Crocodiles ', Turtles > and Lizards. 19 



the tradition of the world-supporting thing, and did reverence 

 to it. And so from East to West, from antiquity to to-day, 

 the creature, vast, ponderous, inert, has commanded and 

 commands the homage of men. 



Nor in poetry do the historic traditions of the creature 

 altogether fail of notice. How yEschylus was killed every 

 one knows, but in Spenser we find Thomalin (moralising on 

 good and bad shepherds) localising the event in England, 

 and making the victim of the eagle's mistake " a proud and 

 ambitious pastour," by name Algrind, who lived in his own 

 neighbourhood : 



' ' One day he sate upon a hill 



As now thou wouldst by me ; 

 But I am taught by Algrind's ill 



To love the low degree : 

 For sitting so with bared scalp, 



An eagle soared high, 

 That, weening his white head was chalk, 



A shell-fish down let fly. 

 She weened the shell-fish to have broke, 



But therewith bruised his brain ; 

 So now astonied with the stroke, 



He lies in grievous pain." 



Henceforth Thomalin refuses ever to go up to the top of a hill, 

 lest an eagle with a tortoise should happen to be overhead. 

 An excellent simile, drawn from a most unpromising source, 

 is Moore's 



" Raised the hopes of men as eaglets fly 

 With tortoise aloft into the sky, 

 To dash them down again more shatteringly ! " 



Of the connection of the tortoise-shell with the first lyre 

 Shelley, among others, takes notable cognisance in his 

 " Hymn to Mercury." The poet sees the child playing 

 about outside the cave and chancing upon a tortoise : 



' ' The beast before the portal at his leisure 

 The flowery herbage was depasturing ; 

 Moving his feet in a deliberate measure 

 Over the turf." 



