The Poets Dolphin. 155 



of Fingal's cave, where "by turns, his dolphins, all finny 

 palmers great and small, came to pay devotion due." 



"Crooked" is a favourite poet's epithet for the dolphin, 

 for most poets go to heraldry and fable for their natural 

 history ; and antiquity always spoke of the dolphin, drew it 

 in pictures, carved it in stone, and engraved it on metal, as 

 curly-bodied. Sometimes they were merely bowed "con- 

 vexedly;" in others, as in Arion's steed, "concavously 

 inverted," with various spinal inflexions. But this incurvity 

 is, of course, a fiction, for the dolphin is as straight-spined 

 an animal as ever swam in water ; but the popular error 

 rose, not unnaturally, from the fact of the porpoise being 

 usually seen when leaping, and with its head declining 

 towards the water before the tail had fairly left it. Among 

 the pretty fancies which the evanescent beauties of the 

 dying dolphin have afforded poets, should be quoted Byron's, 

 of the parting day, that 



"Dies like the dolphin, whom each pang imbues 

 With a new colour as it gasps away, 

 The last still loveliest till 'tis gone, and all is grey." 



Anticipated, however, among others, by Falconer in the 

 lines 



"While in his heart the fatal javelin thrills, 

 And flitting life escapes in sanguine rills ; 

 What radiant changes strike th' astonished sight, 

 What glorious hues of mingled shade and light ! 

 Not equal beauties yields the lucid west, 

 With parting beams all o'er profusely drest, 

 Not lovelier colours paint the vernal dawn, 

 When orient dews impearl th' enamelled lawn" 



and Herbert's characteristic lines 



" Oh ! what a sight were man if his attires 

 Did alter with his mind, 

 And like a dolphin's skin, 

 His clothes combined with his desires." 



Not that Herbert keeps his metaphor within an allowable 



