5

Thrice he endeavoured to force his passage, and thrice the centre shook. The spider within, feeling the terrible convulsion, supposed at first that nature was approaching to her final dissolution; or else, that Beelzebub,6 with all his legions, was come to revenge the death of many thousands of his subjects whom his enemy had slain and devoured. However, he at length valiantly resolved to issue forth and meet his fate. Meanwhile the bee had acquitted himself of his toils, and, posted securely at some distance, was employed in cleansing his wings, and disengaging them from the rugged remnants of the cobweb. By this time the spider was adventured out, when, beholding the chasms, the ruins, and dilapidations of his fortress, he was very near at his wits' end; he stormed and swore like a madman, and swelled till he was ready to burst. At length, casting his eye upon the bee, and wisely gathering causes from events (for they knew each other by sight), "A plague split you," said he, “for a giddy puppy; is it you, with a vengeance, that have made this litter here? could you not look before you? do you think I have nothing else to do but to mend and repair after you?”"Good words, friend," said the bee (having now pruned himself,9 and being disposed to be droll), "I'll give you my hand and word to come near your kennel 10 no more; I was never in such a confounded pickle since I was born."- Sirrah," replied the spider, "if it were not for breaking an old custom in our family, never to stir abroad against an enemy, I should come and teach you better manners."-" I pray have patience," said the bee, or you'll spend your substance, and, for aught I see, you may stand in need of it

5. Endeavour: etymologically this word means to make it a matter of duty (en devoir, fr. Lat. debere) to do a thing; and was a much more forcible word formerly than at present. It also frequently took an accusative case after it; "Let men endeavour an endless progress."-Bacon, A. L.

6. Beelzebub, in the Hebrew, signifies the lord of flies.

7. Acquitted himself, got himself quit or free. Quit is from Lat. quietus; for the legal sense of which, and all the words derived from it, see note 20, extract 59.

66

8. Was adventured: see note 3, extract 21.

9. Pruned himself: prune was originally the same word as preen, and was often used of birds dressing or picking their feathers. Mr. Wedgwood takes it from L. Sc. prin, O. N. prijon, a pin or knitting needle, such instruments being often used for trimming purposes.

10. Kennel: this word, literally a doggery, is the Fr. canaille (fr. Lat. canis); whereas kennel, the watercourse in a street, comes from Fr. chenal, Lat. canale, a gutter.

all, toward the repair of your house."-" Rogue, rogue," replied the spider, "yet methinks you should have more respect to a person whom all the world allows to be so much your betters."-"By my troth," said the bee, "the comparison will amount to a very good jest; and you will do me a favour to let me know the reasons that all the world is pleased to use in so hopeful a dispute." At this, the spider, having swelled himself into the size and posture of a disputant, began his argument in the true spirit of controversy, with resolution to be heartily scurrilous and angry; to urge on his own reasons without the least regard to the answers or objections of his opposite; and fully predetermined in his mind against all conviction.

"Not to disparage myself," said he, "by the comparison with such a rascal, what art thou but a vagabond without house or home, without stock or inheritance? born to no possession of your own, but a pair of wings and a drone-pipe. Your livelihood is a universal plunder upon nature; a freebooter over fields and gardens; and, for the sake of stealing, will rob a nettle as easily as a violet. Whereas I am a domestic animal, furnished with a native stock within myself. This large castle (to show my improvements in the mathematics) is all built with my own hands, and the materials extracted altogether out of my own person."

"I am glad," answered the bee, "to hear you grant at least that I am come honestly by my wings and my voice; for then, it seems, I am obliged to Heaven alone for my flights and my music; and Providence would never have bestowed on me two such gifts, without designing them for the noblest ends. I visit, indeed, all the flowers and blossoms of the field and garden; but whatever I collect thence, enriches myself, without the least injury to their beauty, their smell, or their taste. Now, for you and your skill in architecture and other mathematics, I have little to say in that building of yours there might, for aught I know, have been labour and method enough; but, by woful experience for us both, it is too plain the materials are naught; and I hope you will henceforth take warning, and consider duration and matter, as well as method

11. Rascal, once a lean worthless deer, and so used in Shakespeare; but, like Fr. racaille, it seems to have originally meant mere refuse or scrapings. Trash also

once signified a worthless hound that required to be kept in traces; or, perhaps, clippings of trees.

and art. You boast, indeed, of being obliged to no other creature, but of drawing and spinning out all from yourself; that is to say, if we may judge of the liquor in the vessel by what issues out, you possess a good plentiful store of dirt and poison in your breast; and, though I would by no means lessen or disparage your genuine stock of either, yet I doubt you are somewhat obliged, for an increase of both, to a little foreign assistance. Your inherent portion of dirt does not fail of acquisitions, by sweepings exhaled from below; and one insect furnishes you with a share of poison to destroy another. So that, in short, the question comes all to this: whether is the nobler being of the two, that which, by a lazy contemplation of four inches round, by an overweening pride, feeding and engendering on itself, turns all into excrement and venom, producing nothing at all but flybane 12 and a cobweb; 13 or that which, by a universal range, with long search, much study, true judgment, and distinction of things, brings home honey and wax?"

12. Flybane: bane is from O. E. bana, a murderer. See extract 1, line 12.

13. Cobweb: cob is spider (M. E. attercoppe meant venom-spider), and was so called from the shape of its body, cop being a common word for anything round,

more especially when it formed the tip, or top, of an object. It was used in M. E. for the head-"Sir Simon de Montfort, he swore by his cop;" Song on the Kyng of Almaigne-for the tip of the nose, &c. Compare Lat. caput; cap, cope.

130. From 'THE LINES ON THE DEATH OF DR. SWIFT.'

The time is not remote when I
Must by the course of nature die;
When, I foresee, my special friends
Will try to find their private ends:
5 And, though 'tis hardly understood
Which way my death can do them good,
Yet thus, methinks, I hear them speak:

66 See, how the Dean begins to break!
Poor gentleman, he droops apace!
10 You plainly find it in his face.

8. Dean, Fr. doyen, Lat. decanus, originally meant one who was set over ten (Gk. Séxa) monks; "ten being used

in Latin for an indefinite number, like

(Wedgwood).

seven in Hebrew"
9. Apace, on pace (Fr. pas), rapidly
Compare Gk. δρόμῳ.

That old vertigo in his head

Will never leave him till he's dead.
Besides his memory decays:

He recollects not what he says;

15 He cannot call his friends to mind:

Forgets the place where last he dined:
Plies you with stories o'er and o'er ;
He told them fifty times before.

How does he fancy we can sit
20 To hear his out-of-fashion wit?
But he takes up with younger folks,
Who for his wine will bear his jokes.
Faith! he must make his stories shorter,
Or change his comrades once a quarter:
25 In half the time he talks them round,
There must another set be found."

24. Comrades: Fr. camarade, It. camerata, first meant a company occupying

the same chamber (Lat. camera), and then a member of such a company

131. Matthew Prior. 1664-1721. (History, p. 164.)
CUPID'S MISTAKE.

As after noon, one summer's day,

Venus stood bathing in the river;

Cupid a-shooting went that way,

New strung his bow, new fill'd his quiver.

5 With skill he chose his sharpest dart:
With all his might his bow he drew:
Swift to his beauteous parent's heart
The too-well-guided arrow flew.

10

I faint! I die! the goddess cried :
O cruel, could'st thou find none other
To wreck thy spleen on, Parricide!
Like Nero, thou hast slain thy mother.

11. Wreck: the spelling here may be due to the O. E. form, wrecan, which

once signified to give effect to, though its usual sense was to avenge.

132. John Gay. 1688-1732. (History, p. 165.)
THE HARE AND MANY FRIENDS.

Friendship, like love, is but a name,
Unless to one you stint the flame.
The child whom many fathers share,
Hath seldom known a father's care.
5 'Tis thus in friendships; who depend
On many, rarely find a friend.

A Hare who, in a civil way,
Complied with everything, like Gay,
Was known to all the bestial train
10 Who hunt the wood, or graze the plain;
Her care was never to offend,

And every creature was her friend.
As forth she went at early dawn,
To taste the dew-besprinkled lawn,
15 Behind she hears the hunter's cries,

And from the deep-mouthed thunder flies.
She starts, she stops, she pants for breath;
She hears the near approach of death:
She doubles to mislead the hound,
20 And measures back her mazy ground;

2. Stint, limit, confine. The Elizabethan writers always use it in the more correct sense of to stop entirely.

14. Lawn, properly a clear space between woods. The older form is launde (see Chaucer, Knight's Tale, 1.838), which seems to come from W. llan, an open space, as in Llandaff, Llandudno, &c.; though in local names it means a sacred enclosure, or church, like Lat. templum.

19. Hound: by Grimm's law hound

is the same word as Gk. κúwv, Greek k and Latin c interchanging with Gothic h. Compare κapdía and cor with heart; cervus with hart; kepaλń and caput with head, Ger. haupt; képas with horn, &c. But may not a hound, Ger. hund, be the grasping animal (Lat. pre-hend-ere, to grasp), with the same origin as hand, hint, hent (used both as sb. and vb.. in Shakespeare-an opportunity, and to seize).