156 The Poets and Nature. 



licence any more than Montgomery, who speaks of the dol- 

 phins when alive as miracles of beauty. They "glow with 

 such orient tints, they might have been the rainbow's off- 

 spring," and " sparkle through the sea." Other poets make 

 the same fanciful error, and thus it may be that Eliza Cook 

 spoke of them as "golden." 1 It is a standard of com- 

 parison for the gaiety of others : 



" The longing heart of Hero, much more joys 

 Than nymphs and shepherds when the timbrel rings, 

 Or crooked dolphins when the sailor sings." 



"And when he chose to sport or play, 

 No dolphin ever was so gay." 



"Sportive," "leaping," "gay," are among the regular 

 epithets of the creature, and thus a poet arrives at the 

 delightful phrase of " the dolphin Pleasure." 



The porpoise then, up to a certain point, is the counterpart 

 of the "pellochs rolling from the mountain bay" the dolphin. 

 Nor, seeing that the poets really, as a rule, meant porpoise 

 when they said dolphin, is this to be wondered at. Both, 

 therefore, are "gamesome," "tumbling," and so forth. 



But here comes in one of those ingenuities of fancy so 

 characteristic of poetical natural history the creation 

 of two species out of one. For the porpoise has many 

 disadvantages as compared with the dolphin. Its name 

 is absurd ; it is never mentioned in classical verse ; it had 

 no taste for music; never happened to be near a ship 

 when poets were thrown overboard with their harps ; never 

 dragged goddesses about in shells. This being the case, 

 the poets deliberately transfer its virtues, under the name 

 of dolphin, to an imaginary creature, and reconstruct a 

 new fish of fancy out of what is left. This is exactly 

 analogous to the other poetical process of crediting the 



1 So Keats, following the Greeks' epithet of " gleaming," speaks of 

 their ' ' scales of gold. " 



