Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/122

 114

NOTES AND QUERIES. UB* s. it. AUG. 6,

the storm in 'Pericles,' where we hear "Shakespeare's own voice in unmistakable and royal power," He describes the sailors' conversation in III. ii. as "masterly" and "full of the raging storm," and adds :

" There is so mighty a breath of storm and raging seas, such rolling of thunder and flashing of light- ning in these scenes, that nothing in English poetry, not excepting Shakespeare's ' Tempest ' itself, nor Byron's and Shelley's descriptions of nature, can surpass it. The storm blows and howls, hisses and Rcreams, till the sound of the boatswain's whistle is lost in the raging of the elements. These scenes are famous and beloved among that seafaring folk for whom they were written, and who knew the subject- matter so well." 'William Shakespeare,' chap. xv.

To this emphatic testimony may be added a reference to two minute descriptive touches evidently due to Shakespeare's personal observation :

Yond tall anchoring bark Diminish'd to her cock, her cock a buoy Almost too small for sight. The murmuring surge, That on the unnumberd idle pebbles chafes, Cannot be heard so high. ' King Lear,' IV. 6.

Horns whelk'd and waved like the enridged sea.

Ibid.

Can we believe that he who wrote thus never saw the sea ? I say again, Impossible.

C. C. B.

The following passage is not so bad as those passages which I have quoted, but I think that Shakspeare may have written it without having seen the sea :

Behold the threaden sails, Borne with the invisible and creeping wind, Draw the huge bottoms through the furrowed sea, Breasting the lofty surge : O, do but think You stand upon the rivage, and behold A city on the inconstant billows dancing : For so appears this fleet majestical.

'Henry V.'

The following, too, is natural but the scene may have been described without having been seen :

The dreadful summit of the cliff, That beetles o'er his base into the sea.



The very place puts toys of desperation, Without more motive, into every brain That looks so many fathoms to the sea, And hears it roar beneath. ' Hamlet.'

Nor do I see in Edgar's speech in ' King Lear' anything which shows actual know- ledge of the sea. I admit that Shakspeare has a natural description of the sea-shore : Timon hath made his everlasting mansion Upon the beached verge of the salt flood ; Which once a day with his embossed froth The turbulent surge shall cover.

' Timon of Athens.'

Of course Shakspeare could not have seen the sea-shore if he did not see the sea. But

he hag described one more successfully than the other. Very different are Homer's de- scriptions of the sea from those of Shak- speare. Hermes flew to deliver a message to Calypso :

(Tfva.T iirfiT eVi KU/>ta, Xdpii) 8pviOi e OSTC /caret Seivovs K^ATTOV? Aos aTpv i\6v<i ay/owoVwv, irVKtvd. ifTfpa. Several aX.fjLjJ. ' Odyssey,' Book V. 11. 51-53.

Homer must have seen the gulls flying over the waves before he wrote these lines.

Cowper gives Us a marine picture in some striking lines :

Then forests or the savage rock may please, That hides the sea-mew in his hollow clefts Ab we the reach of men. His hoary head, Conspicuous many a league, the mariner, Bound homeward, and in hope already there, Greets with three cheers exulting. At his waist A girdle of half-withered shrubs he shows, And at his feet the baffled billows die.

' The Task,' Book I.

The last line must have been written by one who had seen the motion of waves at the base of a rock. ' E. YARDLEY.

WILD GEESE EMBLEMS OF CONSTANCY (9 th S. i. 365). Asiatic Journal, October, 1827, vol. xxiv., July-December, 1827, pp. 438-41, ' Marriages in China ':

" On the day of marriage, relations and friends send congratulations and presents, such as tablets, geese (the emblems of fidelity), wine, &c., to the bridegroom's house ; they stick flowers in his hair and decorate him with scarlet, in token of joy. The bride's relatives and friends send her pins, bracelets, garments, cosmetics, rouge, &c. All her young female friends come and \veep with her night and day, till she enters the ornamented chair sent by the bridegroom's friends. The latter form a pro- cession, with lanterns, music, a pavilion, the figure of a goose in wood or tin, &c. The young man and his juvenile friends accompany the pro- cession to the bride's house, and bring her home. When she arrives at the gate, the music strikes up, and the kea-po, or pronubce, take the bride on their shoulders, and carry her over 'the dish of fire,' which is placed inside the door, to the 'bride's chamber.' The bride then accompanies the kea-po, bearing areca-nut, to the hall ; she requests the guests to partake of it, and after ' worshipping the goose' with the bridegroom, she re tires again to her chamber.

"The facts and authorities in this article are taken from various notices interspersed in the valuable dictionary of Dr. Morrison.

"Wild geese have in every age been an emblem of conjugal fidelity in China. Thus in the ' She king,' one of the Chinese classics : ' The wild geese cackle in response ; day breaks and morning commences ; the bridegroom has gone to bring home his wife ere approaching spring shall have melted the ice.' " P. 440.

Traces of the heliophallic significance of the goose remain to us Western folk in the