e "currant
lip" of No. 2.

CYME, _see_ SENNA.

CYPRESS.[71:1]

(1) _Suffolk._

Their sweetest shade, a grove of Cypress trees!

_2nd Henry VI_, act iii, sc. 2 (322).

(2) _Aufidius._

I am attended at the Cypress grove.

_Coriolanus_, act i, sc. 10 (30).

(3) _Gremio._

In ivory coffers I have stuff'd my crowns,
In Cypress chests my arras counterpoints.

_Taming of the Shrew_, act ii, sc. 1 (351).

The Cypress (_Cupressus sempervirens_), originally a native of Mount
Taurus, is found abundantly through all the South of Europe, and is said
to derive its name from the Island of Cyprus. It was introduced into
England many years before Shakespeare's time, but is always associated
in the old authors with funerals and churchyards; so that Spenser calls
it the "Cypress funereal," which epithet he may have taken from Pliny's
description of the Cypress: "Natu morosa, fructu supervacua, baccis
torva, foliis amara, odore violenta, ac ne umbra quidem gratiosa--Diti
sacra, et ideo funebri signo ad domos posita" ("Nat. Hist.," xvi. 32).

Sir John Mandeville mentions the Cypress in a very curious way: "The
Cristene men, that dwellen beyond the See, in Grece, seyn that the tree
of the Cros, that we callen Cypresse, was of that tree that Adam ete the
Appule of; and that fynde thei writen" ("Voiage," &c., cap. 2). And the
old poem of the "Squyr of lowe degre," gives the tree a sacred
pre-eminence--

"The tre it was of Cypresse,
The fyrst tre that Iesu chese."

RITSON'S _Ear. Eng. Met. Romances_, viii. (31).

"In the Arundel MS. 42 may be found an alphabet of plants. . . . The
author mentions his garden 'by Stebenhythe by syde London,' and relates
that he brought a bough of Cypress with its Apples from Bristol 'into
Estbritzlond,' fresh in September, to show that it might be propagated
by slips."--_Promptorium Parvulorum_, app. 67.

The Cypress is an ornamental evergreen, but stiff in its growth till it
becomes of a good age; and for garden purposes the European plant is
becoming replaced by the richer forms from Asia and North America, such
as C. Lawsoniana, macrocarpa, Lambertiana, and others.

FOOTNOTES:

[71:1] Cypress, or Cyprus (for the word is spelt differently in the
different editions), is also mentioned by Shakespeare in the following--