Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 2.djvu/464

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[9 th S. II. DEC. 3, '

I cannot doubt that Shakespeare saw the sea. Could anybody in his position, with such a soul nay, with even the usual amount of human intelligence watch the hastening Thames flow by at Bankside and not follow it to watch its fate ? To me it seems almost essential to a poet's nurture that he should be brought face to face with that great mystery the sea, and I cannot but believe that the writer of ' The Tempest ' both sought and obtained the boon. I feel that Shake- speare's Cliff must have been some time trod by Shakespeare's feet.

How fearful

And dizzy 'tis to cast one's eyes so low ! The crows and choughs that wing the midway air Show scarce so gross as beetles : naif way down Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade ! Methinks he seems no bigger than his head : The fishermen that walk upon the beach Appear like mice : and yond tall anchoring bark, Diminish'd to her cock ; her cock, a buoy Almost too small for sight : the murmuring surge That on the unnumber'd idle pebbles chafes Cannot be heard so high. I '11 look no more, Lest my brain turn, and the deficient sight Topple down headlong.

ST. SWITHIN.

I failed to notice in my former letter some important corroboration of Homer, Hesiod, and Byron. In ' Julian and Maddalo,' Shelley has these lines :

Into the purple sea The orange hues of heaven sunk silently.

Shelley also mentions, in his stanzas written near Naples,

The purple noon's transparent light. And in his lines written among the Euganean hills he speaks of

a soft and purple mist, Like a vaporous amethyst.

Virgil in his "purpureum mare" was follow- ing Homer. His testimony, therefore, is worth nothing. On the main question con- cerning Shakspeare's want of knowledge of the sea I will make some remarks. As is well known, Walter Scott and Charles Kings- ley described most accurately foreign lands which they had never seen. They made good use of what they had read or heard. In the same way Shakspeare sometimes has a good description of the sea and that which pertains to it. But, because he often draws the sea monstrously unlike the real thing, I maintain that he never saw it. Ariel's dirge is highly poetical, but it argues no actual knowledge. I do not possess a concordance, and must trust to my memory ; but I cannot remember any reference by Shakspeare to seaweed, and I believe he did not know that there was such a thing in the sea. Some poets

might know of it, and never mention it ; but Shakspeare, who speaks of every land weed and flower with which he was acquainted, would have made much of seaweed, if he had known of it. Homer and Horace have effective references to it, and it is also men- tioned by Virgil. E. YARDLEY.

The three lines MR. YARDLEY quotes from ' A Midsummer Night's Dream ' clearly prove that Shakespeare had seen the sea. Perhaps I may be allowed to quote a line (the only one I remember) from an early sonnet of my own :

Thine eyes in colour like the morning sea. The eyes in question were of that rare, but very beautiful pale green tint which some- times goes with hair of a rich red, and is, so far as I know, seen nowhere else in nature but in such eyes, and in shallow seawater early in the morning, when the light is good, but the sky not yet too darkly blue. How did Shakespeare know that the sea, near shore, is of this colour, and that the colour is most noticeable in the first light of morning ? That he did know it is evident, and that he knew it from personal observation is strongly probable. I doubt whether any sailor would describe the sea as green ; but a landsman, having usually heard it described as blue, is naturally struck by the fact that, seen from shore, it is not always blue, and Shakespeare was just the man to notice the conditions under which it is least so. I cannot under- stand how so sympathetic a critic as MR. YARDLEY can fail to see that in the lines he quotes the poet is reporting what he has actually seen :

The eastern gate, all fiery red, Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams.

C. C. B.

" HORSE-MARINE ".(9 th S. ii. 26, 112, 355). It seems to me that there has been somewhat too much learning shown in attempts to determine the origin of terms which can generally be traced to a naval source. Take horse marine " as an example. The obvious origin of this sobriquet comes from the wore 1 " hawser," by sailors called a hawse. " Marines g to the hawse bluejackets aloft "would not sound strange to a sailor's ear. Now, it seems to me that when the marines first manned the haivse, it would not entail any very great energy of wit to play upon the word and to give those noble fellows a name which seems to puzzle the learned in these days. " Sick as a horse " is a kindred joke. Horses, I am told, are never sick. But hawsers are, as any one who has crossed the Channel will aver.