Matilda Fitzwalter to the less admirable King John. The "allegory on the banks of the Nile" is the type of one who affects to regret that which his own evil passions have brought about.[1] I give the passage in full as it is rich in unnatural history—
"The dead man's grave with feigning tears to fill,
So the devouring crocodile doth kill.
To harbour hate in show of wholesome things,
So in the rose the poison'd serpent stings.
To lurk far off yet lodge destruction by,
The basilisk so poisons with its eye.
To call for aid and then to lie in wait,
So the hyæna murders by deceit.[2]
By sweet enticement sudden death to bring.
So from the rocks alluring mermaids sing."
The belief that the dove had no gall gave that bird an importance with sentimentalists which it has now lost. Lovers were formerly pleased to attribute the same physiological defect to their mistresses, and consequently Drayton did not neglect to credit his "Idea" therewith.[3]
"A milk-white dove upon her hand she brought.
So tame t'would go, returning at her call.
About whose neck was in a collar wrought
'Only like me, my mistress hath no gall.'"
The Bestiaries made good use of this and of other idiosyncrasies of the dove in likening it to the Holy Spirit, of whom it may be accounted the self-chosen symbol. Raulin,[4] an eccentric French preacher who died in 1514, gave many reasons why the bird was thus highly honoured; the first being, "A dove is without gall and is
- ↑ "The crocodile shrowdeth greatest treason under most pitiful teares: in a kissing mouth there lyeth a galling minde."—Euphtues (Arber's edition), p. 75.
- ↑ At the present day people in Palestine believe that this animal "posts itself near a road, and, by an irresistible power of fascination which it can exercise on human beings, it obliges a traveller to follow it, leading him through rough and thorny places that he may fall and bleed to death or be worn out by fatigue, and so become a defenceless prey." If the man at once cry out for help the beast runs off howling, for "its magnetic force has no power on the person."—Pierotti's Customs and Traditions of Palestine, p. 40.
- ↑ Eclogue, ix. [iv. 1435]; see also The Owl [iv. 1313].
- ↑ Post-Mediæval Preachers, by S. Baring-Gould.
