28 The Poets and Nature. 



And so in Hamlet : 



" King. How fares our cousin ? 



Hamlet. Excellent, i' faith of the chameleon's diet : I eat the air, 

 promise-crammed." 



Once upon a time, says a Hindoo legend, there was a 

 certain king who had before him a case in which two 

 Brahmans disputed the possession of a cow and calf, and 

 he was so dilatory in judgment that the pious litigants 

 appealed to Heaven, the result, as far as the king was 

 concerned, being that he was turned into a chameleon, 

 which never seems to know its own mind for an hour to- 

 gether. 



Poets see lizards in two aspects either as things of 

 happiest, brightest sunshine, or of ominous and sepulchral 

 gloom. Those, as Byron, Shelley, Rogers, Montgomery, 

 or Faber, who had seen and therefore admired these pretty, 

 elegant, harmless creatures, speak of them with kindly 

 admiration. They hear " the quick-eyed lizard rustling 

 through the grass," or note " the shrill chirp of the green 

 lizard's love," see " the lively lizard playing in the chinks," 

 and watch it basking in the grooves of the fallen pillar 



" With sensual enjoyment of the heat, 

 And with a little pulse that would outstep 

 The notes of nightingales for speed." 



On the other hand, they are creatures of ruins and dismal 

 abodes 



" Bit by bit the ruin crumbles, 



Not a lizard there abiding ; 

 And the callow raven tumbles 



From the loophole of her hiding." 



" The painted lizard and the bird of prey " are associates 

 in Dryden (borrowing from Virgil) ; in Cunninghame we 

 have "the lizard and the lazy, lurking bat, Inhabiting the 



