"Not for the heaps untold
That swell the Miser's hoard,
I claim the birthright of the bold,
The dowry of the Sword—
"Nor yet the gilded gem
That coronets the slave—
I clutch the spectre-diadem
That marshals on the brave.
"For that—be Sin and Woe—
All priests and women tell—
Be Fire and Sword—I pass not tho'
This Earth be made a Hell.
"Above the rest to shine
Is all in all to me—
It is, unto a soul like mine,
To be or not to be.
"Printed with Permission of Superiours: And are to be had of the Printer, at his House hard by the sign of the Squirrel, over-against the way that leadeth to the Quay."
P.S. Query, What is a "hodipeke?" Is it a "hypocrite?" and should not "Phæbus," in the fourth verse, be "Phœbus?"
THE HIPPOPOTAMUS.
The earliest mention of the hippopotamus is in Herodotus, who in ii. 71. gives a detailed description of this inhabitant of the Nile. He is stated by Porphyry to have borrowed this description from his predecessor Hecatæus (Frag. 292. ap. Hist. Gr. Fragm., vol. i. ed. Didot). Herodotus, however, had doubtless obtained his account of the hippopotamus during his visit to Egypt. Cuvier (Trad. de Pline, par Grandsagne, tom. vi. p. 444.) remarks that the description is only accurate as to the teeth and the skin; but that it is erroneous as to the size, the feet, the tail and mane, and the nose. He wonders, therefore, that it should have been repeated, with few corrections or additions, by Aristotle (Hist. An., ii. 1. and 7.; viii. 24.) and Diodorus (i. 35.). Compare Camus, Notes sur l'Histoire des Animaux d'Aristote, p. 418.
None of the Greek writers appear to have seen a live hippopotamus; nor is there any account of a live animal of this species having been brought to Greece, like the live tiger which Seleucus sent to Athens. According to Pliny (H. N., viii. 40.) and Ammianus Marcellinus (xxii. 15.), the Romans first saw this animal in the celebrated edileship of Æmilius Scaurus, 58 B.C., when a hippopotamus and five crocodiles were exhibited at the games, in a temporary canal. Dio Cassius, however, states that Augustus Cæsar first exhibited a rhinoceros and a hippopotamus to the Roman people in the year 29 B.C. (li. 22.) Some crocodiles and hippopotami, together with other exotic animals, were afterwards exhibited in the games at Rome in the time of Antoninus Pius (A.D. 138-80. See Jul. Capitolin. in Anton. Pio, c. 10.) and Commodus, against his various exploits of animal warfare in the amphitheatre, slew as many as five hippopotami (A.D. 180-92. See Dio Cass. lxxii. 10. and 19.; and Gibbon, c. 4.). Firmus, an Egyptian pretender to the empire in the time of Aurelian, 273 A.D., once rode on the back of a hippopotamus (Flav. Vopiscus, in Firmo, c. 6.): but this feat was probably performed at Alexandria.