This association of ideas renders solitude in spring, and solitude in winter, two very different things. In the latter, we are better content to bear the feelings of the season by ourselves ; in the former, they are so sweet, as well as so overflowing, that we long to share them. Shakspeare, in one of his sonnets, describes himself as so identifying the beauties of the spring with the thought of his absent mistress, that he says he forgot them in their own character, and played with them only as with her shadow. See how exquisitely he turns a commonplace into this fancy; and what a noble brief portrait of April he gives us at the beginning! There is indeed a wonderful mixture of softness and strength in almost every one of the lines.

"From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dress'd in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with hir
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell

Of different flowers in odour and in hue,

Could make me any summer's story tell,

Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew :
Nor did I wonder at the lilies white,

Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose:
They were but sweet, but* figures of delight,

Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seem'd it winter still; and, you away,
As with your shadow, I with these did play."

Shakspeare was fond of alluding to April. He did not allow May to have all his regard, because she was richer. Perdita, crowned with flowers, in the "Winter's Tale," is beautifully compared to

"Flora

Peering in April's front."

There is a line in one of his sonnets, which, agreeably to the image he had in his mind, seems to strike up in one's face, hot and odorous, like perfume in a censer.

*But sweet, but.-Quare, But sweet-cut?

U

"In process of the seasons have I seen

Three April perfumes in three hot Junes burn'd."

His allusions to spring are numerous in proportion. We all know the song containing that fine line, fresh from the most brilliant of palettes

"When daisies pied, and violets blue,

And lady-smocks all silver white,

And cuckoo-buds of yellow hue,

Do paint the meadows with delight."

We owe a long debt of gratitude to the daisy; and we take this opportunity of discharging a millionth part of it. If we undertook to pay it all, we should have had to write such a book as is never very likely to be written,—a journal of numberless happy hours in childhood, kept with the feelings of an infant and the pen of a man. For it would take, we suspect, a depth of delight and a subtlety of words, to express even the vague joy of infancy, such as our learned departures from natural wisdom would find it more difficult to put together than criticism and comfort, or an old palate and a young relish. But knowledge is the widening and the brightening road that must conduct us back to the joys from which it led us; and which it is destined perhaps to secure and extend. We must not quarrel with its asperities, when we can help.

We do not know the Greek name of the daisy, nor do the dictionaries inform us; and we are not at present in the way of consulting books that might. We always like to see what the Greeks say to these things, because they had a sentiment in their enjoyments. The Latins called it Bellis or Bellus, as much as to say, Nice One. With the French and Italians it has the same name as a Pearl, -Marguerite, Margarita, or generally, by way of endearment, Margheretina.* The same word was the name of a woman, and occasioned infinite inter

*This word is originally Greek,-Margarites; and as the Franks probably brought it from Constantinople, perhaps they brought its association with the daisy

also.

mixtures of compliment about pearls, daisies, and fair mistresses. Chaucer, in his beautiful poem of "The Flower and the Leaf," which is evidently imitated from some French poetess, says :

"And at the laste there began anon

A lady for to sing right womanly

A bargaret* in praising the daisie,

For, as methought, among her notés sweet,

She said, 'Di douset est la Margarete."

"The Margaret is so sweet." Our Margaret, however, in this allegorical poem, is undervalued in comparison with the laurel; yet Chaucer perhaps was partly induced to translate it on account of its making the figure that it does; for he has informed us more than once, in a very particular manner, that it was his favourite flower. There is a very interesting passage to this effect in his "Legend of Good Women;" where he says, that nothing but the daisied fields in spring could take him from his books.

"And as for me, though that I can but lite t

On bookés for to read I me delight,
And to hem give I faith and full credènce,
And in my heart have hem in reverence

So heartily, that there is game none
That from my bookés maketh me to gone,
But it be seldom, on the holy day;

Save, certainly, when that the month of May
Is comen, and I hear the foulis sing,
And that the flowers ginnen for to spring,
Farewell my bookè, and my devotion.
Now have I then eke this condition,
That, above all the flowers in the mead,
Then love I most those flowers white and red,
Such that men callen daisies in our town.
To hem have I so great affection,
As I said erst, when comen is the May,
That in the bed there daweth me no day.
That I n'am up and walking in the mead,
To seen the flower agenst the sunné spread,

When it upriseth early by the morrow :
That blissful sight softeneth all my sorrow.
So glad am I, when that I have presence
Of it, to doin it all reverence,

As she that is of all flowers the flower."

He says that he finds it ever new, and that he shall love it till his "heart dies ;" and afterwards, with a natural picture of his resting on the grass :

"Adown full softély I gan to sink,

And, leaning on my elbow and my side,
The longé day I shope* me for to abide
For nothing ellis, and I shall not lie,
But for to look upon the daisie,

That well by reason men it call may
The daisie, or else the eye of day."

This etymology, which we have no doubt is the real one, is repeated by Ben Jonson, who takes occasion to spell the word days-eyes;” adding, with his usual tendency to overdo a matter of learning

66

"Days-eyes, and the lippes of cows;"

videlicit, cowslips: which is a disentanglement of compounds, in the style of our pleasant parodists :—

"Puddings of the plum,

And fingers of the lady."

Mr Wordsworth introduces his homage to the daisy with a passage from George Wither; which, as it is an old favourite of ours, and extremely applicable both to this article and our whole work, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of repeating. It is the more interesting inasmuch as it was written in prison, where the freedom of his opinions had thrown him.† He is speaking of his Muse, or Imagination.

* Shaped.

It is not generally known that Chaucer was four years in prison, in his old age, on the same account. He was a Wickliffite,-one of the precursors of the Reformation. His prison, doubtless, was no diminisher of his love of the daisy.

"Her divine skill taught me this;

That from everything I saw

I could some invention draw,
And raise pleasure to her height
Through the meanest object's sight:
By the murmur of a spring,
Or the least bough's rustelling;
By a daisy, whose leaves spread
Shut when Titan goes to bed;
Or a shady bush or tree;

She could more infuse in me
Than all Nature's beauties can

In some other wiser man."

But

Mr Wordsworth undertakes to patronise the celandine, because nobody else will notice it; which is a good reason. though he tells us, in a startling piece of information, that

"Poets, vain men in their mood,

Travel with the multitude,"

yet he falls in with his old brethren of England and Normandy, and becomes loyal to the daisy.

"Be violets in their secret mews

The flowers the wanton Zephyrs choose;
Proud be the rose, with rains and dews

Her head impearling;

Thou liv'st with less ambitious aim,

Yet hast not gone without thy fame;
Thou art indeed, by many a claim,
The poet's darling.

"A nun demure, of lowly port;

Or sprightly maiden of Love's court,

In thy simplicity the sport

Of all temptations;

A queen in crown of rubies drest;

A starveling in a scanty vest;

Are all, as seem to suit thee best,

Thy appellations.

"A little Cyclops, with one eye
Staring to threaten or defy-

That thought comes next, and instantly
The freak is over;