PEDIPALn — SCORPIONS. 331 



know it cannot affect you, but it is a liabit which I cannot 

 relinquish." " Indeed/' replied the Tortoise, " then I cannot 

 do better than free so evil-minded a creature from his bad 

 disposition, and secure the good from his malevolence." 

 Saying which he dived under the water, and the waves soon 

 carried the Scorpion beyond the bourn of existence. 



When, in this banquet house of vice and strife, 

 A knave olt strikes the various stings of fraud, 

 'Tis best the sea of death ingulf him soon, 

 That he be freed from man, and man from liim.i 



Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, 

 has the following in his chapter on the Scorpion : 



"There is a common adage. Comix Scorpium, a Raven 

 to a Scorpion, and it is used against them that perish by 

 their own inventions: when they set upon others, they meet 

 with their matches, as a raven did when it preyed upon a 

 Scorpion, thus described by Alciatus, under his title Jasfa 

 ultio, just revenge, saying as foUoweth : 



Raptabat volucer captum pede corvus in auras 



Scorpion, audaci prgemia parta gulaj. 

 Ast ille infuso sensim per membia venemo, 



Raptorem in stygias compulit ultor aquas. 

 risu res digna ! aliis qui fata parabat. 



Ipse periit, propriis succubuitque dolis. 



Which may be Englished thus : 



The ravening crow for prey a Scorpion took 

 Within her foot, and therewithal aloft did flie. 



But he empoysoned her by force and slinging stroke, 

 So ravener in the Stygian Lake did die. 



sportful! game! that he which other for bellyes sake did kill, 



By his own deceit should fall into death's will. 



"There be some learned writers, who have compared a 

 Scorpion to an epigram, or rather an epigram to a Scor- 

 pion, because as the sting of the Scorpion lyeth in the 

 tayl, so the force and vertue of an epigram is in the conclu- 

 sion, for vel acriter saUe mordecd, vel jucunde atquc. dal- 

 citer delectei, that is, either let it bite sharply at the end, 

 or else delight pleasingly."'' 



1 Asiatic Miscellany, ii. 451. 



2 Topsel's Hi&t. of Beists anl Strpents, p. 755-6. 



