Anon the scene changes, and leaving the green fields of which Falstaff “babbled,” and the “great pool” with its “swan’s nest” (Cymbeline, Act iii. Sc. 4), we are led to—
“That pale, that whitefaced shore,
Whose foot spurns back the ocean’s roaring tides.”
King John, Act ii. Sc. 1;
there to contemplate “the sea-mells” on the rock (Tempest, Act ii. Sc. 2), or watch the movements of the “insatiate cormorant” (Richard II. Act ii. Sc. 1).
Nor are we left entirely to our own reflections in these situations. Some trait or other is noticed in the habits of the bird alluded to, some curious instinct pointed out. We pause insensibly to admire the appropriate haunts in which the poet has discovered the fowl, and carry out with him, in thought, the crafty device of the fowler to which a passing allusion is made.
Naturalists have frequently observed that when any of the diving-ducks are winged or injured, they generally make for the open water, and endeavour to escape by diving or swimming away, while those which do not excel in diving, usually make for the shore when wounded, and, as Shakespeare tells us, “creep into sedges.”
DUCK-HUNTING.
“Alas! poor hurt fowl, now will he creep into sedges.”
Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii. Sc. 1.