2 1 o The Poets and Nature. 



dining-room with its dinner dangling behind it. At any rate, 

 there was abundant self-satisfaction, and not without cause 

 either. For, taking nature all round, I know no episode 

 that excels in interest the successful web-spinning of spiders. 

 Savages are laboriously ingenious in trap-setting, but 

 "Arachne" gives them points at every stage. And how 

 curious the poets' fancy of nature admiring herself, so 

 satisfied with the perfection of her own spider that she 

 copies it in flowers : 



" Fair Cypripedia, with successful guile, 

 Knits her smooth brow, extinguishes her smile 

 A spider's bloated paunch and jointed arms 

 Hide her fair form, and mask her blushing charms ; 

 In ambush sly the mimic warrior lies, 

 And on quick wing the panting plunderer flies." Darwin. 



Did the poets know that "gossamer" was spiders' web? 

 Many certainly did not ; some are doubtful : some undoubt- 

 edly did. Thus, Darwin, accurately excellent, speaks of the 

 adventurous flight of the newly hatched gossamer-spider : 



" So shoot the spider brood at" breezy dawn 

 Their glittering network o'er th' autumnal lawn ; 

 From blade to blade connect with cordage fine 

 The unbending grass, and " live along the line." 



And again, in c; Prince Arthur," is the line : 



"On the buoyant air sublimely borne." 



And again, in Charlotte Smith : 



" Small, viewless aeronaut, that by the line 

 Of gossamer suspended, in mid-air 

 Float'st on a sunbeam. Living atom, where 

 Ends thy breeze-guided voyage ? With what design 

 In aether dost thou launch thy form minute, 

 Mocking the eye ? Alas, before the veil 

 Of dense clouds shall hide thee, the pursuit 

 Of the keen swift may end thy fairy sail." 



And here too ever-welcome Hardis : 



