(1)	Queen.	The Violets, Cowslips, and the Primroses, Bear to my closet.
Cymbeline, act i, sc. 5 (83).
(2)	Angelo.	It is I, That, lying by the Violet in the sun, Do as the carrion does, not as the flower, Corrupt with virtuous season.
Measure for Measure, act ii, sc. 2 (165).
(3)	Oberon.	Where Oxlips and the nodding Violet grows.
Midsummer Night's Dream, act ii, sc. 1 (250).
(4)	Salisbury.	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.
King John, act iv, sc. 2 (11).
(5)	K. Henry.	I think the king is but a man, as I am; the Violet smells to him as it doth to me.
Henry V, act iv, sc. 1 (105).
(6)	Laertes.	A Violet in the youth of primy nature, Forward, not permanent; sweet, not lasting. The perfume and suppliance of a minute; No more.
Hamlet, act i, sc. 3 (7).
(7)	Ophelia.	I would give you some Violets, but they withered all when my father died.
Ibid., act iv, sc. 5 (184).
(8)	Laertes.	Lay her i' the earth, And from her fair and unpolluted flesh May Violets spring!
Ibid., act v, sc. 1 (261).
(9)	Belarius.	They are as gentle As zephyrs blowing below the Violet, Not wagging his sweet head.
Cymbeline, act iv, sc. 2 (171).
(10)	Duke.	That strain again! It had a dying fall: O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet sound, That breathes upon a bank of Violets, Stealing and giving odour!
Twelfth Night, act i, sc. 1 (4).
(11)	Song of Spring.	When Daisies pied, and Violets blue, &c.
Love's Labour's Lost, act v, sc. 2 (904). (See Cuckoo-buds.)
(12)	Perdita.	Violets dim, But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes Or Cytherea's breath.
Winter's Tale, act iv, sc. 4 (120).
(13)	Duchess.	Welcome, my son; Who are the Violets now, That strew the green lap of the new-come spring?
Richard II, act v, sc. 2 (46).
(14)	Marina.	The yellows, blues, The purple Violets and Marigolds, Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave While summer-days do last.
Pericles, act iv, sc. 1 (16).
(15)		These blue-veined Violets whereon we lean Never can blab, nor know not what we mean.
Venus and Adonis (125).
(16)		Who when he lived, his breath and beauty set Gloss on the Rose, smell to the Violet.
Ibid. (936).
(17)		When I behold the Violet past prime, And sable curls all silver'd o'er with white,
		*****
		Then of thy beauty do I question make, That thou among the wastes of time must go, Since sweets and beauties do themselves forsake And die as fast as they see others grow.
Sonnet xii.
(18)		The forward Violet thus did I chide: "Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells, If not from my love's breath? The purple pride Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells In my love's veins thou hast too grossly died."
Ibid. xcix.

There are about a hundred different species of Violets, of which there are five species in England, and a few sub-species. One of these is the Viola tricolor, from which is descended the Pansy, or Love-in-Idleness (see Pansy). But in all the passages in which Shakespeare names the Violet, he alludes to the purple sweet-scented Violet, of which he was evidently very fond, and which is said to be very abundant in the neighbourhood of Stratford-on-Avon. For all the eighteen passages tell of some point of beauty or sweetness that attracted him. And so it is with all the poets from Chaucer downwards—the Violet is noticed by all, and by all with affectation. I need only mention two of the greatest. Milton gave the Violet a chief place in the beauties of the "Blissful Bower" of our first parents in Paradise—

Paradise Lost, book iv.

and Sir Walter Scott crowns it as the queen of wild flowers—

Yet favourite though it ever has been, it has no English name. Violet is the diminutive form of the Latin Viola, which again is the Latin form of the Greek ???. In the old Vocabularies Viola frequently occurs, and with the following various translations:—"Ban-wyrt," i.e., Bone-wort (eleventh century Vocabulary); "Cloefre," i.e., Clover (eleventh century Vocabulary); "ViolÉ, Appel-leaf" (thirteenth century Vocabulary);[310:1] "Wyolet" (fourteenth century Vocabulary); "Vyolytte" (fifteenth century Nominale); "Violetta, A^ce, a Violet" (fifteenth century Pictorial Vocabulary); and "Viola Cleafre, Ban-vyrt" (Durham Glossary). It is also mentioned in the Anglo-Saxon translation of the Herbarium of Apuleius in the tenth century as "the Herb Viola purpurea; (1) for new wounds and eke for old; (2) for hardness of the maw" (Cockayne's translation). In this last example it is most probable that our sweet-scented Violet is the plant meant, but in some of the other cases it is quite certain that some other plant is meant, and perhaps in all. For Violet was a name given very loosely to many plants, so that Laurembergius says: "Vox ViolÆ distinctissimis floribus communis est. Videntur mihi antiqui suaveolentes quosque flores generatim Violas appellasse, cujuscunque etiam forent generis quasi vi oleant."—Apparat. Plant., 1632. This confusion seems to have arisen in a very simple way. Theophrastus described the Leucojum, which was either the Snowdrop or the spring Snowflake, as the earliest-flowering plant; Pliny literally translated Leucojum into Alba Viola. All the earlier writers on natural history were in the habit of taking Pliny for their guide, and so they translated his Viola by any early-flowering plant that most took their fancy. Even as late as 1693, Samuel Gilbert, in "The Florists' Vade Mecum," under the head of Violets, only describes "the lesser early bulbous Violet, a common flower yet not to be wasted, because when none other appears that does, though in the snow, whence called Snowflower or Snowdrop;" and I think that even later instances may be found.

When I say that there is no genuine English name for the Violet, I ought, perhaps, to mention that one name has been attributed to it, but I do not think that it is more than a clever guess. "The commentators on Shakespeare have been much puzzled by the epithet 'happy lowlie down,' applied to the man of humble station in "Henry IV.," and have proposed to read 'lowly clown,' or to divide the phrase into 'low lie down,' but the following lines from Browne clearly prove 'lowly down' to be the correct term, for he uses it in precisely the same sense—

Poet's Pleasaunce."

This may prove that Browne called the Violet a Lowly-down, but it certainly does not prove that name to have been a common name for the Violet. It was, however, the character of lowliness combined with sweetness that gave the charm to the Violet in the eyes of the emblem writers: it was for them the readiest symbol of the meekness of humility. "Humilitas dat gratiam" is the motto that Camerarius places over a clump of Violets. "A true widow is, in the church, as a little March Violet shedding around an exquisite perfume by the fragrance of her devotion, and always hidden under the ample leaves of her lowliness, and by her subdued colouring showing the spirit of her mortification, she seeks untrodden and solitary places," &c.—St. Francis de Sales. And the poets could nowhere find a fitter similitude for a modest maiden than

Violets, like Primroses, must always have had their joyful associations as coming to tell that the winter is passing away and brighter days are near, for they are among

Yet it is curious to note how, like Primroses, they have been ever associated with death, especially with the death of the young. I suppose these ideas must have arisen from a sort of pity for flowers that were only allowed to see the opening year, and were cut off before the full beauty of summer had come. This was prettily expressed by H. Vaughan, the Silurist:

Daphnis, 1678.

It was from this association that they were looked on as apt emblems of those who enjoyed the bright springtide of life and no more. This feeling was constantly expressed, and from very ancient times. We find it in some pretty lines by Prudentius—

Shakespeare expresses the same feeling in the collection of "purple Violets and Marigolds" which Marina carries to hang "as a carpet on the grave" (No. 14), and again in Laertes' wish that Violets may spring from the grave of Ophelia (No. 8), on which Steevens very aptly quotes from Persius Satires—

In the same spirit Milton, gathering for the grave of Lycidas—

gathers among others "the glowing Violet;" and the same thought is repeated by many other writers.

There is a remarkable botanical curiosity in the structure of the Violet which is worth notice: it produces flowers both in spring and autumn, but the flowers are very different. In spring they are fully formed and sweet-scented, but they are mostly barren and produce no seed, while in autumn they are very small, they have no petals and, I believe, no scent, but they produce abundance of seed.[313:1]

I need say nothing to recommend the Violet in all its varieties as a garden plant. As a useful medicinal plant it was formerly in high repute—

Stockholm MS.

and it still holds a place in the Pharmacopoeia, while the chemist finds the pretty flowers one of the most delicate tests for detecting the presence of acids and alkalies; but as to the many other virtues of the Violet I cannot do better than quote Gerard's pleasant and quaint words: "The Blacke or Purple Violets, or March Violets of the garden, have a great prerogative above others, not only because the minde conceiveth a certain pleasure and recreation by smelling and handling of those most odoriferous flowres, but also for that very many by these Violets receive ornament and comely grace; for there be made of them garlands for the head, nosegaies, and poesies, which are delightfull to looke on and pleasant to smell to, speaking nothing of their appropriate vertues; yea, gardens themselves receive by these the greatest ornament of all chiefest beautie and most gallant grace, and the recreation of the minde which is taken thereby cannot but be very good and honest; for they admonish and stir up a man to that which is comely and honest, for flowres through their beautie, variety of colour, and exquisite forme, do bring to a liberall and greatte many minde the remembrance of honestie, comelinesse, and all kindes of vertues. For it would be an unseemely and filthie thing (as a certain wise man saith) for him that doth looke upon and handle faire and beautifull things, and who frequenteth and is conversant in faire and beautifull places, to have his minde not faire but filthie and deformed." With these brave words of the old gardener I might well close my account of this favourite flower, but I must add George Herbert's lines penned in the same spirit—

Poems on Life.

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FOOTNOTES:

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