Of the bold merry mermen under the sea;
They would sue me, and woo me, and flatter me,
In the purple twilights under the sea;
But the king of them all would carry me,
Woo me, and win me, and marry me,
In the branching jaspers under the sea;
Then all the dry pied things that be
In the hueless mosses under the sea
Would curl round my silver feet silently,
All looking up for the love of me.
And if I should carol aloud, from aloft

All things that are forked, and horned, and soft,
Would lean out from the hollow sphere of the sea,
All looking down for the love of me.

TRITONS AND MEN OF THE SEA.

JAVING treated of Sirens, mermaids, and other female phenomena connected with the ocean, we here devote an article to its male gentry— personages for whom, though we may speak of them with a certain familiarity on the strength of old acquaintance, we entertain all the respect due to their ancient renown, and to those sacred places of poetry in which they are still to be found.

And first of the most ancient. The Triton is one of a numerous race begotten by Triton the son of Neptune, whose conch allayed the deluge of Deucalion. Like his ancestors, he is half a man and half a fish, with a great muscular body, and a tail ending in a crescent. There is a variety which has the forefeet of a horse. And sometimes he has two thighs like a man, or great, round, divided limbs resembling thighs, and tending to the orbicular, which end in fish-tails instead of legs. He

serves Neptune and the sea-nymphs; is employed in calming billows and helping ships out of danger; and blows a conch-shell before the car he waits on, the sound of which is heard on the remotest shores, and causes the waves there to ripple. You may see him in all his jollity in the pictures of the Italians, waiting upon Galatea and sporting about the chariot with her nymphs; for with the strength he has the good humor of the most gambolling of the great fish; and when not employed in his duties, is for ever making love, and tumbling about the weltering waters.

In one of the divine drawings of Raphael, lately exhibited in St. Martin's-lane (and to be detained, we trust, among us for ever, lest our country be dishonored for want of taste), is a Triton with a nymph on his back, whom he is carrying through the water in a style of exquisite grace and affectionateness; for the higher you go in art, the more lovely does love become, and the more raised above the animal passion, even when it most takes it along with it.

Imagine yourself on a promontory in a lone sea, during an autumnal morning, when the heavens retain the gladness of summer-time, and yet there is a note in the wind prophetical of winter, and you shall see Neptune come by with Amphitrite, strenuously drawn through the billows, in which they are half washed, and Triton blowing his conch before them.

"First came great Neptune with his three-forkt mace,
That rules the seas and makes them rise or fall;

His dewy lockes did drop with brine apace

Under his diademe imperiall;

And by his side his

queene with coronall,

Faire Amphitrite, most divinely faire,

Whose yvorie shoulders weren covered all

As with a robe with her owne silver haire,

And deckt with pearles which th' Indian seas for her prepaire.

And all the way before them, as they went,

Triton his trompet shrill before them blew,

For goodly triumph and great jollyment,

THAT MADE THE ROCKES TO ROARE AS THEY WERE RENT."

FAERIE QUEENE, Book iv. Canto xi.

These pearls which Amphitrite wears, were probably got for her by the Tritons, who are great divers. In one of the pictures of Rubens, there are some of them thrusting up their great hands out of the sea (the rest of them invisible), and offering pearls to a queen.

Some writers have undertaken to describe these seadeities more minutely, and as partaking a great deal more of the brute-fish than the man. According to them, the Triton has hair like water-parsley; gills a little under the ears; the nostrils of a man ; a wide mouth with panther's teeth; blue eyes; fins under the breast like a dolphin; hands and fingers, as well as nails of a shelly substance; and a body covered with small scales as hard as a file. Be this as it may, he was in great favor with the sea-goddesses, and has to boast even of the condescension of Venus. Hear what a triumphant note he strikes up in the pages of Marino.

Tra queste squamme, a la scagliosa ombrella

Di questa coda, in questa curva schiena
Vien sovente a seder la Dea più bella.'

A dreadful face in the Carpathian sea
After a sweet one like a deer in flight,
Came ploughing up a trough of thunderous might-
Triton's in chase of coy Cymothoe.
Rugged and fierce, and all afroth, came he,

Dashing the billowy buffets left and right;
And on his slippery orbs, with eyes alight
For thirst, stoop'd headlong tow'rds the lovely she;

Crying, "What boots it to look out for aid

In weedy thicks, and run a race with him
To whom the mastery of the seas is given?

On this rude back, under the scaly shade

Of this huge tail, midst all this fishy trim,

Oft comes to sit the loveliest shape in heaven."

According to Hesiod, Triton is a highly "respectable god, in the modern sense of the word, for he lives "in a golden house." To be sure, he does that, as residing with his father and mother; but, moreover, he is a god redoubtable on his own account deinos a god of "awful might," as Mr. Elton excellently renders it; not "eximius" merely, or egregious, as feeble Natalis Comes interpreteth it; nor simply "vehemens," as the common Latin version saith better, but implying the combination of force and terror.

"From the god of sounding waves,

Shaker of earth, and Amphitrite, sprang
Sea-potent Triton huge;

(excellently rendered, that)

Beneath the deep

He dwells in golden edifice,

(but with his father and mother, quoth Hesiod),

A god

Of awful might.*

Mr. Elton appends a curious note to this passage, from the learned and ingenious, but most gratuitous, "Mythology "of Bryant; who, out of a mistaken zeal for identifying every thing with Scripture, undoes half the poetry of old fable "at a jerk," and makes stocks and stones of the gods with a vengeance. We are sorry to find that so poetical a translator has allowed himself, out of a like respectable error, to contract his larger instincts into those of a dogmatist so prosaical. According to Mr. Bryant, Triton is no better than an old brick building; and Amphitrite herself "another."

"The Hetrurians," says he, "erected on their shores towers and beacons for the sake of their navigation, which they called Tor-ain; whence they had a still farther denomination of Tor-aini (Tyrrheni). Another name for buildings of this nature was Tirit, or Turit; which signified a tower or turret. The name of Triton is a contraction of Tirit-on, and signifies the tower of the sun; but a deity was framed from it, who was supposed to have had the appearance of a man upwards, but downwards to have been like a fish. The Hetrurians are thought to have been the inventors of trumpets; and in their towers on the sea-coast there were people appointed to be continually on the watch, both by day and by night, and to give a proper signal if any thing happened extraordinary. This was done by a blast from the trumpet. In early times, however, these brazen instruments were but little known; and people were obliged to use what were near at hand, the

* Elton's "Hesiod," p. 194.