An elegant expansion of these lines in Phaer's Virgil. Æn. end of book 4.
"Dame rainbow down therefore with safron wings of dropping showres.
Whose face a thousand sundry hewes against the sunne devoures,
From heaven descending came——"
Scene 1. Page 131.
Ari. ... so I charm'd their ears,
That calf-like, they my lowing follow'd through
Tooth'd briers, sharp furzes, pricking goss and thorns
Which enter'd their frail skins.
Dr. Johnson has introduced a passage from Drayton's Nymphidia, as resembling the above description. It is still more like an incident in the well known story of the friar and the boy.
"Jacke toke his pype and began to blowe
Then the frere, as I trowe,
Began to daunce soone;
The breres scratched hym in the face
And in many another place
That the blode brast out,
He daunced among thornes thycke
In many places they dyde hym prycke, &c."
Scene 1. Page 136.
Cal. And all be turn'd to barnacles, or apes.
Mr. Collins's note, it is presumed, will not be thought worth retaining in any future edition. His account of the barnacle is extremely confused and imperfect. He makes Gerarde responsible for an opinion not his own; he substitutes the name of Holinshed for that of Harrison, whose statement is not so ridiculous as Mr. Collins would make it, and who might certainly have seen the feathers of the barnacles hanging out of the shells, as the fish barnacle or Lepas anatifera is undoubtedly furnished with a feathered beard. The real absurdity was the credulity of Gerarde and Harrison in supposing that the barnacle goose was really produced from the shell of the fish. Dr. Bullein not only believed this himself, but bestows the epithets, ignorant and incredulous on those who did not; and in the same breath he maintains that crystal is nothing more than ice. See his Bulwarke of defence, &c. 1562, Folio, fo. 12. Caliban's barnacle is the clakis or tree-goose. Every kind of information on the subject may be found in the Physica curiosa of Gaspar Schot the Jesuit, who with great industry has collected from a multitude of authors whatever they had written concerning it. See lib. ix. c. 22. The works of Pennant and Bewick will supply every deficiency with respect to rational knowledge.