The Poets' Dolphin. 157 



eagle and the pelican with all the virtues which antiquity 

 really intended for the vulture, and then abusing the vulture 

 as a "gryffe" or a fowl without any virtues. 



Though gamesome like the dolphin (that is itself), the 

 porpoise is also ferocious "like as a mastiff" 



" Upon every side 



The gamesome porpoise tumbled in the tide, 

 Like as a mastiff, when restrained a while, 

 Is made more furious and more apt to spoil" (Quarks) 



while the extension of the weather-foretelling idea into some- 

 thing sinister, is a curious illustration of the poet's humour. 

 That " the tumbling porpoise " predicted rough weather was 

 an old sailor's superstition before Virgil's time, and is a 

 familiar idea in English verse, as in Churchill, " like a por- 

 poise just before a storm onward he rolled," or in "The 

 Shipwreck " 



" When threatening clouds th' etherial vault deface 

 Their route to leeward still sagacious form, 

 To shun the fury of th' approaching storm," 



But it ought to have been noted by other poets that the 

 porpoise foretold coming rough weather, by its anxiety to 

 escape from it, and not from any delight in the tempest. For 

 the only use of the creature as a weather-gauge was the 

 direction in which it was going, inasmuch as the porpoise is 

 always seen hurrying away in front of the storm which it 

 apprehends to be coming. Churchill and Falconer under- 

 stood this, but the majority simply made the poor porpoise 

 " the vulture of the sea," delighting in conflicts, and eating 

 the victims of the storm. Thus in Davenant : 



" The prince could porpoise- like in tempests play, 

 And in court-storms on shipwrecked greatness feed." 



Strictly analogous also to the poetical evolutions of a specially 

 sinister "night-raven" out of the ordinary raven, is the 

 poets' deduction of a " porcpisce " out of the ordinary por- 



