THE SERPENT IN LITERATURE 201 
serpent, even as the Druids did for their sacred 
nadder-stone. 
In prose literature the best presentation of 
serpent life known to me is that of Oliver Wendell 
Holmes: and being the best, in fiction at all 
events, I am tempted to write of it at some 
length. 
Now, very curiously, although, as we have just 
seen, the incorrect drawing takes nothing from 
the charm and, in one sense, from the truth of 
Dr. Hake’s picture, we no sooner turn to Elsie 
Venner than we find ourselves crossing over to 
the side of the good naturalist, with apologies for 
having insulted him, to ask the loan of his fierce 
light—for this occasion only. Ordinarily in con- 
sidering an excellent romance, we are rightly 
careless about the small inaccuracies with regard 
to matters of fact which may appear in it; for the 
writer who is able to produce a work of art must 
not and cannot be a specialist or a microscopist, 
but one who views Nature as the ordinary man 
does, at a distance and as a whole, with the vision 
common to all men, and the artist’s insight added. 
Dr. Holmes’s work is an exception; since it is a 
work of art of some excellence, yet cannot be read 
in this tolerant spirit; we distinctly refuse to 
overlook its distortions of fact and false inferences 
in the province of zoology; and the author has 
only himself to blame for this uncomfortable 
temper of mind in his reader. 
The story of the New England serpent-girl is 
