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As the virtue of these stones is still much boasted of by the Maltese, and as some, on the contrary, maintain that they are the petrified teeth of a fish called lamia, it will not be irrelevant here to relate some observations from the best authors on this interesting subject, so much to our purpose.
Then Ali Mardan, feeling a strange relief in speaking, told the Jogi about the finding of the maiden, so lovely and forlorn, in the forest. 'She is no handmaiden of the Emperor of China she is no woman! quoth the Jogi fearlessly; 'she is nothing but a Lamia the dreadful two-hundred-years-old snake which has the power of taking woman's shape!
London: T. Cadell and W. Davies, in the Strand. 4 vols. 8vo. The Poetical Works of John Dryden. His "Character of a Happy Warrior" , one of his noblest poems, has a dash of Dryden in it, still more his "Epistle to Sir George Beaumont ." He studied Dryden's versification before writing his "Lamia." On the Origin and Progress of Satire. See Johnson's counter-opinion in his life of Dryden.
Lamia is a serpent transformed by magic into a woman. The idea of both is mythological, and not in any sense physiological. Some women unquestionably suggest the image of serpents; men rarely or never. I have been struck, like many others, with the ophidian head and eye of the famous Rachel.
Many a time I have blushed for them, as I read of the mutilation of Uranus, the fetters of Prometheus, the revolt of the giants, the torments of hell; enamored Zeus taking the shape of bull or swan; women turning into birds and bears; Pegasuses, Chimæras, Gorgons, Cyclopes, and the rest of it; monstrous medley! fit only to charm the imaginations of children for whom Mormo and Lamia have still their terrors.
"Yes, I must pass them for a nobler life, Where I may find the agonies, the strife Of human hearts." In Isabella, the Ode to a Nightingale, Lamia, and Hyperion, he was beginning to paint these "agonies" and "the strife"; but death swiftly ended further progress on this road. Before he passed away, however, he left some things that have an Elizabethan appeal.
Not to go into details, after he had made free with the wives of many men of distinction, he took Domitia Longina from her husband, Aelias Lamia, and married her; and in one day disposed of above twenty offices in the city and the provinces; upon which Vespasian said several times, "he wondered he did not send him a successor too."
Shelley had been reading the poems of "Lamia" and "Isabella" by Keats, as the volume was found turned back open in his pocket; so sudden was the squall. The fragments being now collected and placed in the furnace here fired, and the flames ascended to the height of the lofty pines near us.
This is a joyful occasion to sacrifice both with incense and music of the lyre, and the votive blood of a heifer to the gods, the guardians of Numida; who, now returning in safety from the extremest part of Spain, imparts many embraces to his beloved companions, but to none more than his dear Lamia, mindful of his childhood spent under one and the same governor, and of the gown, which they changed at the same time.
If his senses had cheated him if, in spite of what he had heard, that pale, unspeakably lovely image were indeed a lamia, a goblin shape from Hecate's dark abode, yet would he follow wherever she might lead, as to a festival, only to be with her.
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