FLESH-FLIES NOTICED BY SHAKSPEARE. 177 



racterised, I return to Shakspeare. Now it is not a 

 little remarkable, that while he seems to suppose that 

 maggots were generated by the sun, or that " the 

 sun breeds maggots in a dead dog," he was at the 

 same time aware of the fact, that they are pro- 

 duced by a fly, who deposits on the decajdng 

 matter her eggs, or her larvse. It is curious, 

 that the two ideas could exist simultaneously — 

 that the knowledge of the latter circumstance did 

 not at once lead to the disbelief of the former. 

 But in the history of human knowledge, we meet 

 continually with such anomalies, and find the mind 

 stopping short in the midst of error, just where 

 one step farther would have placed it in the full 

 effulgence of truth. The allusions to the flesh-flies, 

 as the origin of the maggots, are numerous. When 

 Trinculo has been taken out of " the filthy mantled 

 pool," beyond the cell of Prospero, he replies to a 

 question by Alonzo, — " I have been in such a pickle 

 since I saw you last, that I fear me wiU never out of 

 my bones ; I shall not fear fly-blowing." (Tempest, 

 Act V. Sc. I.) When Imogen, in the assumed cha- 

 racter of Fidele, agrees to follow Lucius, she states 

 her determination, in the first instance, to bury the 

 supposed dead body of Posthumus, not for the pur- 

 pose of doing it honour, but of protecting it from 

 those insects : — 



