The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1873-08-21
SHAkSPEARE'S TOAD.
Sweet are the uses Of adversely.

Sweet are the uses Of adversely.
Which, like the toad. ugly and venomous,
Wears yet precious jewel in his head
II glv and venomous" Ugly, therefore
venomouS; for that seems to be the chain
ofargument applied to the unhappy toad.
Mature" says Lord Brougham of Robes
pierre, "had imprinted on his face per-
petual warning of the mans disposition ~
rather singular argument, by the way,
for the noble lord in question to have hit
upon.
But perhaps it is more remarkable to
find poet such as Wadsworth uttering
the corollary of the same proposition in
his Ruth
Yet in his worst pursuits. ween.
That sometimes there did intervene
Pure hopes of high intent;
For passions linked to forms so fair
Ind stately. needs must haze their share
or noble seati8leat.'
Based, perhaps, upon Miranda's raptur-
Gus admiration when Ferd ;nand first bursts
upon her virginia. gaZe:-
There's nothing i'll can dwell in such a temple;
II the ill spirit have so fair a house.
Good things will strive to dwell with it,
But / suppose that poets, whose Office.
like that of other artists, is the worship of
the beautiful, and whose function it is to
supply the warmth and color wanting in
this workaday world, are bound by their
vocation to preach this doctrine for a
truth. l fear it is dangerous one.
AS touching the toad. however, the poets
appear to be wrong. Pope pictures his
enemy, the beautiful Lord Hervey-"Her-
vey the handsome, the figure of
that ill-used reptile, as whispering into
good Queen Caroline's ear:
Who at the ear Of Eve, familiar toad.
uslf-froth. half-venom, spis himself abroad
But in fact there is no venom. There is,
indeed an acrid secretion of the folliclcs
of the skin of the neck, and partly over
the whole body, which exudes, and even
spirits out, on pressure, and is sufficiently
offensive to cause a dog, on Selling a
toad, to drop it somewhat hastily from its
mouth. 1t is potent enough sometimes to
redden the skin of the hand; but it is
perfectly innocuous in the blood, as has
been proven by injecting it into the cir
culation of chicken. And this exuda-
ton is, of course, the "sweltered venom"
of the poetical toad in poetry.
But the Rev. j. G. Wood, that excellent
naturalist and charming writer, assures
us that his children had trough full of
tame toads, each of which answers to its
o,rn particular name, and comes when
called. The children, he says, carry them
round the garden, and hold them up to
any insect which they may chance to
fancy, to enable them to swallow it, which
they do by lightning flash of their
glutinous tongues. Nay, more; their
tender care for their unloved pets is so
great that they battle and kiss them daily,
he declares, just as they themselves are
treated by their nurse. Upon one occa-
sion, one of the Children, who had re-
ceived an orange, was seen with her own
especial toad seated on her hand, partaking
with his mistress of the orange in altern-
ate sucks or bites. Well! de gustibus is
an old axiom, and, it seems, true one.
From the experience so gained, Mr..
Wood declares the toad to be more quick
" and easily tanned than most other ami
mails So that its disposition seems to be
as devoid of venom as its physique. 1t is
curious, by the way, that the word "ugly'
across the Atlantic refers only to moral
deformity, and has no bearing on physical
appearance of any kind.
The precious jewel" in the toad's head
was also an article of general belief in
Shakespeare's time; and is explained by
Halliwell to have been stone of potent
effect in medicine. ANY book of folklore
viii show how much the medicine of the
medieval period dealt with all kinds OF
reptiles, and other such ''uncanny" ami
mails as hedgehogs, bats, owls, and other
weird and misunderstanding things. Ser.
penis, we know, were sacred to EScula.
plus, not on account of their supposed
wisdom or subtlety, but by reason of their
yearly renovation in change of skin and
it would seem that all the reptiles of the
lizard and frog classes, which inherit
some share of the enmity sown in Eden
between the seed of the woman and the
seed of the serpent, inherit also some part
Of this affinity between snakes and the
practice Of physic. find that the home
.HGtlistS OF the present day retain at least
olc drug derived from snakehood-"lach
esis''-which is said to be the poison OF
the lance-headed viper, though it may per
haps be doubted whether their chemists
have really supplied their vials from the
poison-bags of that interesting reptile
They use also the sepia of the cuttle-fish
and have often been struck by the ap
propriateness of sepia as medical EN-
blem. | observe that doctors, when hard
pressed in argument, always escape in 9
flood Of hard words; like the cuttle-fish
protected and concealed by the binding
inky trail it leaves behind it.
l am not sure that the existence of thu
jewel in the toad's head has not been sup
ported, if not suggested, by the extraordi
narily brilliant eye of the reptile, which
appears to flash and scintillate with som,
inward light, thrown into stronger relief
as it is, by the dull, dark, hideous skin in
which it is set. I find this corroboratet
by the fact that in classical times the TOAD
was supposed to partake somewhat of tn,
power of the fabulous basilisk in the abil
ity to fascinate any person 1t looked upol
by the glance of its eye. In the basilisk
indeed, this power was fatal to the life o
the person beheld-a gift never claimet
for the toad.
But if this part of the zoology of tn,
toad has enshrined a popular error of lonl
standing, the nature of its food appears Il
have been no better understood. TIL,
gentle lady welded to the Moor" makes
her jealous, fiery husband exclaim in tn,
agony of his feyer-ft:-
"rd rather be . toad,
And live upon the vapor Of . dungeon,
Than keep corner in the thing I love
For Others uses"
In which, though the sentiment may b.
noble, the science is certainly false. TIL,
food of snakes, according to Shakespeare
was hardly more material than this aeria
toad-diet. In Pericles" he says
And both like serpents are, who though they Tee
on sweetest flowers, yet they poison breed"