Page:Notes and Queries - Series 10 - Volume 12.djvu/345

 10 s. xn. OCT. 9, 1909.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

281

LONDON, SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9, 1909.

CONTENTS. No. 302.

NOTES : Dickens : Shakespeare: "Woodbine," 281 Capt Robert Percival. 282 R. Clutterbuck on Thurtell and Weare, 283 English Clothing Terms in Foreign Tongues "Hoth"=Heath, 284 James Burton, James Birkett, and St. Leonards Dr. Walter Green Sardinian Chapel Juan Fernandez : an Early Crusoe. 285 Robert Paltock, Author of ' Peter Wilkins ' Penny-in-the-Slot Machines in 1829 Bp. Percy Christopher Wren and Freemasonry, 286.

QUERIES : Matthew Arnold, Shelley, Keats, and the Yew Pelle's Bust of Charles II. Spanish Wine Day: Pigeons and Dying People Gilbert of Kilminchey : Sutton of Osbaston "Dish of tea" Portrait by Lintpn Seacome Family, 287 Flying across the Lake of Perugia "Though lost to sight "Pronunciation of " One "Authors Wanted 'John Brown' 'Araminta' "Spurrings" and Lame- ness, 288 Keble on Stars reflected in Ice Burnell Family Brooke's 'Observations on Italy 'Hereditary Herb- strewer Dean Tucker of Gloucester 'Lawyer Outwitted ' Crest and Motto "Man in a quart bottle "Webber Family Napoleon's Laurel-Leaf Wreath, 289.

REPLIES : Last Duel with Swords in England Laurence the Wit, 290 Hursley Vicars Holt Castle and the Beau- champs Lytton's Novels in French Edwin Waugh's Lan- cashire Recitations, 291 "Plus je connais les hommes" Giraffe: Camelopard Hampden Family Baughan : Boffin Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, 292 Robert Southey Fig Tree in the City Weltje's Club, 293 New- ton and King's College " Strawberry Hill" Catalogue,

994 "Futura pi-eetentis" Ladies and Side-Saddles

Elizabeth and the Bishop of Ely Bee-Sting Cure for Rheumatism, 295 Authors Wanted Lincolnshire Names " A nafedave "Rowan Tree Witch Day Rev. G. Mark- ham, 296 John Kelsall Parodies of Kipling " Perte- sen" Bishop Heber, 297 Fair Rosamond The Slovaks

" D g and Pot" "Bosting" Burial-Places of Notable

Englishwomen, 298.

NOTES ON BOOKS :-Mr. Baddeley's 'A Cotteswold Shrine '' Giles and Phineas Fletcher,' Vol. II. Reviews and Magazines.

DICKENS: SHAKESPEARE: " WOODBINE."

I DO not believe that Dickens knew much about flowers : one cannot know everything, and it is possible that he has made a slip in two places.

In ' Bleak House," chap. Ixiv., he refers to " the tiny wooden colonnades, garlanded with woodbine, jasmine, and honeysuckle."

'The Old Curiosity Shop' (chap, xxv.) refers to " the lattice where the honey- suckle and woodbine entwined their tender stems."

Woodbine and honeysuckle are now both names for the same plant ;' see the standard ' British Flora ' of Bentham and Hooker, fifth edition, which says : " Lonicera Pericly- menum. Common Honeysuckle, Wood- bine."

But in earlier centuries the name of " woodbine " was applied to various climbers, especially the " traveller's joy," -vrhose seeds are now lending a fluffy appearance to many wayside hedges. Shakespeare himself has

in ' Midsummer's Night's Dream,' IV. i. 44 :

So doth the woodbine, the sweet honeysuckle, Gently entwist ; the female ivy so Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.

Such is the reading of the Folios, but modern editors have preferred wisely, I think to omit the commas in the first line. L. H. Grindon (' Shakspere Flora,' p. 143 foil.) Suggests that Shakespeare meant, So doth the woodbine that is, the sweet honey- suckle gently entwist. But, read so, it has nothing to entwist, and the parallelism between woodbine and honeysuckle, ivy and elm, is lost. I have little doubt that Gifford, as quoted in ' Knight's Companion Shakspere,' 3 vols., is right. Gifford says in a note on Jonson's

Behold !

How the blue bindweed doth itself unfold

With honeysuckle

that " in many of our counties the wood- bine is still the name for the great convol- vulus." Parkinson's ' Paradise ' (I use the brief form of a long Latin title) of 1629 calls various sorts of honeysuckle " wood- binde " freely ; and, so far as I can make out, in the seventeenth century the meaning of the word, like that of so many other English plant-names, was unsettled. The vernacular of Stratford does not, I think, now call the wild clematis or convolvulus " woodbine," though it is obviously a vague term applicable to many climbing plants. I have never heard the word so used, though the Shakespearian "canker" for dog-rose is known to me as still in use. The confusion of plant - names, past and present, is well exhibited in Milton's ' L' Allegro,' 11. 47-8 :

Through the sweet-briar or the vine,

Or the twisted eglantine,

where the first and third plants are the same to a modern flower-lover, and Warton takes " eglantine " to mean " honeysuckle."

Is it possible that in Kentish dialect " woodbine " does mean something else than honeysuckle, and that Dickens took that other meaning for granted, just as he used a genuine Kenticism (" cows " for "cowls") in 'Pickwick'? Or did he simply put down two charming words, forti- fied by Shakespeare's use of them, and ignorant that for the average man they were tautologous ? I should, perhaps, add that no modern edition of Shakespeare known to me and I have consulted a dozen retains the commas which suggest that the poet meant the two words to be in apposition. NEL MEZZO.