Or I will shake thee from me like a serpent!”
Cardinal Pandulph, the Pope’s legate, in King John (act iii. sc. 1, l. 258, vol. iv. p. 42), urges King Philip to be champion of the Church, and says to him,—
“France, thou mayst hold a serpent by the tongue,
A chafed lion by the mortal paw,
A fasting tiger safer by the tooth,
Than keep in peace that hand which thou dost hold.”
King Richard’s address to the “gentle earth,” when he landed in Wales (Richard II., act iii. sc. 2, l. 12, vol. iv. p. 164), calls us to the Emblem of the snake entwined about the flower,—
“Feed not thy sovereign’s foe, my gentle earth,
Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous sense;
But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom,