"Brother, you have a vice of mercy in you, Which better fits a lion than a man."
[434] Singer's "Shakespeare," 1875, vol. vii. p. 277.
It is recorded by Pliny[435] that "the lion alone of all wild animals is gentle to those that humble themselves before him, and will not touch any such upon their submission, but spareth what creature soever lieth prostrate before him." Hence Spenser's Una, attended by a lion; and Perceval's lion, in "Morte d'Arthur" (bk. xiv. c. 6). Bartholomæus says the lion's "mercie is known by many and oft ensamples: for they spare them that lie on the ground." Shakespeare again alludes to this notion in "As You Like It" (iv. 3):
"for 'tis The royal disposition of that beast To prey on nothing that doth seem as dead."
[435] "Natural History," bk. viii. c. 19.
It was also supposed that the lion would not injure a royal prince. Hence, in "1 Henry IV." (ii. 4) the Prince says: "You are lions too, you ran away upon instinct, you will not touch the true prince; no, fie!" The same notion is alluded to by Beaumont and Fletcher in "The Mad Lover" (iv. 5):
"Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over; If she be sprung from royal blood, the lion He'll do you reverence, else--
According to some commentators there is an allusion in "3 Henry VI." (i. 3) to the practice of confining lions and keeping them without food that they may devour criminals exposed to them:
"So looks the pent-up lion o'er the wretch That trembles under his devouring paws."
_Mole._ The eyes of the mole are so extremely minute, and so perfectly hid in its hair, that our ancestors considered it blind--a vulgar error, to which reference is made by Caliban in "The Tempest" (iv. 1):
"Pray you, tread softly, that the blind mole may not Hear a foot fall."
"The blind mole casts Copp'd hills towards heaven."
Hence the expression "blind as a mole." Alexander Ross[436] absurdly speaks of the mole's eyes as only the "forms of eyes," given by nature "rather for ornament than for use; as wings are given to the ostrich, which never flies, and a long tail to the rat, which serves for no other purpose but to be catched sometimes by it." Sir Thomas Browne, however, in his "Vulgar Errors" (bk. iii. c. xviii.),[437] has, with his usual minuteness, disproved this idea, remarking "that they have eyes in their head is manifested unto any that wants them not in his own." A popular term for the mole was the "moldwarp" or "mouldiwarp,"[438] so called from the Anglo-Saxon, denoting turning the mould. Thus, in "1 Henry IV." (iii. 1) Hotspur says: