Our ancestors had three verbs and three corresponding substantives to express the growth of plants, namely, _spring_, _shoot_, and _sprout_,--all indicative of rapidity of growth; for _sprout_, (Germ. _spriessen_) is akin to _spurt_, and denotes quickness, suddenness. The only one of these which remains in general use is _shoot_: for _sprout_ is now only appropriated to the young growth from cabbage-stalks; and _spring_ is heard no more save in _sprig_, which is evidently a corruption of it, and which now denotes a small slip or twig as we say, sprigs of laurel, bay, thyme, mint, rosemary, &c. Of the original meaning of _spring_, I have met but one clear instance; it is, however, an incontrovertible one, namely, "Whoso spareth the _spring_ (_i. e._ rod, switch), spilleth his children."--_Visions of Piers Plowman_, v. 2554., ed. Wright. Perhaps this is also the meaning in-- "Shall, Antipholus, Even in the spring of love thy _love-springs_ rot?" _Com. of Errors_, Act III. Sc. 2. and in "Time's Glory"-- "To dry the old oak's sap and cherish _springs_." _Rape of Lucrece._ _Spring_ afterwards came to be used for underwood, &c. Perhaps it answered to the present _coppice_, which is composed of the springs or shoots of the growth which has been cut down: "The lofty high wood and the lower _spring_." Drayton's _Muses' Elysium_, 10. "The lesser birds that keep the lower _spring_." _Id._, note. It was also used as equivalent to grove: "Unless it were The nightingale among the thick-leaved _spring_." Fletcher's _Faith. Shep._, v. 1. where, however, it may be the coppice. "This hand Sibylla's golden boughs to guard them, Through hell and horror, to the Elysian _springs_." Massinger's _Bondman_, ii. 1. In the following place Fairfax uses _spring_ to express the "salvatichi soggiorni," i. e. _selva_ of his original: "But if his courage any champion move Too try the hazard of this dreadful _spring_." _Godf. of Bull._, xiii. 31. and in "For you alone to happy end must bring The strong enchantments of the charmed _spring_." _Id._, xviii. 2. it answers to _selva_. When Milton makes his Eve say-- "While I In yonder _spring_ of roses intermix'd With _myrtles_ find what to redress till noon." _Par. Lost_, ix. 217. he had probably in his mind the _cespuglio_ in the first canto of the _Orlando Furioso_; for _spring_ had not been used in the sense of thickets, clumps, by any previous English poet. I am of opinion that _spring_ occurs for the last time in our poetry in the following lines of Pope: "See thy bright altars throng'd with prostrate kings, And heap'd with products of Sabaean _springs_." _Messiah_, 93. Johnson renders the last line--