196 Dr. Heineken's Entomological Notices. 



no one will, I think, accuse him of lending his sanction to the mawkish 

 cant of those puling sentimentalists, who 



" Compound for sins they are inclin'd to 

 " By damning those they have no mind to," 



and while they either directly or indirectly encourage the emasculation 

 (neither a pleasant nor a painless operation I take it) of whole races of 

 animals, from the Mammalia downwards, the crimping of cod, skinnmg 

 of eels, boiling of lobsters and roasting of geese alive! for the mere grati- 

 fication of a sensual appetite ; and the impaling of worms, embowelling 

 of frogs, " playing with"* trouts, &c. &c. for the most contemptible of 

 all amusements; are ready to faint over a legless fly, or to " die of a rose 

 " in aromatic pain." Whether Shakspeare supposed mutilation to be 

 equally painful to the one as to the other, he gives us no opportunity of 

 judging, but from his general truth to nature we have a right to infer that 

 he did not. Pope, the poet of art, might for the mere gingle write 

 " Why has not man a microscopic eye ?" and with as much sense reply 

 " For this plain reason, man is not a fly;" (although the former has the 

 most truly microscopic organ of vision of any animal, and the latter a 

 very imperfect one,) because no one ever supposed him to have known 

 better ; because he was a great deal too learned in perfumes and curling 

 papers to condescend to such trifles as those of natural science ; and be- 

 caiise the best poem he ever wrote was the most artificial one that ever 

 was written ; but Shakspeare both knew better and wrote better. 



As I happen to be just now in a critical humor, and as T only follow 

 their example both in its indulgence and in the subject upon which J am 

 exercising it, I would for a moment turn to p. 392 of the same volume, 

 where Messrs. Kirby and Spence have quoted " shard-born beetle" as 

 Shakspeare's, and wishing to see a little deeper into the millstone than 

 " the commentators," have added in a note, " it might have thrown 



" —fear is the principal sensation in death, which has no pain ; and the giant, 

 " when he dies, feels no greater pain than the beetle." — E. T. B. 



* That is, drowning a miserable animal by degrees, with a barbed hook in 

 his vitals by way of a soother, and a line constantly tugging at it to remind 

 him of its presence. 



