Amongst creatures which come to Noah's assembly but have not the entrée of modern zoological society, we have "the huge ruck,"[1] progenitor, no doubt, of Sindbad's friends; also,
"The Salamander to the Ark retires,
To fly the flood it doth forsake the fires."
[2]"That a Salamander is able to live in flames, to endure and put out fire, is an assertion not only of great Antiquity, but confirmed by frequent and not contemptible testimony," says Dr. Thomas Browne. ". . . . All which, notwithstanding there is on the negative authority and experience." Neither did that astute gentleman give credit to the story of the cockatrice, the half-bird, half-serpent (now only legitimately hatched at Heralds' College), which like the fabled snake, called basilisk,[3] had death in its glance; though in the Ark, as Drayton assures us, the power was most happily suspended. I may conclude what I have to say about Noah's live stock, by mentioning that that fearsome item of folk-lore, the dragon—the fabled guardian of so many hoards of fabulous treasure—
"The watchful dragon comes the ark to keep,"
precisely as if he were in the police force of patriarchal times; and
"Lulled with murmur gently falls asleep,"
just as naturally as if he belonged to that of the nineteenth century.
Drayton's faith in the phœnix was completely orthodox, but he did not put her in the ark, and one wonders what became of her during the Deluge. She was, said his Owl,[4] following Claudian de Phœnice, "parent and infant to herself alone," and it is well that she was
- ↑ See also The Battle of Agincourt [i. 13].
- ↑ Pseud. Epid. book iii. ch. 13, p. 113.
- ↑ In justice to Drayton I must remark that he was rather advanced in his knowledge of the slow-worm. He writes, "The small-eyed slow-worm, called of many blind."—Noah's Flood [iv. 1538]. As it is still sometimes called the blind-worm, I suppose its possession of the faculty of sight is yet doubted. The Rev. J. G. Wood states "it is anything but blind, and its eyes though small are brilliant."—Common Objects of the Country, p. 34. Poisonous, however, Drayton thought it was.
- ↑ The Owl [iv. 1301]. The Parrot and the Vulture are gossips, and worse, in this satire of Drayton's.
