CHAPTER III. 





SNAKES IN NATURE. 



IN all the range of poetry there is no object of nature, 

 outside humanity, which has engaged fancy more constantly 

 or in so many diverse moods as the serpent. It was invested 

 in Holy Writ with a most portentous individuality; has 

 been reverenced at one time or another with divine honours 

 by almost every race upon the earth, and coils inextricably 

 round the legends of nearly every language. It was endowed 

 in classical literature with all conceivable attributes, malig- 

 nant and benign, and honoured through successive ages with 

 such persistent superstition as to constitute it almost the cen- 

 tral figure of folk-myth. Is it then to be wondered at that 

 the poetic mind should be attracted by a creature which has 

 fascinated mankind from the earliest times, and which still 

 maintains its rank as the chiefest of Nature's parables ? 



The serpent, however, has a prodigious literature of its 

 own, and into this I have here no intention to make rash 

 expedition. My concern is specifically with "Snakes in 

 Poetry," and even when thus restricted, the subject is suffi- 

 ciently large and many-sided, "rolling in orbs immense its 

 length of coils," to make me prefer to take it in three 

 sections. The first of these is the reptile " in nature." 



Now, very few of our British poets knew personally any- 

 thing at all of the snake in nature, and this absence of in- 

 formation compelled them to go for the facts they wanted to 

 Holy Writ, classical myths, or popular superstitions. More- 



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