80 
rainbow .” Mr. Grant Allen has made extensive inquiries 
on this point, and his researches lead him to the supposition 
“that the colour sense is as a whole absolutely identical 
throughout all branches of the human race.” 
The reason why colour plays so subordinate a part in the 
older literature of various nations is chiefly the direct and 
simple manner in which the story is related. The ideas 
are concrete. The need of picturesque details does not 
occur to the writer or the singer. He is speaking often 
of familiar things, and feels no necessity to describe them. 
If he does enter upon description, the shining and glittering 
of spears and bucklers are more likely to arrest his attention 
than their precise colour. Mr. A. It. Wallace says that in 
the long epochs during which the colour sense was being de- 
veloped the visual organs would be mainly subjected to two 
groups of rays : — the green from the vegetation, and the 
blue from the sky. This makes it all the more remarkable 
that blue should be so largely absent from early colour 
vocabularies. But much confusion has resulted from the 
poverty of the colour-vocabulary. In quite recent litera- 
ture we find the same objects described by the terms “blue” 
and “green.” 
Green, as a beautiful colour of eyes, has been celebrated 
by many poets. “ Green is indeed the colour of lovers,” 
says Shakspere. Drummond, Cervantes, Longfellow, and 
Dante have all praised the green-eyed beauties. (There 
are many communications in Notes and Queries , 6th S., vol. 
I., and in the Antiquary , vol. III.) Moncrief says that the 
eyes of cats were for a long time the objects of female ambi- 
tion ; they could receive no praise more flattering than to 
discover that they had bluish grey eyes ; that is, changing 
like those of cats, or greenish as they commonly have. La 
Fontaine has given Minerva such eyes, 
Tout le reste entouroit la d£esse, aux yeux vers. 
Marot gives green eyes to Venus, 
Le premier jour que Venus, aux yeux vers. 
