Bind round her polished brow the civic bay,
And drag the fair Philanthropist to day.
Pagan divinities disport themselves on one page, and Christian saints on another. St. Anthony preaches, not to the little fishes of the brooks and streams, but to the monsters of the deep,—sharks, porpoises, whales, seals and dolphins, that assemble in a sort of aquatic camp-meeting on the shores of the Adriatic, and “get religion” in the true revivalist spirit.
The listening shoals the quick contagion feel,
Pant on the floods, inebriate with their zeal;
Ope their wide jaws, and bow their slimy heads,
And dash with frantic fins their foamy beds.
For a freethinker, Dr. Darwin is curiously literal in his treatment of hagiology and the Scriptures. His Nebuchadnezzar (introduced as an illustration of the “Loves of the Plants”) is not a bestialized mortal, but a veritable beast, like one of Circe’s swine, only less easily classified in natural history.
Long eagle plumes his arching neck invest,
Steal round his arms and clasp his sharpened breast;