The listening shoals the quick contagion feel,
Pant on the floods, inebriate with their zeal;
Ope their wide jaws, and bow their slimy heads,
And dash with frantic fins their foamy beds.
For a freethinker, Dr. Darwin is curiously literal in his treatment of hagiology and the Scriptures. His Nebuchadnezzar (introduced as an illustration of the "Loves of the Plants") is not a bestialized mortal, but a veritable beast, like one of Circe's swine, only less easily classified in natural history.
Long eagle plumes his arching neck invest,
Steal round his arms and clasp his sharpened breast;
Dark brindled hairs in bristling ranks behind,
Rise o'er his back and rustle in the wind;
Clothe his lank sides, his shrivelled limbs surround,
And human hands with talons print the ground.
Lolls his red tongue, and from the reedy side
Of slow Euphrates laps the muddy tide.
Silent, in shining troups, the Courtier throng
Pursue their monarch as he crawls along;
E'en Beauty pleads in vain with smiles and tears,
Not Flattery's self can pierce his pendant ears.
The picture of the embarrassed courtiers promenading slowly after this royal phenomenon, and of the lovely inconsiderates proffering their vain allurements, is so ludicrous as to be painful. Even Miss Seward, who held that the
