A Dolphin, lo, did beare him safe awaie.”
A comment from St. Chrysostom, super Matth. xxii., is added,—
“As a king is honoured in his image, so God is loved and hated in man. He cannot hate man, who loves God, nor can he, who hates God, love men.”
Reference is also made to Aulus Gellius (bk. v. c. 14, vol. i. p. 408), where the delightful story is narrated of the slave Androclus and the huge lion whose wounded foot he had cured, and with whom he lived familiarly for three years in the same cave and on the same food. After a time the slave was taken and condemned to furnish sport in the circus to the degraded Romans. That same lion also had been taken, a beast of vast size, and power and fierceness. The two were confronted in the arena.
“When the lion saw the man at a distance,” says the narrator, “suddenly, as if wondering, he stood still; and then gently and placidly as if recognising drew near. With the manner and observance of fawning dogs, softly and blandly he wagged his tail and placed himself close to the man’s body, and lightly with his tongue licked the legs and hands of the slave almost lifeless from fear. The man Androclus during these blandishments of the fierce wild creature recovered his lost spirits; by degrees he directed his eyes to behold the lion. Then, as if mutual recognition had been made, man and lion appeared glad and rejoicing one with the other.”
Was it now, from having this tale in mind that, in the Troilus and Cressida (act v. sc. 3, l. 37, vol. vi. p. 247), these words were spoken to Hector?—
“Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you,
Which better fits a lion than a man.”
Arion sauué par vn Dauphin, is also the subject of a well executed device in the “ΜΙΚΡΟΚΟΣΜΟΣ” (edition Antwerp, 1592),[[138]] of which we give the French version (p. 64),—
“Arion retournant par mer en sa patrie