1 04 The Poets and Nature. 



absurdly than " full-blown," suggests an excessive distension. 

 The real meaning of the word, however, is " nauseating," 

 "nauseous," and differs, therefore, from Pope's in being 

 extremely rude to Bufo. " Slow, soft toad," says Shelley 

 an excellent phrase. But the majority, from Spenser to 

 Wordsworth, have only "bloated" and "loathly." Moore 

 calls it " obscene ; " Southey " foul ; " Savage " loathsome," 

 and so on. Thomson, of course, is egregious as usual in 

 infelicitous description.' 



In metaphor the toad comes off poorly. Spenser sets the 

 fashion : 



1 ' Envy rode 



Upon a ravenous wolf and still did chaw 

 Between his cankered teeth a venomous tode 

 That all the poison ran about his maw." 



In Lovelace's duel : 



" First from his den rolls forth that load 

 Of spite and hate, the speckled toad, 

 And from his chaps a foam doth spawn." 



Pope, in his prologue to the Satires, has Sporus, who, a 



" Familiar toad, 

 Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad." 



Thomson in his " Castle of Indolence" has "a wretch : " 



" A wretch, who had not crept abroad 

 For forty years, no face of mortal seen, 

 In chamber brooding like a loathly toad." 



Southey in " The Miser's Mansion " makes the toad a feature 

 of its horrors : 



41 Thy tall towers tremble to the touch of time, 

 The rank weed rustle in thy spacious courts ; 

 Filled are thy wide canals with loathly slime, 

 Where, battening undisturb'd, the foul toad sports." 



As opposed to all this fancy, how strangely reads this 



