The Loathed Paddock. 103 



altogether a ridiculous image and a waste of " venom." In 

 Dyer we find them associated with several poetical horrors 

 a curious assortment. 



" Tis now the raven's dark abode, 

 "Tis now th' apartment of the toad, 

 And there the fox securely feeds, 

 And there the pois'nous adder breeds." 



Churchill is in the same vein 



1 ' Marking her noisome road 



With poison's trail, here crawl'd the bloated toad ; 

 There webs were spread of more than common size, 

 And half-starv'd spiders prey'd on half-starv'd flies ; 

 In quest of food efts strove in vain to crawl ; 

 Slugs, pinched with hunger, smear'd the slimy wall ; 

 The cave around with hissing serpents hung ; 

 On the damp roof unhealthy vapours hung, 

 And famine, by her children always known, 

 As proud as poor, here fixed her native throne." 



Moore is characteristically fanciful 



" There let every noxious thing 

 Trail its filth and fix its sting ; 

 Let the bull-toad taint him over, 

 Round him let mosquitoes hover, 

 In his ears and eye-balls tingling, 

 With his blood their poison mingling." 



This a bull-toad" is thoroughly Moore ish, and belongs of 

 course to the same poetical family as the "night-raven" or 

 " wood-wolf." Toad and adder, by the way, is a very fre- 

 quent association showing how thoroughly the fiction of 

 the poisonous character of the toad had taken hold of the 

 poets' fancy. So, too, had the wickedness and the blood- 

 thirstiness of the owl. 



" Full-blown "is Pope's delightful epithet for Bufo, "puffed 

 by every quill." It is not what he meant, of course, for that 

 was " inflated," " puffed-out," "bloated." But it conveys his 

 meaning admirably none the less, and has no spite in it. 

 "Fulsome" is one of Dryden's epithets, and, even more 



