5th. Those with two wings and four feet, which seem to have soared to the highest pitch of dragon aristocracy.

Now these dragons were not all cruel destroyers and worthless ravagers; some of them were worthy creatures, taking pleasure in doing good. Such were those two that licked the eyes of Plutus at the temple of Esculapius with such happy effect that he began to see; but the dear dragons unfortunately died, and he had a relapse from which he does not seem likely to recover in our days. Others again were trustworthy, and suffered accordingly, for the hydra was not the only dragon against which the adult Hercules was pitted. There was that terrible sleepless one sprung from Typhon, that kept watch

All amidst the garden fair

Of Hesperus and his daughters three
That sang around the golden tree-

with its hundred heads and as many voices. We are quite aware that some reformers have reduced the heads to one, and that on the shoulders of the shepherd who kept the flocks, μîλa,—oh, those ambiguous Greek words of his good masters or mistresses. And so because μnov signifies a sheep as well as an apple, we are to lose our Hesperian dragon? No, by St. George!

Well, this honest dragon, if all tales be true, was basely murdered by Hercules while doing his golden-apple-watching duty, and the demi-god immediately proceeded to rob the orchard: the poor dragon went to heaven, where he may be seen to this day by those who know where to look for him, with the foot of the murderer, who from his high connexions contrived to get there too, upon the head or heads of his victim.

Notwithstanding these exceptions, however, your dragon, generally speaking, was a most cantankerous monster.

Of the crowned basilisk, that terror of all other dragons, and general destroyer of animal and vegetable life, who could slay with its eye, and make the weapon that smote it the conductor of its deadly poison to the withering arm that wielded it, whether in its apod form or octopod shape, we must only observe that it has sunk into a very harmless, but somewhat terrible looking lizard. A whole chapter might be occupied with the marvellous stories connected with this horror; but we have dragons more than enough on our hands and spare the infliction.

According to Philostratus, your mountain dragon had in his youth a moderate crest, which increased as he grew older, when a beard of saffron colour was appended to his chin; but the dragons of the marsh had no crests. They attained to an enormous size, so that they easily killed elephants. Elian and others make their length from thirty or forty to a hundred cubits. Posidonius described one a hundred and forty feet long that haunted the neighbourhood of Damascus; and another, whose lair was at Macra, near Jordan, was an acre in length, and of such bulk that two men on horseback, with the monster between them, could not see each other. Then, was there not in the library of Constantinople, according to Egnatius, the intestine of a dragon one hundred and twenty feet long, on which were the Iliad and Odyssey in letters of gold?

A subject so pregnant with the wild and wonderful was not likely to

be missed by the Scalds of the Gothic nations, nor by the bards of the ancient British. Before the revival of letters these were the historians of the time, and they interwove among their facts the embellishments of dragons, giants, dwarfs, and the like, fit machinery for arresting the attention of their audience. Firm believers, for the most part, in enchantment and the existence of those romantic beings, they delighted in astonishing their hearers with recitals of combats with monsters such as Schiller's "Kampf mit dem drachen," so admirably illustrated by Retzsch.

Sometimes a true story was veiled under the allegory. Thus, the youth of the pirate king, Regner Ludbrog, who ruled in Denmark in the year 800, or thereabout, was marked by a gallant exploit. The story ran that the lovely daughter of a Swedish prince was intrusted by her father during his absence on a distant expedition to the care of one of his strongest castles, and one of his most tried officers. But

You may train the eagle

To stoop to your fist;

Or you may inveigle

The Phoenix of the east ;
The lioness ye may move her
To give o'er her prey;
But you'll ne'er stop a lover

He will find out the way

and the guardian fell in love with his beautiful ward, bearded the prince, her father, from his almost impregnable fortress, and held her against all comers.

The prince, after stamping and raving according to the most approved forms of the eighth century, put forth a proclamation promising his daughter in marriage to him who should conquer the treacherous guard and deliver her from thraldom. Many were the competitors for the prize, but the castle stood strong, and he who held it was an experienced captain. All the adventurers failed till Regner buckled on his armour. The fortress could not resist his fierce attack: he carried it by storm, delivered the lady, and obtained her as the reward of his valour.

How did the Scalds relate this action? The name of the traitor was cr Orme," " and " Orm" in the Swedish language signifies a serpent, so they by a slight poetical licence represented the fair daughter as detained from the agonised father by a ruthless dragon which Regner slew and set her free. Regner himself, who was a poet of celebrity, strengthened this version by adopting it in his own Runic rhyme, recording the exploits of his life.

Nor were the nations of the south less credulous upon the subject of dragons. So late as 1557 we find in the "Portraits de quelques animaux, poissons, serpents, herbes et arbres, hommes et femmes d'Arabie, Egypte, et Asie, observez par P. Belon du Mans," under a terrific figure of a winged biped dragon superscribed "Portrait du Serpent allé," the following quatrain,

Dangereuse est du Serpent la nature,
Qu'on voit voler près le mont Sinai.
Qui ne seroit, de le voir, esbashy,
Si on a peur, voyant sa pourtraiture?

Gesner copies this likeness of the dragon which, it appears, was also in the habit of flying out of Arabia into Egypt, and he adds three other cuts of formidable dragons, one apod and wingless, another apod and winged, and a third in a most rampant state, winged, stinged, biped, and clawed. Aldrovandi (1640) has cuts of many large flying dragons from Paré, Grevinus, and others, and Jonston (1657) collects most of the portraits of basilisks and dragons given by Aldrovandi and others up to his time.

It is hardly to be wondered at that monsters of which so much had been said and sung, to say nothing of pictorial representation, should have become desiderata for the cabinets of the curious, and it seems to have been no bad speculation to manufacture specimens for collectors. The skates or rays among the fishes offered admirable materials for this purpose, and a very little ingenuity in cropping, drying, and distorting, soon transformed them into most desirable dragons. Others were made up with much greater care. Such were the biped seven-headed hydras figured by Gesner, Aldrovandi, and Jonston, one of which was brought from Turkey to Venice "anno a Christo incarnato tricesimo supra sesqui millesimum mense Januario," and afterwards given "Francorum regi.' It was valued at six thousand ducats and appears to have been put together even more skilfully than the mermaid that beguiled the good cockneys of their shillings some years since. The museums of the Cockletops of former days were nothing without their dragon, and as the rage for collecting increased, the market was supplied with some monster more hideous than the last purchase, and well worthy of a place on the standard of the Brother of the Sun and Moon. Of course every collector's dragon was the real Simon Pure, and above all suspicion. Tradescant's museum (1656) boasted of "Two feathers of the Phoenix tayle," and "A natural dragon above two inches long."

In the early literature of our own country, especially in the ancient ballad and broadside, dragons shone forth in all their glory, only to be eclipsed by the valour of our champions. Nobody was anybody in the old chivalry days who had not slain his dragon.

One of the oldest, if not the oldest of these poectical legends, well known in Chaucer's time, was that which set forth the deeds of " Syr Bevis of Hampton." The following is the description of the dragon in that canticle:

Whan the dragon, that foule is,

Had a syght of Syr Bevis,
He cast up a loude cry,

As it had thundred in the sky;

He turned his body towarde the son;
It was greater than any tonne :
His scales were brighter than the glas,
And harder they were than any bras :
Betweene his shoulder and his tayle,
Was forty fote without fayle.
He waltred out of his den,
And Bevis pricked his stede then,
And to him a spere he thraste
That all to shyvers he it braste:
The dragon then gan Bevis assayle,

And smote Syr Bevis with his tayle;

Then downe went horse and man,
And two rybbes of Bevis brused than.

The fight was long and fearful:

There was a well, so have I wynne,
And Bevis stumbled ryght therein.
Than was he glad without fayle,
And rested a whyle for his avayle;
And dranke of that water his fyll;
And then he lepte out with good wyll,
And with Morglaye his brande,

He assayled the dragon, I understande :
On the dragon he smote so faste,
Where that he hit the scales braste :

The dragon then fainted sore,

And cast a galon and more

Out of his mouthe of venom strong,

And on Syr Bevis he it flong:

It was venomous y-wis.

This well gave Syr Bevis the victory; for, whenever he was hurt sore, he went to the well, washed and came forth

as hole as any man,

Ever freshe as when he began :

:

The dragon saw it might not avayle
Beside the well to hold batayle;
He thought he would with some wyle,
Out of that place Bevis begyle;
He would have flowen then away,

But Bevis lept after with good Morglaye,
And hyt him under the wynge,

As he was in his flyenge,

There he was tender without scale,

And Bevis thought to be his bale.

He smote after, as I you saye,

With his good sword Morglaye.

Up to the hiltes Morglaye yode

Through harte, liver, bone, and bloude:

To the ground fell the dragon,

Great joye Syr Bevis begon.

Under the scales all on hight

He smote off his head forth right.

This, as the Bishop of Dromore remarks, is evidently the parent of the dragon in the "Seven Champions" slain by St. George, as any one may satisfy himself by comparing the two descriptions. Nor is it uninteresting to turn from the dragon of the old romance to that in Spenser's "Faery Queen," with its wynges-like sayls, cruel-rending clawes, yron teeth, and breath of smothering smoke and sulphur ;" and then to that most striking passage in the "Pilgrim's Progress," descriptive of the battle between Christian and Apollyon, who spake like a dragon, and when at last, says Bunyan in his dream, Christian gave him a deadly thrust, "spread forth his dragon's wings, and sped him away that I saw him no more."

Sir Guy of Warwick had slain more than one dragon in his time. Read his own account of the feats.

I went into the souldan's hoast,
Being thither on embassage sent,
And brought his head away with mee,
I having slain him in his tent.

There was a dragon in that land

Most fiercelye mett me by the way
As hee a lyon did pursue,

Which I myself did alsoe slay.

When he came home he did greater things; for, in addition to killing the dun cow, he demolished a monstrous bore-what a god-send a Sir Guy would be at the clubs!—and sent him to Coventry:

Then again :

But first, neare Winsor, I did slaye

A bore of passing might and strength;
Whose like in England never was

For hugeness both in bredth and length.

Some of his bones in Warwicke yet,
Within the castle there doe lye :
One of his sheild-bones to this day,
Hangs in the city of Coventrye.

A dragon in Northumberland,

I also did in fight destroye,

Which did bothe man and beaste oppresse,

And all the countrye sore annoye.

This dragon is thus portrayed in the old metrical romance :

A messenger came to the king,

Syr king, he said, lysten me now,

For bad tydinges I bring you,

In Northumberlande there is no man,

But that they be slayne everychone :

For there dare no man route,

By twenty mile rounde aboute,

For doubt of a fowle dragon

That sleathe men and beastes downe.
He is black as any cole,

Rugged as a rough fole:

His body from the navill upwarde

No man may it pierce it is so harde;
Nis neck is great as any summere ;*

He runneth as swift as any distrere ;†

Pawes he hath as a lyon :

All that he toucheth, he sleath dead downe.

Great winges he hath to flight,

There is no man that bare him might.

There may no man fight him agayne,

But that he sleath him certayne :

For a fowler beast then is he,

Ywis of none never heard ye.