rOULTRY. 383 



Since here, - visible to the naked eye," was a slap-in-the-mouth 

 contradiction thereof; for 



" from his aerial career, 

 A monarch of goosedom, stern, long-necked and high, — Street varied, 



allured by the siren hiss and quack of some seductive voice, 

 sweetly sibillating, in dulcet notes, — 



" O goosey, goosey gander, 

 "Whither do you wander r " 



stoops down to earth and 



" Stamps an image of himself, 

 A sovereign of a frog pond." — Dryclen varied. 



But our love-striken gander was not without high precedent 

 and classic example in his amorous dallying with a daughter of 

 earth. Great Jove, the Thunderer, himself, the Greek mytholo- 

 gists tell us, assumed the shape of a swan, and descended to 

 earth to greet fair Leda, 



" Sparta's beauteous queen." 



Hear what poor old Jack Fal staff says, in the " Merry "Wives 

 of Windsor: " — 



" O powerful love ! You once, O Jupiter, were a swan for the love of Leda ! 

 O omnipotent love ! How near the god drew to the complexion of a goose ! 

 Think on't, O Jove ! a fault in the semblance of a fowl ! a foul fault ! " 



Now, every schoolboy, not wholly oblivious of his Horace, 

 knows that this same Leda, after this visit, laid a couple of 

 splendid eggs, from which were hatched those splendid fellows. 

 Castor and Pollux, redoubtable knock-down heroes in their 

 time, and now fixed in constellation among the starry host. 

 And if these things were so, (and who dare say they were not, 

 against the august authority of Hesiod and Homer, and 

 Horace and Ovid, and JackFalstaff,) who can blame an honest, 

 simple-hearted gander for taking the great god for a leader, 

 when the great god himself had a Leda (leader ?) of his own 

 following ? 



