The Remora. 
383 
“ To swim up to her, and like remoras 
Hang upon her keel, to stay her flight.” 
(The Benegado , ii. 5.) 
And Du Bartas is still more imaginative:— 
“ The remora, fixing her feeble horn 
Into the tempest-beaten vessels stern, 
Stayes her stone-still, while all her stout consorts 
Saile thence at pleasure to their wished ports. 
Then loose they all the sheets, but to no boot: 
For, the charm’d vessell bougeth not a foot: 
No more then if three fadome undergrounde, 
A score of anchors held her fastly bound.” 
(Page 42.) 
Horace , in tlie Poetaster of Ben Jonson (iii. 1), wlien 
victimized by a long-winded “ Hydra of discourse,” ex¬ 
claims :— 
“ Death, I am seized here 
By a land remora ; I cannot stir. 
Nor move but as he pleases.” 
And in Mayne we find a like comparison:— 
“ No remora that stops your fleet. 
Like serjeants gallants in the street.” 
(The City Match.') 
Montaigne also has a story to tell of this strange 
impediment:— 
“ Many are of opinion that in the great and last naval engagement, 
that Anthony lost to Augustus, his admirall gaily was stay’d in the 
middle of her course, by the little fish the Latins call Remora, by 
reason of the juroperty she has of staying all sorts of vessels, to which 
she fastens her self. And the Emperor Caligula, sailing with a great 
navy upon the coast of Romania, his gaily only was suddenly stayed 
by the same fish, which he caused to be taken, fastned as it was to 
the keel of his ship, very angry that such a little animal could resist 
both the sea, the wind, and the force of all his oars, by being only 
fastened by the beak to his galley (for it is a shell-fish) and was, more¬ 
over, not without great reason astonished, that being brought to 
him in the long-boat, it had no more the strength it had without.” 
•{Essay liv.) 
