and are, perhaps, expecting another Midsummer Night's Dream, to find nothing whatsoever subsequently recorded respecting that pilgrim's progress; and to be obliged to believe that we have merely an allusion to Spenser and his Faerie Queen. How we long, and long in vain, to have some details of the experience of the "lowly sort" amongst whom Gorbo piped:
"Those silly herd-grooms who have laughed to see
When I by moon-light make the Fairies sport."[1]
It is really curious to remark that it was more than thirty years after this before Drayton treated his readers to anything more than most cursory glances at the elves with whom he ended by making them so well acquainted.
But return to the Eclogues. A folk-lore student pricks his ears when in the ninth,[2] and most English of them, the poet begins to speak of the significance of flowers. The time is June.
"Who now a posie pins not in his cap?
And not a garland baldrick-wise doth wear?
Some of such flowers as to his hand doth hap,
Others such as a secret meaning bear:
He, from his lass him lavender hath sent,
Showing her love, and doth requital crave;
Him rosemary, his sweetheart, whose intent
Is that he her should in remembrance have.
Roses, his youth and strong desire express;
Her sage, doth show his sov'reignty in all;
The July-flower declares his gentleness;
Thyme, truth, the pansie, heart's ease maidens call."
One of Drayton's contemporaries, whom he did not suffer gladly, wrote:[3] "Louers when they come into a Gardeine, some gather Nettles, some Roses, one Tyme, another Sage, and eueryone that for
- ↑ Eclogue, iv. [iv. 1398].
- ↑ [iv, 1430.] Here we are told that at shearing-time the father of the flock proudly bore a nosegay in his horns, the bell-wether going no less bravely. He was accounted King of the Shepherds whose charge had produced the earliest lamb; and, as we learn from Polyolbion (xiv. [iii. 937]), he wore a "gay bauldrick" when he sat down to the shearing-feast, spread "upon a green that curiously was squared," as the Eclogue says.
- ↑ See Of Poets and Poesy [iv. 1250], and Euphues (Arber's reprint), p. 224.
