NOTES BY THE WAY. 193 



The science or the meaning is also a little obscure 

 in this phrase, which occurs in one of the plays : 



" One heat another heat expels " 



as one nail drives out another, or as one love cures 

 another. 



In a passage in " The Tempest," he speaks of the 

 ivy as if it were parasitical, like the mistletoe : 



"Now, he was 



The ivy which had hid my princely trunk, 

 And sucked my verdure out on't." 



I believe it is not a fact that the ivy sucks the juice 

 out of the trees it climbs upon, though it may much 

 jiterfere with their growth. Its aerial rootlets are 

 for support alone, as in the case with all climbers 

 that are not twiners. But this may perhaps be re- 

 garded as only a poetic license on the part of Shakes- 

 peare ; the human ivy he was picturing no doubt fed 

 upon the tree that supported it, whether the real ivy 

 does or not. 



It is also probably untrue that 



. " The poor beetle that we tread upon, 

 In corporal sufferance finds a pang as great 

 As when a giant dies/' 



though it has suited the purpose of other poets be- 

 sides Shakespeare to say so. The higher and more 

 complex the organization the more acute the pleasure 

 and the pain. A toad has been known to live for 

 ^ays with the upper part of its head cut away by a 

 scythe, and a beetle will survive for hours upon the 



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