POETRY OP INSECT LIGHTS. 173 



incapable of setting light to any tapers, save those of fairy 

 manufacture. Who could quarrel with that pretty conceit of 

 our immortal Bard, which converts " the glowworm's fiery 

 eyes " into lucifers, for the use of Titania's household ? Yet, 

 in our character of entomologist, we may, perhaps, be per- 

 mitted to observe, that Shakespeare has here taken more of 

 poet's license than he is wont to do in his allusions to natural 

 objects, which are in general so infinitely more correct than 

 those of his modern brethren of the lyre. It is admissible 

 enough to term " fiery ' what looks luminous, but it is a long 

 stretch, truly, even to the length of the creature's antipodes, to 

 endow it with " fiery eyes/' in lieu of a fiery-seeming tail. 

 Though the eyes of most night-prowlers are luminous, those 

 of the female glowworm are not, we believe, at all so, any 

 more than those of her flying mate ;* but the latter are pro- 

 digiously large, so large as to constitute the largest portion of 

 his head. The purpose of these disproportioned organs cannot, 

 perhaps, be positively told ; but, according to the old theory of 

 the " light of love," we should suppose that if the lady 

 glowworm (an insect Hero) were, on first acquaintance, to 

 exclaim to her Leander, " Oh, my dear ! what great eyes you 

 have!' ; he would reply, like the wolfish granddam, though in 

 quite another spirit, " Ah, love ! they are all the better to see 

 you with !' J 



Before having quite done with " fiery eyes," we may notice 



* See Vignette. 



