their five hundred names for the lion, which signifies "the hunter
by moonshine."

38 Cephissi glaciale caput, quo suetus anhelam
Ferre sitim Python, amnemque avertere ponto.

Stat. Theb. vii. 349.

Qui spiris tegeret montes, hauriret hiatu
Flumina, &c. Claud. Pref. in Ruf.

Let not then this hyperbole seem too much for an eastern poet,
though some commentators of name strain hard in this place for a new
construction, through fear of it.

39 The taking the crocodile is most difficult. Diodorus says, they are
not to be taken but by iron nets. When Augustus conquered Egypt, he
struck a medal, the impress of which was a crocodile chained to a
palm-tree, with this inscription, Nemo antea religavit.

40 This alludes to a custom of this creature, which is, when sated with
fish, to come ashore and sleep among the reeds.

41 The crocodile's mouth is exceeding wide. When he gapes, says Pliny,
sic totum os. Martial says to his old woman,

Cum comparata rictibus tuis ora
Niliacus habet crocodilus angusta.

So that the expression there is barely just.

42 This too is nearer the truth than at first view may be imagined. The
crocodile, say the naturalists, lying long under water, and being
there forced to hold its breath, when it emerges, the breath long
represt is hot, and bursts out so violently, that it resembles fire
and smoke. The horse suppresses not his breath by any means so long,
neither is he so fierce and animated; yet the most correct of poets
ventures to use the same metaphor concerning him:

Collectumque premens volvit sub naribus ignem.

By this and the foregoing note I would caution against a false
opinion of the eastern boldness, from passages in them ill
understood.

43 "His eyes are like the eyelids of the morning." I think this gives
us as great an image of the thing it would express as can enter the
thought of man. It is not improbable that the Egyptians stole their
hieroglyphic for the morning, which is the crocodile's eye, from
this passage, though no commentator, I have seen, mentions it. It is
easy to conceive how the Egyptians should be both readers and
admirers of the writings of Moses, whom I suppose the author of this