The Poets' Dolphin. 153 



With cruell chaufe their courages they whet 



The maysterdome of each by force to gaine, 



And dreadfull battaile twixt them do arrayne ; 



They snuf, they snort, they bounce, they rage, they rore, 



That all the sea, disturbed with their traine, 



Doth frie with fome above the surges hore : 



Such was betwixt these two the troublesome uprore." 



Morally it is a sportive fish of very benevolent tendencies. 

 It warns sailors of the approaching storm, guards their 

 keels, 1 and befriends the mariner at sea in every way it 

 can. Poets indeed would have been grievously put to it 

 for a touch of marine nature, if it had not been for this 

 "fish" they call the dolphin. As a rule, the poets mean 

 the porpoise, but it is a fair exercise of poetical license to 

 say dolphin for porpoise, or in fact for fish generally. For 

 this creature stood in ancient symbol and classic verse for 

 "the sea-things," so modern poets always keep a dolphin 

 on hand, in case their wanderings in search of a rhyme 

 should take them to the sea coast. It is in fact a stock- 

 in-trade " fish," like the nautilus and the shark and 

 "Behemoth," just as the owl, dove, eagle, lark, and "night- 

 raven " are stock-in-trade birds, or the tiger, fawn, wolf, fox, 

 and sheep stock-in-trade beasts. Every legend of the 

 mystical thing has been punctually utilised by our poets, 

 and often with great elegance and force. Was not the 

 dolphin "the king of the sea," the symbol of marine 

 sovereignty, emblem of sea cities and their maritime supre- 

 macy, the hieroglyphic of Neptune himself? So the poets 

 delighted in " these fleetest coursers of the finny race," the 

 synonyms of celerity, the special messengers of sea-divinities. 



And what delightful creations of fancy they are, those 

 "Ionian shoals of dolphins that bob their noses through 

 the brine" in Keats ! Here in Darwin, one "playful draws 



1 Thus in Waller : 



' ' About the keel delighted dolphins play, 

 Too sure a sign of seas' ensuing rage." 



