derkomai = blepein] to see. Sharpness of sight, it is true, was
attributed to the mythologized reptile, but the primitive _draco_ was
nothing but a large serpent, supposed to be the boa. This sense must
accordingly be comparatively modern. The eagle is the universal type of
keenness of vision. The reptile's way of moving himself without legs is
his most striking peculiarity; and if we derive _dragon_ from the root
meaning to drag, to draw, (because he draws himself along,) we find it
analogous to _serpent_, _reptile_, _snake_.[b] The relation between
[Greek: trechein] and _dragan_ may be seen in G. _ziehen_, meaning both
to draw and to go. Mr. Wedgwood says that he finds it hard to conceive
any relation between the notion of _treachery_, _betrayal_, (_truegen_,
_betruegen_,) and that of drawing. It would seem that to _draw_ into
an ambush, the _drawing_ of a fowler's net, and the more sublimated
_drawing_ a man on to his destruction, supplied analogies enough. The
contempt we feel for treachery (for it is only in this metaphysical way
that Mr. Wedgwood can connect the word with his radical _rac_[c]) is a
purely subsidiary, derivative, and comparatively modern notion. Many,
perhaps most, kinds of treachery were looked upon as praiseworthy in
early times, and are still so regarded among savages. Does Mr. Wedgwood
believe that Romulus lost caste by the way in which he made so many
respectable Sabines fathers-in-law against their will, or that the wise
Odysseus was a perfectly admirable gentleman in our sense of the word?
Even in the sixteenth century, in the then most civilized country of the
world, the grave irony with which Macchiavelli commends the frightful
treacheries of Caesar Borgia would have had no point, if he had not taken
it for granted that almost all who read his treatise would suppose him
to be in earnest. In the same way _dregs_ is explained simply as the
sediment left after _drawing off_ liquids. _Dredge_ also is certainly,
in one of its meanings, a derivative of _dragan_; so, too, _trick_ in
whist, and perhaps _trudge_. Indeed, all the words above-cited are more
like each other than Fr. _toit_ and E. _deck_, both from one root, or
the Neapol. _sciu_ and the Lat. _flos_, from which it is corrupted.

[Footnote a: The German _pfau_ retains the imitative sound which the
English _pea_-cock has lost, and of which our system of pronunciation
robs the Latin.]

[Footnote b: And to _worm_, (another word for _dragon