Very beautifully, in _Twelfth Night_ (act i. sc. 1, l. 9, vol. iii. p. 223), is this idea applied by Orsino, duke of Illyria,— “O spirit of love, how quick and fresh art thou! That, notwithstanding thy capacity Receiveth as the sea, nought enters there, Of what validity and pitch soe’er, But falls into abatement and low price, Even in a minute! so full of shapes is fancy That it alone is high fantastical. _Cur._ Will you go hunt, my lord? _Duke._ What, Curio? _Cur._ The hart. _Duke._ Why, so I do, the noblest that I have: O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence! That instant was I turn’d into a hart; And my desires, like fell and cruel hounds, E’er since pursue me.” The full force and meaning of the mythological tale is, however, brought out in the _Titus Andronicus_ (act ii. sc. 3, l. 55, vol. vi. p. 459), that fearful history of passion and revenge. Tamora is in the forest, and Bassianus and Lavinia make their appearance,— “_Bass._ Who have we here? Rome’s royal empress, Unfurnish’d of her well-beseeming troop? Or is it Dian, habited like her, Who hath abandoned her holy groves, To see the general hunting in this forest? _Tam._ Saucy controller of my private steps! Had I the power that some say Dian had, Thy temples should be planted presently With horns, as was Actæon’s, and the hounds Should drive upon thy new-transformed limbs, Unmannerly intruder as thou art!” Arion rescued by the Dolphin is another mythic tale in which poets may well delight. Alciatus (Emblem 89, edition 1581), directs the moral, “_against the avaricious, or those to whom a better condition is offered by strangers_.” Contrary to the French writers of time and place, the emblem presents in the same device the harpist both cast out of the ship and riding triumphantly to the shore. In auaros, vel quibus melior conditio ab extraneis offertur. _EMBLEMA LXXXIX._ [Illustration: _Alciat, 1581._] DELPHINI _inſidens vada cærula ſulcat Arion, Hocʠ_{3} aures mulcet, frenat & ora ſono. Quàm ſit auari hominis, non tam mens dira ſerarũ est; Quiʠ_{3} viris rapimur, piſcibus eripimur._ [Sidenote: _i.e._] “On the dolphin sitting Arion ploughs cerulean seas, With a sound he soothes the ears, with a sound curbs the mouth. Of wild creatures not so dreadful is the mind, as of greedy man; We who by men are pillaged, are by fishes rescued.”