54 The Poets Beasts. 



But all of a sudden the circling lynx would fly out at a 

 tangent right into the thick of its black tormentors, and, as 

 a rule, bag a brace, right and left. 



Cowley has a very singular passage in one of his Juvenile 

 Pieces, which is this — 



" Let Cygnus pluck from the Arabian waves 

 The ruby of the rock, the pearl that paves 

 Great Neptune's court ; let every sparrow bear 

 From the three sisters' weeping bark a tear ; 

 Let spotted lynxes their sharp talons fill 

 With crystal, fetch'd from the Promethean hill ; 

 Let Cytherea's birds fresh wreaths compose, 

 Knitting the pale-fac'd lily with the rose." 



The reference here — the lynx bringing crystals — is to the 

 old-world fable of the "lyncurium," a misnomer of the 

 lapidaries of the time for "the Ligurian stone" (a repetition 

 of the "g" in the Greek making the error of sound a very 

 easy one) or "jacinth." This gem was supposed to be pro- 

 duced naturally by the lynx, that of the male being held in 

 higher estimation than that of the female, as of purer colour 

 and finer lustre. The jacinth is a lovely crystal, "much 

 more agreeable and superior in tint to the best Brazilian 

 topaz " (King's A^at. Hist, of Gems), but modern jewellers 

 would appear to have confounded it with one of the garnets 

 or cinnamon stones. The ancients, however, prized the 

 " lynx-stone " highly, and attributed to it strange potencies 

 against jaundice and other ailments. 



In European fables the lynx is rarely mentioned, its place 

 being filled for minor affairs by the cat, for greater by the 

 leopard. But it has its traditions. Its eyesight was con- 

 sidered so piercing that it could see through solid matter 

 and long paces of time, so that Lynceus, who could see 

 three weeks ahead, and Apollonius' lynx, that looked through 

 the earth and observed the proceedings of the devils in 

 hell, are quite within its legendary potentialities. Another 



