E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Bob Blair,
and Project Gutenberg Distributed Proofreaders
They in thir time did many a noble dede,
And for their worthines full oft have bore
The crown of laurer leavés on the hede,
As ye may in your oldé bookés rede:
And how that he that was a conquerour
Had by laurer alway his most honour.
DAN CHAUCER: The Flowre and the Leaf.
It is to be lamented that antiquarian zeal is so often diverted fromsubjects of real to those of merely fanciful interest. The mercurialyoung gentlemen who addict themselves to that exciting department ofletters are open to censure as being too fitful, too prone to flit,bee-like, from flower to flower, now lighting momentarily upon anindecipherable tombstone, now perching upon a rusty morion, heredipping into crumbling palimpsests, there turning up a tatteredreputation from heaps of musty biography, or discovering that thebrightest names have had sad blots and blemishes scoured off by theattrition of Time's ceaseless current. We can expect little frominvestigators so volatile and capricious; else should we expect thetopic we approach in this paper to have been long ago flooded withlight as of Maedler's sun, its dust dissipated, and sundry curves andangles which still baffle scrutiny and provoke curiosity exposed evento Gallio-llke wayfarers. It is, in fact, a neglected topic. Itsderivatives are obscure, its facts doubtful. Questions spring fromit, sucker-like, numberless, which none may answer. Why, forinstance, in apportioning his gifts among his posterity, did Phoebusassign the laurel to his step-progeny, the sons of song, and pour therest of the vegetable world into the pharmacopoeia of the favoredÆsculapius? Why was even this wretched legacy divided in aftertimeswith the children of Mars? Was its efficacy as a non-conductor oflightning as reliable as was held by Tiberius, of guileless memory,Emperor of Rome? Were its leaves really found green as ever in thetomb of St. Humbert, a century and a half after the interment of thatholy confessor? In what reign was the first bay-leaf, rewarding thefirst poet of English song, authoritatively conferred? These and otherlike questions are of so material concern to the matter we have inhand, that we may fairly stand amazed that they have thus far escapedthe exploration of archaeologists. It is not for us to busy ourselveswith other men's affairs. Time and patience shall develope profoundermysteries than these. Let us only succeed in delineating in briefmonograph the outlines of a natural history of the BritishLaurel,--Laurea nobilis, sempervirens, florida,--and in postinghere and there, as we go, a few landmarks that shall facilitate thesurveys of investigators yet unborn, and this our modest enterpriseshall be happily fulfilled.
One portion of it presents no serious difficulty. There is anuninterrupted canon of the Laureates running as far back as the reignof James I. Anterior, however, to that epoch, the catalogue fades awayin undistinguishable darkness. Names are there of undoubted splendor,a splendor, indeed, far more glowing than that of any subsequentmonarch of the bays; but the legal title to the garland falls so farshort of satisfactory demonstration, as to oblige us to dismiss thefirst seven Laureates wit