REPTILES. 
191 
King John. He is a very serpent in my way ; 
King John, Act iii. Scene 3. 
King Henry. Their touch affrights me as a ser¬ 
pent’s sting. ....... 
Salisbury . Were there a serpent seen, with forked 
tongue, 
That slily glided towards your majesty, 
It were but necessary you were waked; 
Lest, being suffer’d in that harmful slumber, 
The mortabworm might make the sleep eternal: 
And therefore do they cry, though you forbid, 
That they will guard you, whether you will or no, 
From such fell serpents as false Suffolk is ; 
With whose envenomed and fatal sting, 
Your loving uncle, twenty times his worth, 
They say, is shamefully bereft of life. 
Suffolk. Their music frightful as the serpent’s hiss; 
King Henry VI., Part It. Act iii. Scene 2. 
Clifford. Who ’scapes the lurking serpent’s mortal 
sting ? 
Not he that sets his foot upon her back. 
King Henry VI., Part III. Act ii. Scene 2. 
Brutus. And therefore think him as a serpent’s 
. egg > 
Which, hatch’d, would as his kind grow mischievous; 
And kill him in the shell. 
Julius Caesar, Act ii. Scene 1. 
Cleopati'a. He’s speaking now, 
Or murmuring, Where's my serpent of old Nile ? 
For so he calls me : 
