall Histories, &c. Translated out of French, &c. by H. W. [Henry Wotton] 4to. 1578: "Oh howe wise were our forefathers to forbidde wyne so strictly unto their children, and much more to their wives, so that for drinking wine they deserved defame, and being taken with the maner, it was lawful to kisse their mouthes, whereas otherwise men kissed but their eyes, to showe that wine drinkers were apt to further offence."

The eyes of Juno were as remarkable as those of Pallas : · βοώπις πότνια "Ηρη. Homer.

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But (as Mr. M. Mason observes) we are not told that Pallas was the goddess of blue eye-lids; besides, as Shakspeare joins in the comparison, the breath of Cytherea with the eye-lids of Juno, it is evident that he does not allude to the colour, but to the fragrance of violets." STEEVENS.

Or Cytherea's breath; pale primroses,
That die unmarried, ere they can behold3
Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady
Most incident to maids; bold oxlips, and

So, in Marston's Insatiate Countess, 1613:

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That eye was Juno's,

"Those lips were hers that won the golden ball,
"That virgin blush, Diana's."

Spenser, as well as our author, has attributed beauty to the

eye-lid:

Upon her eye-lids many graces sate, "Under the shadow of her even brows."

Again, in his 40th Sonnet:

Fairy Queen, b. ii. c. iii. st. 25.

"When on each eye-lid sweetly do appear
"An hundred graces, as in shade they sit."

3 pale primroses,

That die unmarried, ere they can behold, &c.] lyco, or Runne Red-Cap, 1609:

"The pretty Dazie (eye of day)

"The Prime-Rose which doth first display
"Her youthful colours, and first dies:
"Beauty and Death are enemies."

Again, in Milton's Lycidas:

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the rathe primrose that forsaken dies."

Malone.

So, in Pim

Mr. Warton, in a note on my last quotation, asks "But why does the Primrose die unmarried? Not because it blooms and decays before the appearance of other flowers; as in a state of solitude, and without society. Shakspeare's reason, why it dies unmarried, is unintelligible, or rather is such as I do not wish to understand. The true reason is, because it grows in the shade, uncherished or unseen by the sun, who was supposed to be in love with some sorts of flowers."

Perhaps, however, the true explanation of this passage may be deduced from a line originally subjoined by Milton to that already quoted from Lycidas:

"Bring the rathe primrose that unwedded dies,

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Colouring the pale cheek of unenjoy'd love." STEevens. BOLD Oxlips,] Gold is the reading of Sir T. Hanmer; the former editions have bold. JOHNSON.

4

The old reading is certainly the true one. The oxlip has not a weak flexible stalk like the cowslip, but erects itself boldly in the face of the sun. Wallis, in his History of Northumberland, says, that the great oxlip grows a foot and a half high. It should be