' However visionary.' — But are they always visionary? the
unicorn, the kraken, the sea-serpent, are all, perhaps, zoologi-
cal facts. The unicorn, for instance, so far from being a lie,
is rather too true ; for, simply as a monokeras, he is found in
the Himalaya, in Africa, and elsewhere, rather too often for
the peace of what in Scotland would be called the intending



NOTES. 169

traveller. That wlucli really is a lie in the account of the uni-
corn — viz., his legendary rivalship with the lion — which lie
may God preserve, in preserving the mighty imperial shield
that embalms it — cannot be more destructive to the zoological
pretensions of the unicorn, than are to the same pretensions in
the lion our many popular crazes about his goodness and mag-
nanimity, or the old fancy (adopted by Spenser, and noticed by
so many among our elder poets) of his graciousness to maiden
innocence. The wretch is the basest and most cowardly among
the forest tribes ; nor has the sublime courage of the English
bull-dog ever been so memorably exhibited as in his hopeless
fight at Warwick with the cowardly and cruel lion called
Wallace. ' Another of the traditional creatures, still doubtful,
is the mertoaid, upon which Southey once remarked to me,
that, if it had been differently named (as, suppose, a mer-ape,)
nobody would have questioned its existence any more than that
of sea-cows, sea-lions, &c. The mermaid has been discredited
by her human name and her legendary human habits. If she
would pot coquette so much with melancholy sailors, and brush
her hair so assiduously upon solitary rocks, she would be car-
ried on our books for as honest a reality, as decent a female, as
many that are assessed to the poor-rates.
