2O2 The Poets and Natiire. 



We were all inmates of one place 

 And I, the monarch of each race, 

 Had power to kill yet, strange to tell ! 

 In quiet we had learn'd to dwell." Byron. 



Of legends of the insect several are worth notice. Thus, 

 that which Phillips, in his " Cider " * refers to : 



" Happy lerne ! whose most wholesome air 

 Poisons envenomed spiders, and forbids the baleful toad ; " 



and Green notices in the line, 



"As spiders Irish wainscot flee." 



The superstition being that, not only did St. Patrick drive 

 all " vermin " out of the island, but communicated to bog- 

 oak the property of keeping spiders off. Is it not a tradi- 

 tion that there are no spiders, for this reason, in the House 

 of Commons, the woodwork being all of Irish oak ? 



" That Apulian spider's poisonous sting, healed by the 

 pleasing antidote of sonnets," is, of course, the tarantula, as 

 specified in Oldham : 



"Some are at sound of christened bell forgiven, 

 And some by squirt of holy water shriven ; 

 Others by anthems played are charmed away, 

 As men cure bites of the tarantula." 



Or in Herbert's lines : 



" As peculiar notes and strains 

 Cure tarantula's raging pains." 



That the spider is venomous is of course a scientific fact. 

 Its jaws, so to speak, are perforated exactly like a viper's 

 tooth, and communicate with a poisonous secretion, which 

 thus passes into any wound inflicted. In the poets the fatal 

 gift is of course as much exaggerated as the deadliness of 



1 The context is as follows : 



" More happy in her balmy draughts (enriched 

 With miscellaneous spices) and the root 

 For thirst-abating sweetness praised, which wide 

 Extend her fame." 



What plant is the poet referring to? 



