The Poets' Snakes. 89 



" Two serpent-forms incumbent on the main, 

 Lashing the white waves, with redundant train, 

 Arch'd their blue necks, and shook their tow'ring crests 

 And plough'd their foamy way with speckled breasts ; 

 Then, darting fierce amid the affrighted throngs, 

 Rolled their red eyes, and shot their forked tongues." 



This cerulean snake is a recurrent figure. Science knows 

 more than one " blue " snake, though they are not all really 

 such. Who, for instance, that has ever seen one, would 

 think of calling the "Korait" " caruleus" 1 Science, how- 

 ever, calls the dull, lead-coloured crow of India " splendens. " 

 So let it pass. The poets, however, have " blue " snakes 

 which they mean to be really blue. Many have water-snakes 

 of this colour for Virgil had such. Darwin, Mary Howitt, 

 and Shelley have, with a natural license, blue sea-snakes. 

 Others have land reptiles of the same colour. Thus in 

 Heber's admirable rendering of Pindar's address to Agesias 

 of Syracuse : 



"Two scaly snakes of azure hue 

 Watched o'er his helpless infancy ; 

 And, rifled from the mountain bee, 

 Bare on their forky tongues a harmless honey-dew." 



King gives Megaera the Fury a ringlet of blue snakes, and 

 in Congreve the Gorgon's headdress of vipers is " blue as 

 the vault." 



While on this subject, it is very curious that the poets 

 should perpetually speak of the "coronal" of snakes what- 

 ever they may mean by it. Yet there is a whole genus 

 scientifically named "coronellinse." 



