gospel were first written in Hebrew or Syriac, yet it is not unquestionable whether the true original be any where extant. And that Syriac copy which we now have, is conceived to be of far later time than St. Matthew. Expositors and annotators are also various. Hugo Grotius hath passed the word zizania without a note. Diodati, retaining the word zizania, conceives that it was some peculiar herb growing among the corn of those countries, and not known in our fields. But Emanuel de Sa interprets it plantas semini noxias, and so accordingly some others. Buxtorfius, in his Rabbinical Lexicon, gives divers interpretations, sometimes for degenerated corn, sometimes for the black seeds in wheat, but withal concludes, an hæc sit eadem vox aut species cum zizania apud evangelistam, quærant alii. But lexicons and dictionaries by zizania do almost generally understand lolium, which we call darnel, and commonly confine the signification to that plant. Notwithstanding, since lolium had a known and received name in Greek, some may be apt to doubt why, if that plant were particularly intended, the proper Greek word was not used in the text. For Theophrastus named lolium aipa, and hath often mentioned that plant; and in one place saith, that corn doth sometimes loliescere or degenerate into darnel. Dioscorides, who travelled over Judæa, gives it the same name, which is also to be found in Galen, Ætius, and Egineta; and Pliny hath sometimes Latinized that word into æra. Besides, lolium or darnel shows itself in the winter, growing up with the wheat; and Theophrastus observed, that it was no vernal plant, but came up in the winter; which will not well answer the expression of the text, "And when the blade came up, and brought forth fruit," or gave evidence of its fruit, the zizania appeared. And if the husbandry of the ancients were agreeable unto ours, they would not have been so earnest to weed away the darnel; for our husbandmen do not commonly weed it in the field, but separate the seed after thrashing. And, therefore, Galen delivereth, that in an unseasonable year, and great scarcity of corn, when they neglected to * où aípnodai. Theophrast. Hist. Plant. lib. 8. separate the darnel, the bread proved generally unwholesome and had evil effects on the head. Our old and later translators render zizania tares, which name our English botanists give unto aracus, cracca vicia sylvestris, calling them tares and strangling tares And our husbandmen by tares understand some sorts of wild fitches, which grow amongst corn, and clasp unto it, accord ing to the Latin etymology, vicia à vinciendo. Now in this uncertainty of the original, tares, as well as some others. may make out the sense, and be also more agreeable unto the circumstances of the parable. For they come up and appear what they are, when the blade of the corn is come up, and also the stalk and fruit discoverable. They have likewise little spreading roots, which may entangle or rob the good roots, and they have also tendrils and claspers, which lay hold of what grows near them, and so can hardly be weeded without endangering the neighbouring corn. However, if by zizania we understand herbas segeti noxias, or vitia segetum, as some expositors have done, and take the word in a more general sense, comprehending several weeds and vegetables offensive unto corn, according as the Greek word in the plural number may imply, and as the learned Laurenbergius hath expressed, runcare, quod apud nostrates weden dicitur, zizanias inutiles est evellere. If, I say, it be thus taken, we shall not need to be definite, or confine unto one particular plant, from a word which may comprehend divers. And this may also prove a safer sense,1 in such obscurity of the original. And, therefore, since in this parable the sower of the zizania is the devil, and the zizania wicked persons; if any from this larger acception will take in thistles, darnel, cockle, wild straggling fitches, bindweed, tribulus, restharrow, and other vitia segetum; he may, both from the natural and symbolical qualities of those vegetables, have plenty of matter to illustrate the variety of his mischiefs, and of the wicked of this world. *De Horti Cultura. This may also prove a safer sense.] But the later commentators seem rather disposed, with Forskäl, to consider it to have been the darnel. 49. When 'tis said in Job, "Let thistles grow up instead of wheat, and cockle1 instead of barley," the words are intelligible, the sense allowable and significant to this purpose: but whether the word cockle doth strictly conform unto the original, some doubt may be made from the different translations of it; for the vulgar renders it spina, Tremellius vitia frugum, and the Geneva yvroye, or darnel. Besides, whether cockle were common in the ancient agriculture of those parts, or what word they used for it, is of great uncertainty. For the elder botanical writers have made no mention thereof, and the moderns have given it the name of pseudomelanthium nigellastrum, lychnoides segetum, names not known unto antiquity. And, therefore, our translation hath warily set down "noisome weeds" in the margin. TRACT II. OF GARLANDS AND CORONARY OR GARLAND PLANTS.2 SIR,-The use of flowery crowns and garlands is of no slender antiquity, and higher than I conceive you apprehend it. For, besides the old Greeks and Romans, the cockle.] Celsius, and after him Michaelis, supposes this to have been the aconite. 2 In the margin of Evelyn's copy is this manuscript note :-"This letter was written to me from Dr. Browne; more at large in the Coronarie Plants." In order to preserve unaltered, as far as possible, the order of Sir Thomas Browne's published works, I have thought proper not to transplant into the " Correspondence" the present and several other Tracts, though they were, in fact, epistolary, and it has been ascertained to whom they were addressed. In the preface to Evelyn's Acetaria (reprinted by Mr. Upcott, in his Collection of Evelyn's Miscellaneous Writings), we find his "Plan of a Royal Garden, in three Books." It was in reference to this projected work (of which however Acetaria was the only part ever published), that Browne's assistance was asked and given. Among the subjects named in that plan the following are Egyptians made use hereof; who, besides the bravery of their garlands, had little birds upon them to peck their heads and brows, and so to keep them [from] sleeping at their festival compotations. This practice also extended as far as India for at the feast of the Indian king, it is peculiarly observed by Philostratus, that their custom was to wear garlands, and come crowned with them unto their feast. The crowns and garlands of the ancients were either gestatory, such as they wore about their heads or necks; portatory, such as they carried at solemn festivals; pensile or suspensory, such as they hanged about the posts of their houses in honour of their gods, as Jupiter Thyræus or Limeneus; or else they were depository, such as they laid upon the graves and monuments of the dead. And these were made up after all ways of art, compactile, sutile, plectile; for which work there were osoavorλókot, or expert persons to contrive them after the best grace and propriety. Though we yield not unto them in the beauty of flowery garlands, yet some of those of antiquity were larger than any we lately met with; for we find in Athenæus, that a myrtle crown, of one and twenty feet in compass, was solemnly carried about at the Hellotian feast in Corinth, together with the bones of Europa. And garlands were surely of frequent use among them; for we read in Galen,* that when Hippocrates cured the great plague of Athens by fires kindled in and about the city: the fuel thereof consisted much of their garlands. And they must needs be very frequent and of common use, the ends thereof being many. For they were convivial, *De Theriaca ad Pisonem. referred to in the present Tract, and in other of Browne's Letters to Evelyn : Book ii. chap. 6. Of a seminary; nurseries; and of propagating trees, plants, and flowers; planting and transplanting, &c. Chap. 16. Of the coronary garden. Chap. 18. Of stupendous and wonderful plants. Book iii. chap. 9. Of garden burial. Chap. 10. Of paradise, and of the most famous gardens in the world, ancient and modern. festival, sacrificial, nuptial, honorary, funebrial. We who propose unto ourselves the pleasures of two senses, and only single out such as are of beauty and good odour, cannot strictly confine ourselves unto imitation of them. For, in their convivial garlands, they had respect unto plants preventing drunkenness, or discussing the exhalations from wine; wherein, beside roses, taking in ivy, vervain, melilote, &c., they made use of divers of small beauty or good odour. The solemn festival garlands were made properly unto their gods, and accordingly contrived from plants sacred unto such deities; and their sacrificial ones were selected under such considerations. Their honorary crowns triumphal, ovary, civical, obsidional, had little of flowers in them: and their funebrial garlands had little of beauty in them besides roses, while they made them of myrtle, rosemary, apium, &c., under symbolical intimations; but our florid and purely ornamental garlands, delightful unto sight and smell, nor framed according to any mystical and symbolical considerations, are of more free election, and so may be made to excel those of the ancients: we having China, India, and a new world to supply us, beside the great distinction of flowers unknown unto antiquity, and the varieties thereof arising from art and nature. But, beside vernal, æstival and autumnal, made of flowers, the ancients had also the hyemal garlands; contenting themselves at first with such as were made of horn dyed into several colours, and shaped into the figure of flowers, and also of as coronarium or clincquant, or brass thinly wrought out into leaves commonly known among us. But the curiosity of some emperors for such intents had roses brought from Egypt until they had found the art to produce late roses in Rome, and to make them grow in winter, as is delivered in that handsome epigram of Martial— Attu Romanæ jussus jam cedere brumæ Some American nations, who do much excel in garlands, content not themselves only with flowers, but make elegant 1 discussing.] Dr. Johnson quotes this passage as his example of the use of the word discuss in the sense of disperse. |