_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,
(As both of you, God pardon it! have done)
To put down Richard, that sweet lovely rose
And plant this thorn, this _canker_ Bolingbroke."
And again, Don John, in _Much Ado about Nothing_, Act I. Sc. 3.:
"I had rather be a _canker_ in a hedge, than a rose in the grave."