The Plant-lore & Garden-craft of Shakespeare

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W. Satchell and Company, 1884 - History - 438 pages

The Plant-Lore & Garden-Craft of Shakespeare by Henry Nicholson Ellacombe, first published in 1884, is a rare manuscript, the original residing in one of the great libraries of the world. This book is a reproduction of that original, which has been scanned and cleaned by state-of-the-art publishing tools for better readability and enhanced appreciation.

Restoration Editors' mission is to bring long out of print manuscripts back to life. Some smudges, annotations or unclear text may still exist, due to permanent damage to the original work. We believe the literary significance of the text justifies offering this reproduction, allowing a new generation to appreciate it.

 

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Page 128 - tis in ourselves that we are thus or thus. Our bodies are our gardens, to the which our wills are gardeners ; so that if we will plant nettles, or sow lettuce, set hyssop and weed up thyme, supply it with one gender of herbs, or distract it with many, either to have it sterile with idleness, or manured with industry, why, the power and corrigible authority of this lies in our wills.
Page 354 - 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.
Page 307 - To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, To throw a perfume on the violet, To smooth the ice, or add another hue Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish, Is wasteful, and ridiculous excess.
Page 196 - Yet mark'd I where the bolt of Cupid fell : It fell upon a little western flower, — Before milk-white, now purple with love's wound, — And maidens call it love-in-idleness.
Page 339 - That do not do the thing they most do show, Who, moving others, are themselves as stone, Unmoved, cold, and to temptation slow, They rightly do inherit heaven's graces And husband nature's riches from expense; They are the lords and owners of their faces, Others but stewards of their excellence. The summer's flower is to the summer sweet, Though to itself it only live and die; But if that flower with base infection meet, The basest weed outbraves his dignity: For sweetest things turn sourest by their...
Page 280 - My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn, I saw good strawberries in your garden there : I do beseech you send for some of them.
Page 317 - Gratiano speaks an infinite deal of nothing, more than any man in all Venice. His reasons are as two grains of wheat hid in two bushels of chaff : you shall seek all day ere you find them, and when you have them, they are not worth the search.
Page 280 - Indeed, my good scholar, we may say of angling as Dr. Boteler said of strawberries, " Doubtless God could have made a better berry, but doubtless God never did ; " and so, if I might be judge, " God never did make a more calm, quiet, innocent recreation than angling.
Page 348 - GOD Almighty first planted a garden; and, indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures; it is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man ; without which buildings and palaces are but gross handyworks...
Page 373 - Sweet flower ! for by that name at last, When all my reveries are past, I call thee, and to that cleave fast, Sweet silent creature ! That breath'st with me in sun and air, Do thou, as thou art wont, repair My heart with gladness, and a share Of thy meek nature ! TO THE SAME FLOWER.

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