2OO The Poets and Nature. 



I won't humanely crush thy bowels out 



Lest thou shouldst eat the flies ; 



Nor will I roast Uhee, with a damn'd delight 



Thy strange instinctive fortitude to see ; 



For there is one who might 



One day roast me. 



Then shrink not, old free-mason, from my view, 

 But quietly, like me, spin out the line ; 

 Do thou thy work pursue 

 As I will mine." 



Mackay has an excellent defence to offer in the poem 

 commencing 



" Though fear'd by many, scorned by all, 

 Poor spider on rny garden wall ; 

 Accursed as ugly, cruel, sly, 

 And seen with an averted eye, 

 Thou shall not lack one friend to claim 

 Some merit for thy injured name." 



So he takes each charge in turn. As for its being " ugly," 

 says he, you have only to look closer to see "a creature 

 robed in brilliancy, with supple and resplendent limbs " and 

 as for " cruel ! " must not spiders eat to live ? And if 

 thou, poor spider, art cruel 



" Because thou takest, now and then, 

 A fly, thy mutton, to thy den," 



what shall we call man who is perpetually killing, not from 

 necessity, but for amusement ? 



"And then we call thee sly, forsooth, 

 As if from earliest dawn of youth 

 We did not lay our artful snares 

 For rabbits, woodcocks, larks, and hares ; 

 Or lurk all day by running brooks 

 To capture fish with cruel hooks, 

 And with a patient deep deceit, 

 Betray them with a counterfeit." 



1 Southey, in his rummaging of zoological legends and folk-lore, was 

 familiar with the frequency with which roasting spiders as specifics against 

 various evils is inculcated. P. R. 



