NATURE AND THE POETS 87 



the botany or the natural history. I doubt if you 

 can catch Shakespeare transgressing the law in this 

 respect, except where he followed the superstition 

 and the imperfect knowledge of his time, as in his 

 treatment of the honey-bee. His allusions to nature 

 are always incidental to his main purpose, but they 

 reveal a careful and loving observer. For instance, 

 how are fact and poetry wedded in this passage, put 

 into the mouth of Banquo ! 



" This guest of summer, 

 The temple-haunting martlet, does approve, 

 By his loved masonry that the heaven's breath 

 Smells wooingly here: no jutty, frieze, 

 Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 

 Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle: 

 Where they most breed and haunt, I have observed, 

 The air is delicate." 



Nature is of course universal, but in the same 

 sense is she local and particular, cuts every suit 

 to fit the wearer, gives every land an earth and sky 

 of its own, and a flora and fauna to match. The 

 poets and their readers delight in local touches. 

 We have both the hare and the rabbit in America, 

 but this line from Thomson's description of a sum- 

 mer morning, 



"And from the bladed field the fearful hare limps awkward," 

 or this from Beattie, 



"Through rustling corn the hare astonished sprang" 



would not apply with the same force in New Eng- 

 land, because our hare is never found in the fields, 

 but in dense, remote woods. In England both 

 hares and rabbits abound to such an extent that in 



