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CHAPTER VI.

THE POETRY OF THE FEET, ETC.

T is much to be lamented that any form of boot or shoe should have interfered with the beauty of the human foot and its elastic tread. The sculptures of antiquity all show great symmetry and beauty of form, whether in the male or female foot the plump, rounded, and

truly natural shape of the feet of the Venus de Medicis has excited the admiration of every one who ever looked at that beautiful statue.

Poets in all ages have been lavish in their praises of the "human foot divine," and a volume of extracts might be made on the poetry of the feet. The inspired Isaiah breaks forth-" How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth glad

tidings." Kitto says, in his remarks on this passage, "When the person is very eminent for rank or holiness the mention of the feet rather than any other part of the person denotes the respect or reverence of the speaker; and then, also, an epithet of praise or distinction is given to the feet, of which, as the most popular instance, the "golden feet" of the Burmese monarch forming the title by which he is usually named by his subjects.

Homer pays homage in the Iliad to Thetis, whom he calls "the silver-footed queen."

Bathus, in the Tenth Idyllium of Theocritus, exclaims

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Charming Bombyce, you my numbers greet,

How lovely, fair, and beautiful your feet!"

While Paris, in making choice of the many beautiful virgins brought before him, pays particular attention to their pedal attractions

"Their gait he marked as gracefully they moved,

And round their feet his eye sagacious roved."

Ben Jonson describes a lover whose affection for

his mistress was so great that he

"would adore the shoe

And slipper was left off, and kiss it too."

and again

"And where she went the flowers took thickest root,

As she had sow'd them with her odorous foot."

Butler, too, has the same springing up of flowers in his "Hudibras"

"Where'er you tread, your foot shall set

The primrose and the violet."

In an anonymous volume of poems, printed in 1653, the writer being contemporary with Butler, we find the following beautiful sentiment:

"How her feet tempt; how soft and light she treads,

Fearing to wake the flowers from their beds:

Yet from their sweet green pillows every where

They start and gaze about to see my fair.

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Look how that pretty modest columbine

Hangs down its head to view those feet of thine!

See the fond motion of the strawberrie

Creeping on earth we go along with thee;

The lovely violet makes after too,

Unwilling yet my dear to part with you

The knot grass and the daisies catch thy toes

To kisse my faire ones feet before she goes."

Shakspear, in "Troilus and Cressida," describes Diomede walking

"'Tis he, I ken the manner of his gait ;

He rises on the toe; that spirit of his,

In aspiration lifts him from the earth!"

again

"Shore's wife hath a pretty foot"

and his graphic description of a free-natured woman

-"nay, her foot speaks"

Old Herrick, who seems to have had the finest perception of the delicate and charming, thus compliments Mrs. Susana Southwood

"Her pretty feet

Like smiles did creep,

A little out and then

As if they started at bo-peep

Did soon draw in again"

It is the exquisite intimation of the lively character of the inward spirit, shown in the active movements of the feet, which Sir John Suckling has imitated in his Ballad of the Wedding:

"Her feet beneath her petticoat

Like little mice stole in and out,
As if they feared the light;

But oh, she dances such a way,

No sun upon an Easter day

Is half so fine a sight!"

Very beautiful also is the following, from one of our old poets-the words are given entire in Wilson's "Cheerful Ayres for three Voices," who could do any harm to so beautiful a part of the human frame?

"Doe not feare to put thy feet

Naked in the river. sweet,

Think not newt nor leech, nor toade,

Will bite thy foot where thou hast trode."

These pretty allusions to pretty feet might be multiplied to a great extent; they will, however, suffice

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