is more in accordance with the Bestiary than is Drayton's, but Lyly[1] is with the latter in speaking of "a sweet panther with a devouring pouch," and they both follow Pliny.[2] Spenser pens more scandal:—
"The panther knowing that his spotted hide
Doth please all beasts, but that his looks them fray.
Within a bush his dreadful head doth hide,
To let them gaze whylest he on them may pray."[3]
If we remain standing by the door of Noah's Ark[4] we shall see other animals approach and hear instructive comments:—
The unicorn[5] leaves off his pride and close
There sets him down by the rhinoceros,"
the pachyderm that has in these latter days usurped the name of the graceful creature which, since the time of James the First, has so well performed its part in supporting the royal arms of Great Britain and Ireland. Drayton was too much of a poet and too little of a naturalist to combine the two. He should have spoken of the cat that secreteth, not of "the cat that voideth civet"; and when he lets slip the expression, "th'uneven legged badger," we can only tell him that Dr. Browne[6] finds the opinion that this creature "hath the legs of one side shorter than of the other . . . repugnant unto the three determinators of truth—authority, sense, and reason," and that modern zoologists do not note an inequality. Here comes "the iron-eating ostrich,"[7] here "the constant turtle," whose reputation has survived the ruthless scoff of Waterton:[8] "The soot-black crow is just as
- ↑ Euphues (Arbor's edition), p. 54.
- ↑ Natural History (Bohn's edition), vol. ii. p. 274.
- ↑ Sonnet liii. Observe that Spenser makes "whylest"="until"—a dreadful solecism now-a-days.
- ↑ See Noah's Flood [iv. 1533, &c.]
- ↑
"Mertilla. O that the horns of all these herds we see
"Mertilla.Were of fine gold, or else that every horn
"Mertilla.Were like to that one of the unicorn,
"Mertilla.And of all these not one but were thy fee"—Nymphal, iv. [iv. 1482]. - ↑ Pseud. Epid. book iii. ch. 5, p. 94.
- ↑ There is no error in the belief that ostriches will swallow iron; but our forefathers thought they fed on it.
- ↑ Essays on Natural History (1838), pp. 145-146.
