time has given the same vote in many a pretty
verse, which, however, it would take too much space to quote at length;
so that I will content myself with these few lines by Alexander
Montgomery (coeval with Shakespeare)--

"I love the Lily as the first of flowers
Whose stately stalk so straight up is and stay;
To whom th' lave ay lowly louts and cowers
As bound so brave a beauty to obey."

Montgomery here has clearly in his mind's eye the Lily now so called;
but the name was not so restricted in the earlier writers. "Lilium,
cojus vox generali et licentiosa usurpatione adscribitur omni flori
commendabili" (Laurembergius, 1632). This was certainly the case with
the Greek and Roman writers, and it is so in our English Bible in most
of the cases where the word is used, but perhaps not universally so. It
is so used by Gower, describing Tarquin cutting off the tall flowers, by
some said to be Poppies and by others Lilies--

"And in the garden as they gone,
The Lilie croppes one and one,
Where that they were sprongen out,
He smote off, as they stood about."

_Conf. Ama._ lib. sept.

It is used in the same way by Bullein when, speaking of the flower of
the Honeysuckle (_see_ HONEYSUCKLE), and it must have been used in the
same sense by Isaak Walton, when he saw a boy gathering "Lilies and
Lady-smocks" in the meadows.

We have still many records of this loose way of speaking of the Lily, in
the Water Lily, the Lily of the Valley, the Lent Lily, St. Bruno's
Lily, the Scarborough Lily, the Belladonna Lily, and several others,
none of which are true Lilies.

But it is time to come to Shakespeare's Lilies. In all the twenty-eight
passages the greater portion simply recall the Lily as the type of
elegance and beauty, without any special reference to the flower, and in
many the word is only used to express a colour, Lily-white. But in the
others he doubtless had some special plant in view, and there are two
species which, from contemporary writers, seem to have been most
celebrated in his day. The one is the pure White Lily (_Lilium
candidum_), a plant of which the native country is not yet quite
accurately ascertained. It is reported to grow wild in abundance in
Lebanon, and it probably came to England from the East in very early
times. It was certainly largely grown in Europe in the Middle Ages, and
was universally acknowledged by a