Greave

“ Of these Coffins Greaves tells us, p. 50. he had seen many fashion’d after the likeness of a Man, or rather resembling one of those Embalm’d Bodies, which, as we have describ’d before, are bound about with Fillets or Roulers, and wrapp’d in a Shroud of Linnen; for as in those there is the shape of a Head, with a kind of painted Vizard or Mask fastned to them, but without any appearance of their Arms or Legs, in like manner is it with these Coffins, the Lids of which have the shape of the Head of a Man, with a Face painted on it resembling a Woman, the residue being one continued Trunk. ”

“ Some of the men stupidly gazed seaward.
“Vhas der island vashed by dis milkiness, captain?” exclaimed Wirtz.{158}
“It stands in the bluest sea in the world,” answered Greaves.
“This here’s a sight,” said Travers, “that may be all blooming fine to read about, but ’taint lucky, to my ways of thinking. Give me natur, says I.”
He did not use the word blooming. This elegant expression was not to be heard in those days; but let it stand.
“Has none of you ever seen such a sight as this before?” called Greaves.
After a pause, “Ne’er a man,” answered Teach.
“Then gaze your eyes full! ”

“ CHAPTER XIV. In passing the grove mentioned in the last chapter, by the edge of a fosse, or ditch, overgrown with bushes, and not far from some miserable huts, I thought I heard a rustling, and reining up my tangan and listening, I could distinguish the deep bass of a grunter, with the running treble of sundry little pigs. My heart went pit-a-pat; here, thought I, is a glorious discovery! I shall be the first to rouse the grizzly monster from his lair, and launch a spear at him. ”

“ The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing. ”

“ The great Blemish, sleek and shining; the small Grif, rough and muddy: the great Blemish clean and polished, smooth-shaved and glossy; the small Grif, dirty and ragged, with the incipient stubble of manhood upon his chin and cheeks. For nature is impartial in her supply of beard and whiskers. Money will not buy them, nor will grease produce them, though it be puffed and perfumed. ”

“ One morning, before daylight had penetrated into the water, Grim catches a glimpse through it of the swarthy belly of the old fish. Driven by hunger, she has come a little way out of her hole, and is now lurking at the edge of the vegetation just above. ”

“ These dreary wastes, pathless and untrodden, were a kind of fabulous region among the patients for all kind of horrors, peopled, as the fancy of each dictated, by the spirits of departed “Léperos,” by venomous serpents and cobras, or by escaped galley-slaves, who led a life of rapine and murder. The flitting jack-o'-lantern that often skimmed along the surface, the wild cry of the plover, the dreary night wind sighing over miles of plain, aided these superstitions, and convinced many whose stubborn incredulity demanded corroboration from the senses. ”

“ With grease upon their faces, filling their long black hair, shining upon their hands, and smeared upon their bodies, they are as disgusting a race as can be found upon the globe; and after a brief survey of their huts and habits, men of a cleanly nature never desire to see them more. Their limbs bear about as great a proportion to their bodies as the stem of a pipe to the bowl ”

“ Whenever Grim goes to the surface, a puffing and growling is heard. The otter hastily gasps for breath, and tightens his hold with his fore-claws; but when they are on their way down to the depths, and air-bubbles, like silver beads, roll through the water behind him, he has only to hold on and let himself go. ”

“ Lest limbs be reddened and rent—I spring the trap that is set—As I loose the snare you may glimpse me there—For surely you shall forget! Row nearer, Mole, nearer to the reeds! It is hard to catch, and grows each minute fainter. ”

“ As you must often have noted, there is among the breezes, a certain one that is extremely partial to animals. It is never happier than when ruffling the forelock of some big dapple-gray; teasing the tail of proud chanticleer; or cradling a gull in its wide-spreading arms. Indeed, it is the very “vagrant breeze” of which, doubtless, you have heard many times. ”

“ The grub amazes me no less. It changes its diet. When a denizen of the vine and the poplar, [159] it eats a leaf; when a denizen of the sloe, it takes to starchy food. It changes its means of liberation. When they have attained their full growth and the moment comes for them to go underground, the first two have nothing in front of them but a yielding obstacle, the surface layer of the leafy sheath, softened and wasted by decay; the third, like the Nut-weevil, has to pierce a wall of exceptional strength. ”

“ Neither suffer the yew too near their house, neither bum crab-shells to redness in the fire, neither trust them where a marsh is deep or by a strong smell of mire, or where encircling rocks echo to a stroke and fling back the phantom of a call. ”

“ The houses stood like rows of cripples, some paralysed, some hunch-backed and some bent with age,
They seemed at war, their chimneys threatening, their brows hung heavy in a sombre rage.
Crab-like the children crawled, while always hammering above their heads the scolding shrewish tongue;
They grew as bloodless flowers unflourishing, waxen and pale from out the dust and dung. ”

“ There the graven narrative closed its chapter of ivory: forever provokingly motionless the lithe limbs of the dryad and the serpent thigh-bracelet and the unhappily amorous faun holding the drapery rigid in his outstretched hand.
I fell asleep, still haunted by the unfinished idyl. The night filled the darkness with whispers and with dreams; and in a luminous cloud I beheld again the faun and the sleeping nymph and the serpent with topaz eyes coiled about her thigh. ”

“ Little louse has burned herself to death. Little flea is crying. Little door is creaking. Little broom is sweeping. Little cart is running. Little manure pile is burning." Then the girl said, "Then I will break my little water pitcher." ”

“ While the grub dies of hunger in a shell which has dried into stone, the full-grown insect that has completed its transformations dies there too, for it is incapable of bursting the prison and freeing itself. ”

“ By an artifice that varies according to the mother's talent, their grubs, either in the germ-stage or newly-born, are brought into touch with the victim that is to feed them: an unwounded victim, for most of them are without a sting; a live victim, but steeped in the torpor of the coming transformations and thus delivered without defence to the grub that is to devour it. ”

“ GREY MARE. The grey mare is the better horse; said of
a woman who governs her husband.
GREY PARSON. A farmer who rents the tithes of the rector
or vicar.
GRIG. A farthing. A merry grig; a fellow as merry as a grig: an allusion to the apparent liveliness of a grig, or young eel.
GRIM. Old Mr. Grim; death.
GRIMALKIN. A cat: mawkin signifies a hare in Scotland.
GRIN. To grin in a glass case; to be anatomized for murder: the skeletons of many criminals are preserved in glass cases, at Surgeons' hall.
GRINAGOG, THE CAT'S UNCLE. A foolish grinning fellow,
one who grins without reason. ”

“ The Rat, much excited, kept close to his heels as the Mole, with something of the air of a sleep-walker, crossed a dry ditch, scrambled through a hedge, and nosed his way over a field open and trackless and bare in the faint starlight. ”

“ A single hair comes wafted by the wind. A beard:grew from the hair, and on the beard was engendered a worm. Owing to this the low wretch came, the evil pagan removed into the beloved jaw-bones, the dearlycherished teeth, to devour and gnaw, to crunch, rasp, and play havoc with the jaws, and hack the teeth. ”

“ Aimlessly they wander hither and thither, sniff at every blade of grass on the way, but scarcely crop any, lift their heads expectantly and joyously, let them droop again in disappointed sadness, bleat, and bleat again. The restlessness increases almost to frenzy, the bleating becomes a perfect bellowing. ”

“ The Crows flew away, but in a little while returned, and cried once more: “Sparrow, Sparrow, have pity on us and give us shelter, for the wind blows and the rain beats, and the prickly-pear hedge-thorns stick into our eyes.” ”

“ The circumstances are not precisely known to us, beyond the fact that a young girl found him early in the morning lying in the shadow of a pile of timber, a prey to one of those strange fevers that make one shiver with cold even under a sky of fire. ”

“ The sanguinary harvest grew broader as the sickle of death was thrust in to reap, and the little brooks and rivulets that had babbled merry music for ages and laved the thirst of man and beast with their crystal water, suddenly became tinged with a dye fresh from the fountain of bitterest sorrow. ”

“ Even under the ideal conditions of good light, warmth and no wind, crevasses are beastly, whether you are pulling over a level and uniform snow surface, never knowing what moment will find you dropping into some bottomless pit, or whether you are rushing for the Alpine rope and the sledge, to help some companion who has disappeared. ”

“ The cat began to bite the rat, the rat began to eat the grease, the grease began to grease the rope, the rope to hang the butcher, the butcher to kill the ox, the ox to drink the water, the water to quench the fire, the fire to burn the stick, the stick to beat the kid, and so the kid went home. ”

“ This curious expression is ascertained to have the meaning here 124 assigned to it by observing (1) that grim and gore must be substantives, and (2) that they must be of like signification; but chiefly by comparing the line with others similar to it. Now the context, in the couplet following, repeats that “men might hear him roar, that foul vile wretch, a mile off;” and in l. 682, Godard calls Grim “a foul dirt, a thrall, and a churl.” The author clearly uses dirt and churl as synonyms. The word grim is the Danish grim, soot, lampblack, smut, dirt, answering to the English grime ”

“ And over and above all else there was bestial fever, a lust for death which made this multitude delirious, an eagerness to see life flow forth fresh and ruddy beneath the knife, so that as it coursed over the soil they might dip their feet in it. ”

“ The wizard of Finland greets thee and bids me say that thou mayest free the maiden thus: Go to the river and smear thyself all over with mud; then say: ‘From a man into a crab,’ and thou wilt become a crab. Plunge boldly into the water, swim as close as thou canst to the water-lily’s roots, and loosen them from the mud and reeds. This done, fasten thy claws into the roots and rise with them to the surface. Let the water flow all over the flower, and drift with the current until thou comest to a mountain ash tree on the left bank. ”

“ The air is moist and raw. I go into the city. I am looking for gardens.
I walk in a black gravy. Along the ditch whose crumbling border I follow, the odor is so strong that it is like an explosive. There is the smell of oil, garlic, filth, ashes, opium, and offal. I walk amid a free and easy people who are shod with thick buskins or sandals of straw, wearing long hoods or skullcaps of felt, their silk or linen trousers tucked into leggings.
The wall winds and undulates, and its coping, an arrangement of bricks and open-work tiles, imitates the back and body of a crawling dragon. ”

“ That the grub is no corpse is revealed in another manner. I place in glass tubes, with a plug of cotton, twelve larvæ removed from the Odynerus’ larders. The sign of latent life is the creature’s freshness and its hue, a soft pinky white; the sign of death and corruption is a brown colouring. Well, eighteen days later one of the grubs begins to turn brown. A second is seen to be dead in thirty-one days. ”

“ Worm talk, clashing jaws of moth
Chumbling holes in cloth:
The groan of ants who undertake
Gigantic loads for honour's sake,
Their sinews creak, their breath comes thin:
Whir of spiders when they spin,
And minute whispering, mumbling, sighs
Of idle grubs and flies.
This man is quickened so with grief,
He wanders god-like or like thief
Inside and out, below, above,
Without relief seeking lost love.
[30]
FOX'S DINGLE ”

“ A CROW, in great want of food, saw a Serpent asleep in a sunny nook, and flying down, greedily seized him. The Serpent turning about, bit the Crow with a mortal wound; the Crow in the agony of death exclaimed: "O unhappy me! who have found in that which I deemed a happy windfall the source of my destruction."
⁠There are many men who will, like the Serpent, endanger their lives, for the sake of finding treasure. ”

“ When at dayspring he is dappled with spots and sunk in a mist, and his orbed centre retires, mistrust thou of showers; for a gale is bearing hard from seaward, ill-ominous for trees and crops and herds. ”

“ Dangeau, a guard or two, six filthy, reeking creatures, drawn from the lowest slums, steeped in wickedness as in blood; the exquisite head, lovely to the last, set on a dripping pike; the white, insulted body, stripped to the dust and mire of Paris; the frightful odour of gore diffused by all, made up a total effect of horror unparalleled in any age. ”

“ Then hunger and thirst assailed them, serpents bit them, stinging flies drove men mad, the sand burnt their feet through steel and leather. They lost more this way than by Saracen ambush, and lost more hearts than men. ”

“ In the midst of this horrible feast, a large raven dashed down from a dark cloud, and, driving away all the meaner birds, fell a-feasting himself;—opened the breast of his victim, who was still alive, and encouraging him on ”