[[059]] Phillips's Flora Historica.
[[060]] The word primrose is supposed to be a compound of prime and rose, and Spenser spells it prime rose
The pride and prime rose of the rest
Made by the maker's self to be admired
The Rev. George Croly characterizes Bengal as a mountainous country--
There's glory on thy mountains, proud Bengal--
and Dr. Johnson in his Journey of a day, (Rambler No. 65) charms the traveller in Hindustan with a sight of the primrose and the oak.
"As he passed along, his ears were delighted with the morning song of the bird of paradise; he was fanned by the last flutters of the sinking breeze, and sprinkled with dew by groves of spices, he sometimes contemplated the towering height of the oak, monarch of the hills; and sometimes caught the gentle fragrance of the primrose, eldest daughter of the spring."
In some book of travels, I forget which, the writer states, that he had seen the primrose in Mysore and in the recesses of the Pyrenees. There is a flower sold by the Bengallee gardeners for the primrose, though it bears but small resemblance to the English flower of that name. On turning to Mr. Piddington's Index to the Plants of India I find under the head of Primula--Primula denticula--Stuartii--rotundifolia--with the names in the Mawar or Nepaulese dialect.
[[061]] In strewing their graves the Romans affected the rose; the Greeks amaranthus and myrtle: the funeral pyre consisted of sweet fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant lay silent expressions of their surviving hopes. Sir Thomas Browne.
[[062]] The allusion to the cowslip in Shakespeare's description of Imogene must not be passed over here.--