Who was John Adamson, author of Fanny of Caernarvon, or the War of the Roses, an historical romance, of which a French translation was published in 1809 at Paris, in 2 vols. 12mo.?
E. H. A.
Canker or Brier Rose.—Can any of your correspondents tell me why the brier or dog-rose was anciently called the canker? The brier is particularly free from the disease so called, and the name does not appear to have been used in disparagement. In Shakspeare's beautiful Sonnet LIV. are the lines:
"The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye,
As the perfumed tincture of the roses."
In King Henry IV., Act I. Sc. 3., Hotspur says:
"Shall it for shame be spoken in these days,
Or fill up chronicles in times to come,
That men of your nobility and power,
Did 'gage them both in an unjust behalf,