158 The Poets and Nature. 



poise, which they treat as if it were a pig, and call it " greedy" 

 and "obscene." The grampus is a "variety" of the porcpisce 

 which poets decline to entertain seriously except when they 

 mean a whale. 



The following note of Wren's upon the use of the word 

 "porpoise" by Sir Thomas Browne is worth quoting: 



"Read porkpisce. The porkpisce hath his name from 

 the hog hee resembles in convexity and curvitye of his 

 backe, from the head to the tayle ; nor is he otherwise curlie, 

 than as a hog is ; except that before a storme hee tumbles 

 just as a hog runs. That which I once saw cutt up in Fish 

 Street was of this forme, and above five foote longue, his 

 skin not skaly, but smoothe and black, like bacon in a 

 chimney, and his bowels in all'points like an hog ; yf instead 

 of his four fins you imagine four feete, hee would represent 

 a back hog (as it were) s weated alive." 



" They say they are half-fish, half-flesh," says the prince 

 in " Pericles," and one of the many legends of the porky 

 nature of this fish to which the poets subscribe is that 

 St. Patrick, unable to restrain his appetite on a fast-day, 

 surreptitiously procured some pork and proceeded to eat it. 

 But an angel, to save the saint from sin, turned it into por- 

 poise meat, and so the porpoise has been partly pork ever 

 since. 



