two that may take next rank, "the snowdrop cold, that trembles not to kisses of the bee," and the daffodils "that take the winds. of March with beauty," belong to "the garden that no man hath planted."

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"February fair maid" and "prophet of the roses Tennyson calls the snowdrop, and Wordsworth devotes to it a charming sonnet, commencing:

"Lone flower, hemmed in with snows and white as they,

But hardier far, once more I see thee bend

Thy forehead, as if fearful to offend.

Like an unbidden guest.

But curiously marred by the poet saying:

"So welcome as a friend

Whose zeal outrides his promise."

Why this most infelicitous line?

It is a pity that the poets singing of this flower should have forgotten that tradition says the snowdrop was the first flower that bloomed outside Eden. It was created out of the falling snowflakes by an angel on purpose to stop Eve's heart from breaking in her great misery.

Who does not know Herrick's address to the "Daffadils":

'Fair daffadils, we weep to see

You haste away so soon;

As yet the early-rising sun

Has not attained his noon.
Stay, stay,

Until the hasting day

Has run

But to the evensong;

And, having prayed together, we
Will go with you along."

What inspired the sweet singer with the fancy that "daffadils are of such fleeting beauty? They last upon the stalk longer than many flowers, and when cut last longer still; but the fancy was fixed, for elsewhere, in his “Divination," he says:

"When a daffadil I see,

Hanging down his head towards me,
Guess I may what I must be:
First, I shall decline my head;
Secondly, I shall be dead;
Lastly, safely buried."

For the rest of the flowers that can boast of special dedications, this article cannot suffice. The tulip is taken to task for its gaudiness, is called a "quean"; and young women are warned by Cavalier poets to take warning by the rapid fading of the "painted" flower. There is nothing worth quoting in these allusions, but in some volumes,* scarcely

*Pearch's Poems.

perhaps so well known as they should be, I find two poems, one by "Langhorne," and one by " Mr. B——————y,” on the tulip, and each is a finished piece of good work. In the one the tulip scoffs at the myrtle; in the other, at the lily of the valley. In both the flaunting “ quean is reproved by third parties (a zephyr and a bee), and in both the sun is the cause of the proud maid's undoing:

"With more than usual lustre bright,

The genial god of heat and light,

Through the blue heavens pursued his course,

And shone with more than summer force.
Each flower that glow'd in bright array
Witnessed the life-imparting day;
The tulip, too, above the rest,

The vigorous warmth, with joy confest,
What transport in her bosom swelled!

And so forth. The other poem runs thus:

"Fierce on the flower the scorching beams
With all the weight of glory fell;
The flower exulting caught the gleams,
And lent its leaves a bolder swell.
Expanded by the searching fire,

The curling leaves the breast disclosed;
The mantling bloom was painted higher,
And every latent charm exposed.
But when the sun was sliding low,

And evening came with dews so cold,

The wanton beauty ceased to blow,

And sought her bending leaves to fold.
Those leaves, alas! no more will close;
Relaxed, exhausted, sickening, pale ;
They left her to a parent's woes,

And fled before the rising gale."

None of the other "poems " need more than passing notice. Herrick has whimsical versicles on the origin of various flowers. Thus, the wallflower was a virgin who, hasting too fast to meet her lover, fell over the garden wall and broke her neck; the marigolds were old maids who turned yellow from jealousy, and though they died, never changed colour; pansies (or heart's-ease), words on which he is very fond of playing:

Frolic virgins once these were,

Over-loving, living here;

Being here their ends denied,

Ran for sweethearts mad, and died.

Love, in pity of their tears,

And their loss in blooming years,

For their restless here-spent hours

Give them heart's-ease turned to flowers."

The only one of the series with a prettily phrased conceit is to the carnation:

1

But the list, if I were to make it complete, would be almost as long as a list of the flowers of a garden. Do you remember in Leigh Hunt's "Feast of the Poets," how, when the company is assembled,

"by some charm or other, as each took his chair
There burst a most beautiful wreath in his hair.
I can't tell 'em all, but the groundwork was bay,
And Campbell, in his, had some oak-leaves and may :
And forget-me-not Rogers; and Moore had a vine,
And Shelley besides most magnificent pine

Had the plant which they least touch, Humanity, knows;
And Keats's had forest-tree, basil, and rose ;

And Southey's some buds of the tall Eastern palm,
And Coleridge mandragoras mingled with balm;

And Wordsworth, with all which the field-walk endears,
The blossom that counts by its hundreds of years."

In addition to these, Lytton's with his favourite jasmine and violets, Mackay's briony and bluebells, Burns and his daisies in ivy, Leigh Hunt's eglantine and poppies, Cunningham with his narcissus; while among the wreaths should surely have been the blossoms of the celandine and water-lily, may, cornflower, and lilac, and many others whom the poets individually addressed.

It will be seen that I make no pretence of exploiting the Poets' Garden. I am merely a passer-by on the common road, and, through the gates, and here and there where the hedge lets me see over or see through, get a peep at the pleasure-grounds within. The subject is an immense one, as beautiful as it is wide-spreading, but in these few pages I have merely recorded some first impressions received in passing.

PHIL ROBINSON.

I

HAVE for some time been engaged in editing for the RollsSeries the "Memorials of St. Edmundsbury," a collection, that is to say, of documents relating to the great and famous Abbey of St. Edmund at Bury, the abbey represented in the minds of so many English people, who otherwise would know nothing of the monastery and its history, by the Abbot Samson of Carlyle's "Past and Present."

The greater part of these materials appeals of course mostly or exclusively to the professed historical student. But in the second volume, just issued, there is a document, now published for the first time, of so much general interest, and throwing so much light on the intimate details of a past social and ecclesiastical system, as well as incidentally on the character of the King from whom the barons wrung the Great Charter, that it has seemed to me worth while to · give some account of it for another public than that which generally concerns itself with the publications of the Rolls Series.

The tract in question, "De Electione Hugonis "-"On the Election of Hugo❞—fills twenty leaves in the Harleian MS. 1005, but the writing is so small and so full of contractions that as now published it occupies upwards of a hundred pages of an ordinary octavo volume.The writer does not tell us his name, and it is not otherwise known, but from internal evidence it is certain he was a monk of St. Edmund's Abbey at the time when the abbatial election which he describes took place.

Now, this election was that which followed upon the death of Abbot Samson himself, the great abbot for whose well-known portrait in "Past and Present" Carlyle drew his materials from the "Chronicle of Jocelin de Brakelonde," then recently edited for the Camden Society from this same Harleian MS. which contains the tract “On

the Election of Hugo." On December 30, 1211, says the writer of the tract in his opening sentences, "Abbot Samson, of venerable memory, passed from this world to Him who hath set bounds to men which it is impossible for any one to overstep, exchanging earthly things for heavenly, toil for rest, grief and sorrow for joy and consolation, things transitory for things eternal; and leaving his flock mourning for the loss of so great a shepherd, and exposed to the attacks of ravenous wolves." They were troubled times indeed on which the good abbot closed his eyes; for England lay at the moment under the great Interdict imposed upon her by Pope Innocent III. in consequence of the conduct of John in reference to the nomination of Stephen Langton to the See of Canterbury.

The body of Samson was laid, doubtless with due funeral rites, in a small burial close, "in pratello," near the monastery, whence, as we are afterwards informed, it was translated at the end of two years and a half into the chapter-house. After this, the first thought of the monks was to communicate their abbot's death to the King. A „deputation, consisting of Robert the sacrist, Robert the chamberlain, and Thomas of Walsingham, set out on its way to the King; they found him at a place called in the MS. Frisomantel-i.e., Freemantlea park and hunting-lodge, of which now no trace remains, near to Lord Carnarvon's mansion of High Clere House, in Hampshire. John received them very graciously. Some jewels and other ornaments which had been worn by the late abbot were presented to him by the -deputation. He at first, with self-depreciating expressions, refused to accept them; but consented to do so when the sacrist assured him. that in his last illness Samson had expressed a wish that they should be so bestowed.

An interval of more than a year and a half followed, during which no step was taken to fill the vacancy. In July 1213, the King, being then at Corfe Castle in Dorsetshire, and intending shortly to · cross the Channel on his way to Poitou, wrote to the convent, directing them to send to him discreet men from their number, with a view to the choice of an abbot. This letter is given in full.

Thus far the vacancy had been of no extraordinary length, and as the abbot's revenues, pending the appointment of his successor, passed into the King's exchequer, it is likely that under other cir.cumstances John would have waited some time longer. But he was now on his good behaviour; he had reconciled himself to the Pope through Pandulph the legate, agreed to hold his kingdom, as a. fief, from the Holy See, and allowed Stephen Langton and the other exiled bishops to land peaceably in England. The Interdict was at an end. Full of projects against Philip Augustus of France-projects which came to a disastrous end at Bouvines in the following year-John desired to be on good terms with the bishops and the