THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 201 



serpent, even as the Druids did for their sacred 

 nadder-stone. 



In prose literature the best presentation of 

 serpent life known to me is that of Oliver Wendell 

 Holmes : and being the best, in fiction at all 

 events, I am tempted to write of it at some 

 length. 



Now, very curiously, although, as we have just 

 seen, the incorrect drawing takes nothing from 

 the charm and, in one sense, from the truth of 

 Dr. Hake's picture, we no sooner turn to Elsie 

 Venner than we find ourselves crossing over to 

 the side of the good naturalist, with apologies for 

 having insulted him, to ask the loan of his fierce 

 light for this occasion only. Ordinarily in con- 

 sidering an excellent romance, we are rightly 

 careless about the small inaccuracies with regard 

 to matters of fact which may appear in it ; for the 

 writer who is able to produce a work of art must 

 not and cannot be a specialist or a microscopist, 

 but one who views Nature as the ordinary man 

 does, at a distance and as a whole, with the vision 

 common to all men, and the artist's insight added. 

 Dr. Holmes' s work is an exception ; since it is a 

 work of art of some excellence, yet cannot be read 

 in this tolerant spirit ; we distinctly refuse to 

 overlook its distortions of fact and false inferences 

 in the province of zoology ; and the author has 

 only himself to blame for this uncomfortable 

 temper of mind in his reader. 



The story of the New England serpent-girl is 



