©« 
 
THE POETS' BEASTS. 
 
Uniform with this volume, crown 8vo. cloth extra, 7s. 6d. 
 
 THE POETS' BIRDS. 
 
 By PHIL ROBINSON, Author of "Noah's Ark," &c. 
 
 " Mr. Phil Robinson's new volume — a book which may be described as one half classi- 
 fied extracts from the poets, the other half a humorous defence of birds whom they 
 have neglected or maligned— is a very pleasant one. The one half of Mr. K 
 book may be set against the other; and an atrtholof tsins poems like 
 
 Skylark,' and a hundred touches, at once truthful and imagin.v 
 Keats and Byron and Burns, and man)' a lesser poet of the - lhame or 
 
 1-eyden, more than compensates for a certain want of variety in the allusions to green- 
 finches and crakes, and a too great tendency to describe all the less important song- 
 birds as 'twittering.' But either half is very' pleasant reading, and more es; i 
 
 combine with a love of poetry some knowledge of the wooc^ 
 James's Gazette. 
 
 "Mr. Phil Robinson has hit upon a happy idea. . . . Throughout the tx 
 struck both by the author's exceptional knowledge of bird-nature a: - 
 exceptional industry in the accumulation of material . . . We can hardly be too hearty 
 in our praise. The work is not only of great interest but of solid usefulness. —Derby 
 Mercury. 
 
 " Both informative and entertaining." — Scotsman. 
 
 ..iply delightful book."— Illujtra ted London News. 
 
 " Mr. Phil RoLinvon writes so charm] 
 let off for having given us so much of the poets and so little of hi-n^elf in this fat and 
 well-filled volume. His book CO -:rung to- 
 
 ■ is as usual Of 
 
 - 
 
 y of his wonte: .al of genuinely 
 
 : all the delicate 
 refinements of form in poetry, might do worse than take a leaf as to ■. 
 matter out of his amusing book. It is needk 
 studied from the very' life, that out of the fall 
 tongue has spoken words of wisdom on all the f 
 from England to the Cape of Good Hope- T* 
 
 information, and minute zoolcv 
 
 " The book is remarkable both in its conception and execution, and does great 
 
 whose knowledge of English poetry in 
 its full extent can hardly be surpassed.' —Tablet. 
 
 CHATTO eV WINDUS, Piccadilly, W. 
 
THE POETS' BEASTS 
 
 A SEQUEL TO "THE POETS' BIRDS ' 
 
 BY 
 
 PHIL ROBINSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 IN MY INDIAN GARDEN," " NOAH'S ARK," " UNDER THE PUNKAH, 
 
 ''SINNERS AND SAINTS," "THE POETS' BIRDS," ETC. 
 
 Hontoon 
 
 CHATTO AND VVINDUS, PICCADILLY 
 
 1885 
 
 [The right of translation is reserved] 
 
BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. 
 BDINBUECM ANO LONDON 
 
Zbis Volume 
 
 IS MOST GRATEFULLY DEDICATED TO 
 TWO POETS, 
 
 JEAN INGE LOW and EDWIN ARNOLD, 
 
 IN RESPECTFUL ADMIRATION 
 
 OF 
 
 THEIR RARE SYMPATHY WITH NATURE, 
 
 AND THEIR TENDER INTERPRETATIONS OF 
 
 " THE SPEECHLESS WORLD." 
 
EXCULPATORY NOTE. 
 
 By way of partial explanation of the errata and 
 repetitions which the Reader will find flourishing in 
 the later and unrevised pages of this volume, I would 
 venture to draw his generous attention to my present 
 address. Leaving England for the front at very short 
 notice, I had not the necessary time for finishing my 
 proof-correcting ; and though this fact is no sort of 
 justification for the original mistakes, it appears to me 
 to be somewhere on the road to an excuse for their 
 being left unmolested. 
 
 PHIL ROBINSON. 
 
 Headquarters Camp, 
 Suakim Field Force, April 1885. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 I. THE KING OF THE BEASTS 
 
 II. THE HEPTARCHY OF THE CATS 
 III. BEARS AND WOLVES 
 IV. SOME BEASTS OF REPROACH 
 V. ASSES AND APES 
 VI. SOME HARMLESS BEASTS 
 VII. BRITISH WILD BEASTS 
 VIII. BEASTS OF CHASE . 
 IX. THE POETS' FLOCKS . 
 X. " THE BEARD-BLOWN GOAT " 
 XL THE POETS' HERDS . 
 XII. SOME POETS' HORSES 
 
 XIII. SOME POETS' DOGS . 
 
 XIV. SOME POETS' CATS . 
 
 PAGE 
 I 
 
 29 
 
 56 
 
 85 
 
 119 
 I40 
 
 174 
 205 
 
 237 
 255 
 270 
 295 
 305 
 
 337 
 
THE POETS' BEASTS, 
 i. 
 
 THE KING OF THE BEASTS. 
 
 There are many who deprecate the lion's coronation as the 
 King of Beasts. But, after all, it should not be forgotten 
 by this noble animal's critics that it is only contended on its 
 behalf that it is the King of Beasts; and, remembering this, 
 it is very difficult, I think, to dispute its claim to monarchy. 
 It may have vassals actually as strong as itself, powerful 
 Warwicks or Burgundies, but it is still, I think, their liege 
 lord. Its gait, eye, voice, and uplift of head all make it 
 royal in presence — and as for its character, taking one 
 thing with another, it is as good as that of any other 
 beast. Its personal advantages, therefore, are all so much 
 "to the good," as it were, while in its natural life, and in 
 its traditional glories, the lion is indisputably majestic. 
 
 There are two lions, the real and the imaginary. The 
 former exists in nature only ; the latter in heraldry, myths, 
 and poetry. But both are royal ; the former from attri- 
 butes of person, the latter from attributes of mind. 
 
 A writer, 1 for whom I have a great respect, calls the 
 King of Beasts "a great carnivorous impostor," challenges 
 
 1 Frances Power Cobbe. 
 
 A 
 
2 Poets Beasts. 
 
 its claim to majesty, and asks proof of its "supposed i 
 nanimity and generosity beyond the blandness of its Harold 
 Skimpole countenance, and the disdainful manner in which 
 it throws back its mane as if it were quite incapable of the 
 pettiness (of which it is, nevertheless, frequer. y) of 
 
 picking up and eating a humble black-beetle."' But thk 
 it is quite true that it is sometimes excelled in size and 
 generally in ferocity by the tiger, in e'.egance of form by 
 the leopard and jaguar, and in beauty of colouring by most 
 of t 
 
 ParV: . . ven if it were advisable, to 
 
 to depose the lion from the throne it has. by the univei 
 consent of mankind, so long occupied." It would be I 
 
 magnificent presence and kingly voice of 
 the lion would always suffice to rethrone it as often as it 
 was deposed. And it wou"d be onadvisable, as no t 
 beast could be crowned in its stead. The ermine would 
 .come the unwieldy elephant v. anti- 
 
 pathies t - nd mosquitoes, its secluded 
 
 herbivorous habits ; and there is too much blood or. 
 
 :"s claws for_a sceptre. The violent rhinoceros, with its 
 vicious I .night force its way to temporary dictator- 
 
 ship during a popular revolution, or the tusky wild boar 
 by pertinacity of courage enforce a general : But 
 
 er of them could be presented with sufficient dL 
 to the people as the Anointed and E 
 cessor worthy to fill its place, the lion must remain k 
 
 Its glorious head and fall gent eye, the terrible 
 
 composure of its bearing, the u e ease of its step, 
 
 the awe-compelling voice — "the r e he 
 
 ks his prey " — are all kingly. But in many of its h. 
 it declines from this high standard. It is not really c^ 
 geous. Thus, the anc. -...tues of Fear the 
 
 heads of lions. It avoids i formidable antago- 
 
 eads man and a'd his works. It hat. 
 
The King of the Beasts. 3 
 
 wooded and, if possible, rocky places, where it can lie 
 hidden and pounce upon passing prey. If it misses its 
 aim it sulks, but does not pursue. 
 
 Of course, the imaginary lion, the Hon of the poets, is 
 a very different animal. It is a king of " sandy deserts," 
 reigning in a majestic solitude. It courts danger by pro- 
 voking men to combat, and never knows when it is beaten. 1 
 It scorns a weak foe, and generously overlooks everything 
 not its equal — for which perhaps the poets might quote that 
 episode near Bethel when the lion killed the prophet, but 
 refused to harm his ass. There is only one rebel against its 
 authority, Spenser's "prowd, rebellious unicorn." 
 
 But much of the poets' mistaken eulogy is condoned by 
 their fidelity to tradition, and the result is that, while the 
 lion is credited with noble qualities that he does not possess, 
 he is also debited with many very culpable human weak- 
 nesses. So, though the poets must be held largely respon- 
 sible for the perpetuation of the ideas of the royalty, 
 magnanimity, and general infallibility of the lion, there can 
 be no doubt that, taken as a whole, their presentation of 
 the " King of the Beasts " is a tolerably fair one. It is 
 not, perhaps, quite so impartial as the American poets' 
 exposition of their country's "Eagle" — but then that, as I 
 have said elsewhere, is what might be called in vulgar 
 ish "altogether phenomenal" — but it will stand, never- 
 theless, like Landseer's bronzes, as being a thoroughly 
 gratifying and sufficiently accurate statement of the lion's 
 pretensions. For the poets assume the attitude of his- 
 torians rather than of courtiers towards "the forest ki 
 and — following the old fabulists faithfully — compound a 
 sovereign that has both the virtues of royalty and the weak- 
 nesses. Thus, though the lion is regal, it is at times tyran- 
 
 1 Solomon himself says that it is "the strongest among beasts, 
 and turneth not away from any.*' But Solomon probably did not 
 know of the tijrer. 
 
4 Poets Beasts. 
 
 nical, and, though usually magnanimous, it is also on 
 occasion "inhuman." It is "the awful lion's royal sh- 
 in one place : in another we meet only " the shaggy terror 
 of the wood." While Cowper portrays the beast sparing 
 a victim " on the terms of royal mercy, and through generous 
 scorn to rend a victim trembling at his foot,'" Armstrong 
 writes of "the ruthless king of beasts, that on blood and 
 slaughter only live 
 
 In spite too of its prodigious si it is well worth 
 
 noting that no incident of man's triumph over the lion is 
 neglected, and — as Pausanias tells us that Polydamas, the 
 athlete, killed a lion, "although he was unarmed" — it is 
 particularly recorded (whenever such was the case) that the 
 man was without weapons during the encounter. In the 
 same spirit the Assyrian king has left the proud chronicle 
 on stone how " I. Assar-Banipul, king of multitudes, by my 
 might, on my two legs, a fierce lion, which I seized behind 
 the ears, in the service of Istar, goddess of war, with my 
 two hands killed*' 1 In the same spirit of pride at such 
 a conquest, the son of Jesse makes his boast before the 
 king, and afterwards, being himself king, he places among 
 his "mighty men," and before "the Thirty," that man of 
 calm courage Benaiah, who " went down and slew a lion 
 in the midst of a pit in time of snow," and who also 
 : ;ble as himself, two " lion-like " men of Moab. 
 Our own Richard — "he who robbed the lion of his heart " 
 — after three sting, so the legend goes, in the 
 
 dungeons of "Almay; especially glorified by the 
 
 ballad-singers of his day, because he had torn a lion to 
 pieces, and this, too, "without his weapons in his har 
 
 .00, " irresistible Samson," who " tore the lion as the 
 lion tears the kid" ("and he had nothing in his hand"). 
 
 1 " Who drew the lion vanquished? 'twas an Avec 
 
 plus de raison nous aurions le dessus si mes confreres savaient peindre," 
 . lion in La Fontaine. 
 
The King of the Beasts. 5 
 
 " Withouten wepen save his handes twey 
 He slew and all to-rente the leon 
 Toward his wedding walking by the way." 
 
 And David (in Cowley) — 
 
 " Saw a lion and leapt clown to it ; 
 As eas'ly there the royal beast he tore, 
 As that itself did kids or lambs before." 
 
 And Hercules (in Darwin) — 
 
 " Drives the lion to his dusky cave, 
 
 Seized by the throat the growling fiend disarms, 
 And tears his gaping jaws with sinewy arms." 
 
 So in Glover's " Leonidas," "This unconquered hand 
 hath from the lion rent his shaggy mane." So Drayton 
 in the " Polyolbion " has a hero smashing two lions' heads 
 together "against the hardened earth" till "their jaws and 
 shoulders burst," reminding us of St. George's feats with a 
 diversity of dragonish things ; and Montgomery peoples the 
 world before the Flood with beings who pulled lions about 
 as if they had been rabbits, and who were themselves ruled 
 over by giant kings whose robes were "spoils of lions." 
 
 " Throned on a rock the Giant-King appears 
 In the full manhood of five hundred years ; 
 His robe the spoil of lions, by his might 
 Dragged from their dens and slain in fight" 
 
 Cervantes speaks of Don Quixote's adventure with the 
 lions as " the last and highest point at which the unheard- 
 of courage of the Knight ever did, or could, arrive," and 
 Don Quixote was himself so much of the same opinion, 
 that he gave the world to know that thenceforward he 
 called himself the Knight of the Lions. 
 
 " Are the lions large ? " asked Don Quixote. " Very 
 large," replied the man in the fore-part of the waggon ; 
 "bigger never came from Africa." But the Knight insists 
 upon them being led forth. They will not come. One of 
 
6 The Poets 1 Beasts. 
 
 them, "of a monstrous size and frightful aspect," approaches 
 the open door, stretches itself, gapes, yawns, "then thrusts 
 out half a yard of tongue, with which it licks the dust off 
 ce, : ' puts its head out of the cage, and after looking 
 about it "awhile," turned its back upon the Don, without 
 paying any attention whatever to his "vapourings and 
 bravado," and "very contentedly lay down again in its 
 apartment." So perhaps "the lion is not so fierce as 
 painted," as Fuller — plagiarising from Herbert's "Jacula 
 prudentum," itself a plagiarism — allows. 
 
 ost cases the poets represent the lions calling, like 
 the Earl of Chatham, or Mr. Winkle, for their antagonists 
 to "come on;" but occasionally, as in straight-thru si 
 Quarles — 
 
 • " They faint, and show 
 Their fearful heels ;: leerdocroi 
 
 and I find in Sir Thomas Browne the following note : " In 
 our time in the court of the Prince of Bavaria one of the 
 lions leaped down into a neighbour's yard, where, nothing 
 regarding the crowing or noise of the cocks, he did eat them 
 up, with many hens." Our own iions of the Tower used, 
 I find, to be regaled occasionally on "cocks and hens." 
 
 Though usually so chivalrous as to refuse to take advan- 
 tage of " equal foes." Byron tells us how — 
 
 at dead of night he prowls 
 . murder glutted, and in carnage rolls ; 
 Insatiate still through teeming herds he roams, 
 In seas of gore the I 
 
 1 Phineas Fletcher has the following, identical in spirit : — 
 when a greedy lion, long unfed, 
 Breaks in at length into the harmlesse fol •! — 
 So hungry rage commands — with fearful dread 
 He J. og controi Is 
 
 The victor proud ; he spoils, devours and tears, 
 n the shepherd calls his peers." 
 
The King of the Beasts. 7 
 
 As a rule " courteous " to their subjects, we read in 
 Butler that 
 
 " Lions are kings of beasts, and yet their power 
 Is not to rule and govern but devour. 
 Such savage kings all tyrants are." 
 
 Again, though the sovereignty is one that " makes all 
 nature glad," and the beasts unanimous in loyal submis- 
 sion (the fox says " Thee all the animals with fear adore "), 
 yet we find the lion's subjects abused for submitting to his 
 supremacy. " No better than mere beasts that do obey," 
 says Butler, and Pope — 
 
 " If a king's a lion, at the least 
 The people are a many-headed beast." 
 
 So that, even from this scanty sample of quotations, it is 
 evident that the poets had not arrived at any such unani- 
 mous opinion as to the lion idea as they have about many 
 other animals. As the King of Beasts it is merely the corre- 
 late of the eagle. But as the fabulists' lion, done into verse, 
 it remains the same mock-heroic animal that the folk-lore 
 of the world has bequeathed to us. 
 
 Above all, of course, the lion is royaj ; not so super- 
 lative, perhaps, in sovereignty as the eagh, but still very 
 emphatically the King of Beasts. " The sovereign lion " — 
 "the forest king" — "the lion king" — "dread king" — "im- 
 perious lion " (Cowper), and so forth, are to be collected for 
 the gathering by bushels. Morris' " yellow lords of fear " 
 is exceptionally fine. Nor, seeing how unanimously the 
 past has conspired to crown the lion, is it easy to quarrel 
 with the poets for perpetuating the monarchical idea. But 
 it is essentially a poetical form of procedure to accept a 
 fiction on the statement of professed fables and myths, and 
 then to build upon it according to individual imagination. 
 Thus, nothing is so popular with poets as the image of a 
 
8 1 he Poets Beasts. 
 
 lion, like some chivalrous knight of the Crusades, challeng- 
 ing attack from overwhelming numbers, and defying superior 
 strength. 
 
 No lion in the flesh behaves as Dryden's " kingly beast " 
 that guides his pursuers to where he stands, " with roar of 
 seas directs his ^chasers' way," that " provokes the hunters 
 from afar, and dares them to the fray," and that " roars out 
 with loud disdain, and slowly moves, unknowing to give 
 place;" or, as Thomson's — 
 
 " Despising flight, 
 The roused-up lion, resolute and slow 
 A '.vancing full on the protended spear," 
 
 or as many other lions of poetry do, that scorn to turn from 
 a foe. 
 
 As a matter of fact, the lion, of all beasts of prey, is one 
 of the readiest to avoid a scrimmage. King James used to 
 try to divert his friends with lion-fights in the Tower, but, 
 according to Howes' Chronicle, his Majesty always failed, 
 owing to the captives' objections to fighting. " Then were 
 divers other lions put into that place one after another, but 
 they showed no more sport nor valour than the first : and 
 ever)' one of them, so soon as they espied the trap-doors 
 open, ran hastily into their dens. Lastly, there were put 
 forth together the two young lusty lions which we/e bred in 
 that yard, and were now grown great. These at first began 
 to march proudly towards the bear, which the bear perceiv- 
 ing came hastily out of a corner to meet them, but both lion 
 and lioness skipped up and down and fearfully fled from 
 the bear ; and so these, like the former lions, not willing to 
 endure any fight, sought the next way into their den." But 
 perhaps this forbearance is like that of the late Mr. T. 
 rs, who, it is said, " never liked to hit a man who didn't 
 know who he was." He was afraid of killing him in all 
 his ignorance. So before he hit him he always told the 
 
The King of the Beasts. 9 
 
 victim that he was Sayers. In the same way the poets' lion 
 always " roars " before attacking. 
 
 " Something almost like a lion " came " a great padding 
 pace " after the Pilgrim. It had " a hollow voice of roar- 
 ing." " 
 
 This passage reminds me somehow of the poetical Beast 
 of Beasts. It is almost like a lion, and has a hollow voice. 
 
 Snug. Have you the lion's part written ? Pray you, if it be, give it 
 
 me, for I am slow of study. 
 Quince. You may do it extempore, for it is nothing but roaring. 
 
 Now, to complete the poetical lion it is necessary that in 
 all its moods it should be classic ; not only in those that 
 are heroic but those that are pathetic also. For are not 
 strong passions merely strong feelings ? So the lion in grief 
 is the most grievous beast imaginable. No parents created 
 (except eagles) feel the loss of their young so keenly as lions 
 and lionesses ; none are so quickly apprehensive of danger 
 to their hearths and cradles ; none are so frantic in revenge. 
 Therefore, from Spenser, with his "felle" lion that "grudg- 
 ing in his great disdaine, mournes inwardly, and makes to 
 himselfe mone," to Burns, who, anxious to give expression 
 to an overwhelming melancholy, cries out for the voice of 
 a lioness " that mourns her darling cubs' undoing," we find 
 the poets punctually magnifying the tenderness of the 
 species. It was necessary, of course, that this should be 
 done — just as one hears it said, describing some utter 
 ruffian, that, "after all, his heart is in the right place." 
 Thus, some of Ouida's tawny heroes are very leonine. 
 They crunch up bronze candlesticks between their fingers 
 in agonies of suppressed passion. But their violet eyes 
 overflow with liquidity at the first appeal of pathos. 
 
 The "stately lion," that "stalks with fiery glare" and 
 "dauntless strides along," offers in its majestic gait an 
 obvious simile that is abundantly and handsomely availed 
 
i o The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 of. Omitting the interminable series of individuals that 
 have been leonine in deportment, the surpassing dignity 
 and sense of power that ennobles the lion's pace have been 
 admirably transferred to, among other objects, an army (Mrs. 
 Hemans) : 
 
 " With a silent step went the cv.irassed ban 
 Like a lion's tread on the burning sands " — 
 
 lines which might be happily applied to the march of the 
 brigade of Guards across the sands to Tel-el-Kcbir. Words- 
 worth employs the simile for primeval man — 
 
 •• His native dignity no forms debase, 
 The eye sublime, and surly lion-grace : 
 The slave of none, of beasts alone the lord." 
 
 When tranquil in mind, there is a simplicity and ease in 
 the lion's movements, though full of a tremendous conscious- 
 ness of strength, that is eminently beautiful. When slightly 
 out of temper this state, iness increases by the addition of a 
 splendid sullenness — "with sullen majesty he stalks away r- 
 (Broome) — but the simplicity is lost. When it flies into a 
 passion both stateliness and simplicity are gone, for the lion 
 reverts at once to a furious rough-and-tumble wild beast. 
 
 But the poets measure its kingliness by its fur)-, and the 
 more "woode" it becomes the more royal. This is an 
 error, not only of fact, but of grace. When Jove gets angry 
 he grows undignified. Gods and kings should always keep 
 their tempers, for sceptres do not become furious hands, 
 tals begin to question divinity when they see such 
 ions coclestibus animis. 
 
 Sometimes, but very seldom, he is merely "the shaggy- 
 lion" (Prior), "the forest prowler '* (Byro: 
 (Young), " terror of the wood " (Broome), that "grins dread- 
 fully" — the lion of nature pure and simple, "lapping at 
 the palm-edged pool '" (Jean Ingelow) ; the husband of the 
 
The King of the Blasts. 1 1 
 
 " tawny " lioness that, robbed of whelps, " forgets to fear ; " 
 the father of the brindled cubs "blood-nurtured in their 
 grisly den." And it is worth noting that, just as the cock 
 comes off, both in poetry and proverb, with such honours, 
 while the hen is left behind to cackle and be generally 
 ridiculous, so the lioness fails to receive from her spouse 
 any adequate reflection of his dignities. She is desperately 
 cruel, and, in defence of her young, exceptionally fierce. 
 Because one, being robbed of her whelps, is said to have 
 killed the Ambracian king, they all seem athirst for homi- 
 cide. But the poets know little else of her. Pope calls 
 her "stubborn," Spenser, King, and several others "fell," 
 Montgomery, in the sense of mad with and 
 
 all the rest speak of her as the incarnation of maternal 
 fury. But the poets should not call the lioness or her 
 cubs "brindled," nor speak of "lionets." or as heraldry 
 calls little lions, " lioncels," 1 as "shrieking." For lion- 
 kittens are spotted, and mew — " slumbering in milk and 
 sighing " like any other cat"s kittens. 
 
 But their home, "Gurden the lion's palace," the grisly 
 den, all strewn with victim-remnants, cannot be too dread- 
 fully rendered, and the poets' grimness - rises to the subject. 
 
 ' The air as in a lion's den 
 Is c'ose and 1. 
 
 •• T.rrific as the lair 
 Where the young lions couch." 
 
 " Giant rocks at distance p : led 
 Cast their deep shadows o'er the wild. 
 Darkly they rise. 
 Away ! within those awful cells 
 The savage lion of Afric d? 
 
 1 " The Lyoncel from sweltrie countries braug' 
 He looketh with an eie of flames of 
 
 — C ' ; Tonrtian; 
 
 2 Inter alios Wordsworth, Thomson, Hemans, Montgome: 
 
1 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " In weary length 
 The enormous lion rests his strength. 
 For blood in dreams of hunting burns ; 
 Or, chased himself, to fight returns, 
 Growls in his sleep, a dreary sound, 
 Grinds his wedged teeth and spurns the ground." 
 
 " There, bent on death, lie hid his tawny brood, 
 And couched in dreadful ambush, pant for blood ; 
 Or stretched on broken limbs, consume the day 
 In darkness wrapt, and slumber o'er their prey." 
 
 That lion-cubs eat tiger-cubs (Southey), but avoid bears 
 and bulls till they are grown up (Cowley), are two details of 
 poetical natural history which seem to rest on an insuf- 
 ficient foundation of fact. The following also seems to be 
 a sketch from Southey's imagination : — 
 
 " A lion vainly struggled in the toils, 
 
 Whilst by his side the cub, in furious rage, 
 His young mane floating to the desert air, 
 Rends the fallen huntsman." 
 
 Of the beast in nature poetry is full, from the half-created 
 lion of the morning of the sixth day "pawing to get free 
 his hinder parts " (Melton) — 
 
 "The roaring lion shakes his tawny inane, 
 His struggling limbs still rooted in the plain " {Da>~<i<in) — 
 
 to the final lion of the Apocalypse that shall have six wings, 
 and eyes before and behind ; from the cub, whelped upon 
 a litter of mumbled bones, to the old toothless brute blunder- 
 ing into the Kafir's pitfall, and — 
 
 " I5y the wily African betrayed, 
 Heedless of fate, within its gaping jaws 
 Expiring indignant." 
 
 But, as a rule, the lion is not merely the natural beast, 
 it is the "dread king," autocrat of the forest and desert, 
 
The King of the Beasts. i 3 
 
 the " blood-nurtured monarch of the wood " (Southey), with 
 terrific attributes of eye and voice and stride — 
 
 " The lordly lion stalks 
 Grimly majestic in his lonely walks. 
 When round he glares, all living creatures fly ; 
 He clears the desert with his rolling eye." 
 
 Each special feature in turn engages the poets' deference, 
 and each in turn is cited — like the birth-marks on the 
 Christian Champions, on the Fatal Children, or Eastern 
 Messiahs of all kinds and heroes generally — as an indisput- 
 able proof of natural dominion and a birthright of sove- 
 reignty. Thus of the lion's eye — ■ 
 
 '• A lion o'er his wild domains 
 Rules with the terror of his eye." — Montgomery. 
 
 And the undoubted majesty of the lion's gaze when startled 
 into apprehension or anger is a frequent metaphor — 
 
 " Like a lion turns the warrior, 
 Back he sends an angry glare." — Percy's Reliqucs. 
 
 " As a leon he his loking caste." — Chancer. 
 
 " A lion's noble rage sits in their face. 
 Terribly comely ! arm'd with dreadful grace." — Cowley. 
 
 Its voice, "the prowling lion's Here I am" (Words- 
 worth); that "doubles the horrors of the midnight hours" 
 (Broome); "how fearful to the desert wide!" — is one of 
 the poets' finest resources whenever terror is needed in a 
 stanza or panic-striking catastrophe requires a simile from 
 Nature. 
 
 " Xot with more dismay 
 When o'er Caffraria's wooded hills 
 Echoes the lion's roar, the timid herd 
 Fly the death-boding sound " (Southey), 
 
 than puny enemies before the battle-cry of heroes of the 
 lion ramp, conspirators before the discovering lantern-flash, 
 
i 4 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 or evil-doers at the voice of God ; and. in short, everything 
 in Nature that at one time or another may be suddenly 
 . i into the propriety of precipitate self-preservation. 
 As a rule it is heard roaring at night — " midnight listens 
 to the lion's roar" (Byron); but sometimes in broad day- 
 "the lion's sullen roar at noon resounds along the 
 lonely banks of ancient Tigris" (Akenside). As a rule, 
 too, the lion roars only when a'.one ; when, that is, it is call- 
 ing to its mate or seeking one — " the solitary lion's roar " 
 (Montgomery) ; but occasionally travellers have heard them 
 roaring in company, and justifying therefore Montgon.. 
 fine simile of — 
 
 " Mad as a Lybian wilderness by night 
 With all its lions up." 
 
 that the poets have no room for error. But it is not a 
 fact, as Prior supposes, 1 that lions go about roaring seeking 
 for hunters to rend. 
 
 reverent as the majority are, there are poets who 
 (in spite of Eliza Cook's warning *) have been found auda- 
 cious enough to " talk as familiarly of roaring lions as maids 
 of thirteen do of puppy-dogs," and even to make fun of the 
 tremendous voice. 
 
 : So have I heard on Afric's burning shore 
 A hungry lion give a grievous roar ; 
 The grievous roar echoed along the shore. 
 
 1 " So the fell lion in the lonely glade, 
 
 nnrting with the hunter's spear, 
 Tho' deeply wounded, no way yet dismay'd, 
 
 terrible, and meditat . 
 In sulien fury traverses the plain 
 To find the oe, and battle him again." 
 
 — OJe to the (j, 
 
 Let the lion be stirred- by too daring a word, 
 And beware of his echoing grc 
 
The King of the Beasts. 1 5 
 
 Artax, : So have I heard on Afiic's burning shore 
 Another lion give a grievous roar, 
 And the first lion thought the last a bore. 
 
 Or, as in Swift's delightful " Hyperbole on a Lion : " 
 
 " He roar'd so loud and looked so wondrous grim, 
 II is very shadow durst not follow him." 
 
 The prodigious fervour of the lion's attack — or rather the 
 exaggerated ideas once entertained of the general fierceness 
 of the animal — has stereotyped Chaucer's comparison "as 
 feres as a lion" — "as lions fierce. 1 ' 
 
 " Xe in Belmarie there n'is so fell Icon 
 That hunted is, or for his hunger wood. 
 Ne of his prey desireth so the blood 
 As Palamon." 
 
 And again- 
 
 " This Palamon 
 In his fighting: were as a wood leon. 
 
 So Thomson and Parnell — 
 
 " On just reason, once his fury roufed, 
 No lion springs more eager to his prey. 
 Blood is a pastime." 
 
 " So proud, inhuman, numberless and strong, 
 Like desert lions on their prey they go." 
 
 Hence numerous metaphors taken from the same aspect of 
 the animal have become almost proverbs with poets of the 
 Eliza Cook calibre — " She'll take a blow and face a foe, 
 like a lion turned to bay " — " Go face the hungry lion in his 
 path," &c. But the ferocity idea is certainly elongated to 
 absurdity when we read that — 
 
 " The lion may yield, let him sink, let him bleed, 
 But seek not to tame him, to bind and to lead ; " 
 
 for as a matter of fact the lion has been very frequently 
 
i6 
 
 tamed. Among the ancier - considered a regular 
 
 appendage of the hunting being trained for the 
 
 chase, in a notably, just as the lynx and cheetah are 
 
 trained still in the East. Nor were the Assyrians singular 
 in keeping this beast as a pet, for several heroes and k 
 both to east and west of Nineveh are reported to have kept 
 tame lions : while in art the docile species is by no means 
 uent — 
 
 r.g ran many a tame leon and leopart." 
 
 And so we find, among ot": - John, an 
 
 Jerome, Sir Gwain de Galles, De Latour, Saladin, Hilde- 
 brand, Una, and the Fairie Queene. all maintaining lions as 
 pets or servants, while in the various c ybele — 
 
 . or maned lions hale 
 jggish wheels r solemn their toothed maws, 
 Their surly eyes brow-h:dden, heary paws 
 Uplifted drowsily, and neiry tails 
 
 Cowering brushes — 
 
 and Bacchus, and Love, Indras, Prakrit, and Bala share 
 with other c: ::d personages the dignity of a lion- 
 
 steed. 
 
 u, in popular works of fiction, from the "Arabian 
 to the •• Pilgrim's Progress," the lion appears as a 
 janitor or guardian, faithfully ferocious to the suspicious- 
 looking stranger and the evil-doer, but as tame to its own 
 household and friends s companion or Androcles' 
 
 acquaintance. 
 
 N r in . is ferocious" connection is it impertinent to 
 note how carefully the poets credited the fiction of the lion 
 finding it necessary to exasperate itself up to the neces 
 point by lashing its own body with its tail, 1 just as 
 
 1 This fiction, it is just possible, arose from the curious claw-like 
 prickle or " thorn " found sometimes at the tip of the animal's tail, and 
 _re still puzzled to provide an explanation. 
 
The King of the Beasts. i 7 
 
 Picrochole had to goad himself into courage against Grand- 
 gousier by self-reproaches. " Roused by the lash of his 
 own stubborn tail," says Dryden, happily hitting off the 
 British characteristic of abusing ourselves into action ; while 
 Waller is more precise — 
 
 '• A lion so with self-provoking smart 
 (His rebel tail scourging his noble part) 
 Calls up his courage ; then begins to roar 
 And charge his foes." 
 
 That the lion wags its tail when angry has passed into 
 a proverb, and those who have hunted the splendid animal, 
 either in Asia or Africa, always record the preliminary 
 " lashing of the tail " of a lion that has made up its mind 
 to charge. So Darwin's " indignant lions rear their bristling 
 mail, and lash their sides with undulating tail." Cowley's 
 " bold lion, that, ere he seeks his prey, lashes his sides 
 and roars and then away," and others are not only within 
 " the literal verity," but the extension of so common a 
 feline gesture into a leonine singularity — above all, for so 
 absurd a purpose as stinging itself into courage — is a 
 prolongation of the idea that is decidedly poetical, but 
 certainly little else. 
 
 Indeed, the poets seem to recognise the dilemma in 
 which undue insistence on the unmitigated ferocity of the 
 
 lion would place them — 
 
 " Fie 
 Upon a lord that wol have no mercie, 
 But be a leon both in word and deed ! " 
 
 ejaculates Chaucer, after having exhausted the lion-idea 
 to magnify the heroic fury of Palamon. For if the lion is 
 not magnanimous it is evidently unworthy of the royal title. 
 So the poets " hedge," so to speak, on all their ferocity by 
 explaining that under certain particular circumstances the 
 lion is quite lamb-like, and with very special classes of 
 persons, "roars you as gently as any sucking dove." 
 
 B 
 
iS Ike Poets Beasts. 
 
 You are never, of course, to be in any doubt as to the 
 capacity of the lion for being terrible on occasion — "Mind 
 you, Todgers's can do it when it likes." But, on the other 
 hand, Hercules can calm down to the distaff, and Mars 
 play with pet sparrows. Did not Cceur-de-Lion himself 
 withdraw his hand on one or two occasions from commit- 
 ting unnecessary murders? So just as the partial historian 
 tempers the crimson story of the first Richard with dabs 
 and specks of white clemency, so the poet, afraid of finding 
 his monarch-beast a complete Nero, qualifies its blood- 
 thirstiness with legendary and mythical suggestions of an 
 occasional magnanimity. Thus Moore diverges from his 
 usual importraiture to call it, in one of his Fables, "gene- 
 rous lion," and Dryden (using generous in the best sense, 
 as Prior has "the hungry lion's gen'rous rage") goes on to 
 say — 
 
 " So when the gen'rous lion has in sight 
 His equal match, he rouses for the fight. 
 But when his foe lies prostrate on the plain 
 He sheaths his paws, uncurls his angry mane, 
 And, pleas' d with the bloodless honour? of the day, 
 Walks over, and disdains th' inglorious prey \ " 
 
 which is industriously untrue to fact — while sheathing his 
 pa:i's is an extraordinary performance even for a poet's lion. 
 The bear really does act in the whimsically magnanimous 
 way described in the above lines. But not the lion. 
 
 "The royal disposition of that beast to prey on nothing 
 that doth seem as dead " is a fiction. 
 
 " And I no less her anger dread 
 Than the poor wretch that feigns him dead 
 While some fierce lion doth embrace 
 His lifeless corpse and licks his face. 
 Wrapt up in silent fear he lies, 
 Torn all to pieces if he cries." 
 
 This reads well enough in Wallers song, but it is deplorably 
 
The King of the Beasts. 19 
 
 beyond doubt that the lion will even prey on things that are 
 obviously and outrageously defunct. Its opportunity really 
 comes when "the foe lies prostrate on the plain." Above 
 all, it prefers to surprise its "equal match" when he is 
 asleep by the camp fire. The same agreeable fiction is 
 very frequently repeated. In one of the oldest of our 
 ballads we find — 
 
 " As the lyonne which is of bestes kynge, 
 Unto thy subjects be kurteis and benyngne ; " 
 
 whereas in nature the lion will even condescend to pick up 
 off its royal path such inconsiderable "subjects "as mice, 
 lizards, frogs, and even cockroaches. The larger ones keep 
 out of sight, knowing his majesty's omnivorous propensities, 
 and disregard Wyatt's assurance that "the lion in his raging 
 hour forbears that sueth," or Broome's, that "the fierce 
 lion will hurt no yielden things." Dr. Livingstone once 
 saw a very fine lion in Africa that had just captured a fawn 
 only a few hours old. Yet Quarles tells the fawns that 
 " hungry lions, woo'd with tears, will spare," and Spenser 
 the lady — 
 
 " The lyon lord of everie beast in field 
 His princely puissance will abate, 
 And mightie proud to humble weak does yield, 
 Forgetful of the hunger which of late 
 Him prickt, in pittie of such sad estate." 
 
 Thus, in St. George's adventures, two lions, after killing the 
 eunuch, lay their heads in Sabra's lap. But the Knight 
 comes up and slays them, for which I can never sufficiently 
 forgive him. He goes on, however, to say : " Now, Sabra, I 
 have by this proved thy fidelity : for it is the nature of the 
 lion, be he never so furious, not to harm but humbly lay 
 his bristled head upon a maiden's lap. Therefore, divine 
 paragon, thou art the world's chief wonder for love and 
 chastity." Later on, in the adventures, I think, of St. David, 
 
20 TJlC Poets BtJ. 
 
 where the King of Babylon's daughter is in great trouble, 
 her : shing to kill her. Fidelia hangs about the king's 
 
 neck "like a lioness,'" and says : "Thou monstrous murderer, 
 more cruel than the mad dogs of I ; hy dost thou 
 
 determine to slaughter the most chaste and loyal lady in 
 the world., even she within whose lap untamed lions will 
 come and sleep ? '' 
 
 But women were the special objects of leonine forbear- 
 ance, particularly if they were cha^ 
 
 lis said that a lion will turn and flee 
 From a maid in the pride of her purity ; 
 
 and again — 
 
 " Harpers have sung and poets told 
 That he, in fury uncontrolled, 
 The shaggy monarch of the wood, 
 Before a virgin, fair and good, 
 Hath pacified his savage mood ; r ' 
 
 so that if Byron, Scott, and the rest be correct, "a lion 
 among ladies " need not after all be so " dreadful " a thing as 
 Snug supposed. Nor if they are of royal blood will the royal 
 beast do them hurt, as in Beaumont and Fletcher's play — 
 
 " Fetch the Numidian lion I brought over. 
 e be sprung from royal blood, the lion 
 Will do her reverence ; else, he'll tear her.'' 
 
 Una, be remembered, was at first attacked by the 
 
 beast, but, recognising her virtue, it fawned upon her, kissed 
 her feet, licked her hands, and followed her to the death. 
 
 As a matter of (poetical) fact, lions will not hurt princes 
 under any consideration. Nor are many individual instances 
 of leonine generc - To say nothing of the fre- 
 
 quent allusions to Androcles his lion, Shakespeare. Wal - 
 Blake. Fairfax, Cowper, and others cite examples of the lion's 
 unexpected clemency to such as were in misfortune, or those 
 who had befriended it. 
 
The King of the Beasts. 2 1 
 
 Thoroughly consonant with this theory of the occasional 
 gentleness of " the terror of the wood," is the poet's cheer- 
 fulness in endorsing its amiable familiarity with the lamb. 
 Everybody, probably, remembers the astonishment of the 
 Seven Champions of Christendom, even though they were 
 accustomed to "untamed lions" laying their heads in the 
 laps of Angelicas, when they saw lions and lambs together. 
 But the poets are not to be surprised by such trifles. The 
 Orpheus and Amphion myths redound to the credit of the 
 muse, 1 and it is not therefore altogether unnatural that lions 
 "by tuneful magic tamed," "by verses charmed," and "led 
 by the ear," should now and then be found "dandling the 
 kid," or "gambolling with the bounding roe." They write, 
 however, on a point of a high prescription. We read in 
 Howe's " Chronicles " how King James had a lamb lowered 
 into the Tower lions' den, the company expecting to behold 
 a thrilling murder. On the contrary, " Being come to the 
 ground, the lamb lay upon his knees, and both the lions stood 
 in their former places and only beheld the lamb. Presently 
 the lamb rose up and went unto the lions, who very gently 
 looked upon and smelled on him, without any hurt. Then 
 the lamb was softly drawn up again, in as good plight as 
 he was let down." In the earliest past, as we know from 
 Holy Writ, "the lion gambolled with the kid" in Spenser's 
 Paradise — 
 
 " The lyon there did with the lambe consort, 
 And eke the dove sate by the faulcon's side ; 
 Ne each of other feared fraud or tort, 
 But did in safe securitie abide, 
 Wkhouten perill of the stronger pride." 
 
 We can also surmise, from sacred promises of a future of 
 universal peace and idyllic amiability,, what Shelley, dream- 
 ing of the hereafter, foresees — 
 
 1 Poets claim both as of their craft : also Arion. 
 
22 The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 " The lion now forgets to thirst for blood : 
 There might you see him sporting in the sun 
 Beside the dreadless kid ; his claws are she I 
 His teeth are harmless ; custom's force has i 
 Ills nature as the nature of a lamb ; " 
 
 and that then, blessed as in Montgomery's " Pelican Island," 1 
 where " nor lion nor tiger shed innocent blood," 
 
 •• The steer and lion at one crib shall meet, 
 And harmless serpents lie 
 
 The weary Progress will then be over : the chained lions 
 and the loose ones will have no further terrors for Fait 
 and the beasts that came along after the pilgri:. 
 padding pace " will have been forgotten by Christian. 
 
 In heraldry it is a more conspicuous beast than even the 
 ordinary familiarity with the armorial lion would lead the 
 uninitiated to suppose, for (as Planche tells us -) it was 
 once upon a time the only beast thought worthy to be w 
 on shields and helmets. Thus, kings of I \ Scotland, 
 
 Norway, and Denmark, Princes of Wales and Dukes of 
 Normandy, Counts of Flanders, Earls of Arundel, Lir^ 
 Leicester, Shrewsbury, Pembroke, Salisbury, and Here: 
 all bore lions — indeed, up to the twelfth century, heraldic 
 zoology begins and ends with the King of Bear : t on, 
 
 the leopard came upon the heraldic field, not only to dh 
 honours with the lion, but to usurp its place. For leopard 
 and lion — notably in the arms of England — are the one and 
 same animal, the difference of attitude alone deciding the 
 nominal species. In other words, "leopard" is used in 
 heraldry, not to represent a specific beast, but only a parti- 
 cular attitude of the lion. Thus lion-leopard means a lion 
 passing and seen in profile, while a leoparded-lion means 
 a lion full-faced. For the lion, pure and simple, heraldry 
 
 1 " Lion nor tiger here shed innocent blood." — I 
 
 2 Planche, " The Pursuivant of Arms : " Chaito & Windus. 
 
The Kino- of the Beasts. 23 
 
 insists that it shall be "rampant." That attitude belongs 
 to it, as a matter of course. According to further details 
 of position, couching, standing, stalking, &c, the lion 
 symbolises sovereignty, circumspection, sagacity, magna- 
 nimity, valour, counsel. But heraldry has played strange 
 pranks with the animal, for it has degenerated into many 
 unworthy varieties, double-headed and double-tailed, fork- 
 tonged and winged, blue and red, silver and gold, black 
 and white — and even spotted. 
 
 As our national emblem the lion cannot fail of course 
 to meet with abundant and flattering recognition. But 
 there has been, on the whole, a generous forbearance from 
 the topic that deserves our gratitude. Nevertheless, when- 
 ever treaties are signed, "the British lion kisses the feet 
 of peace," and whenever they are broken " our lion roars." 
 In subsequent battle "the lion-glance appals the foe," and 
 after the victory it " learns to spare the fallen foe." But 
 many other countries claim the lion for their cognisance, 
 or have at one time or other earned the leonine epithet, 
 for, besides "the Anglian lion, the terror of France," : there 
 is "the ruddy lion that ramped in gold" in "proud Scot- 
 land's royal shield ;" "the winged lion of St. Mark," 2 where 
 " Venice sate in state, throned on her hundred isles," but 
 now 
 
 " St. Mark sees his lion where he s'ood, 
 
 Stand, but in mockery of his wither'd power." 
 
 There is " Belgia," with her lions " roaring by her side," — 
 "the Belgic lion in full fury roars" (Phillips), and "the 
 Assyrian lyonesse," and " the lion of Neustria," and (what- 
 ever that was) the Tartar lion, and " victorious Salem's 
 
 1 That " oft prowling, ensanguined the Tweed's silver flood, but, 
 taught by the bright Caledonian lance, learned to fear in his own native 
 wood." — Burns. 
 
 2 " Sullen old lion of grand St. Mark 
 
 Lordeth and lifteth his front from the dark.'' — Joachim Miller. 
 
24 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 lion-banner," " Judah's lion," and others of more or less 
 celebrity. 
 
 Yet, with all their homage, the poets can hardly exceed 
 the measure of this animal's dignity in prose. Even to 
 dream of lions was a splendid prognostication. It is the 
 ensign of Hercules, Hector, and Achilles ; the Egyptian 
 hieroglyph of divine strength ; the " vehicle " of many gods 
 both of the East and West, and of the heroic all the world 
 over, from Scandinavian Rollo to Ethiopian Camlace. The 
 Persian Xerxes also is a lion, though it was those beasts 
 that, by attacking his camel-train, put his campaign in peril. 
 The gods of Greece borrowed its form, and the chiefest of 
 Olympus and of the earth accepted its spoils as the insignia 
 of imperial strength. To describe or paint Jove himself, 
 men have had to take the lion as their model, and in the 
 imaginative Orient the figure is repeated in the forces of 
 Nature and the pageantry of the Pantheon. Its effigies sup- 
 ported the throne of Solomon and dignified the decorations 
 of the Temple. It stands, the mere name alone — " Sinha," 
 lion — as the honourable affix of every member of one of the 
 noblest nations of Hindostan, whose king all the world 
 knew as Runjeet Singh, " the lion of the Punjab." But 
 I a roll of heroes that title summons up to the fancy — 
 "the lion of Persia," 1 Ali, "the lion of God," "the lions of 
 Judah," " the lion-kings'of Assyria," "the lion of the north," 
 "the lion of the Prophet," "the lion of Bavaria" — and so 
 forth in endless list, till we have enough Cceur-de-Lions 
 and Leos to re-establish a Lemberg or a Eeontopolis, and 
 to justify the redemption of " that sweet land of Lyonnesse " 
 now lying forty fathom under Cornish water. To take its 
 name was the crowning affectation of the chivalrous, just as 
 to have killed a lion was so often — from Hercules to Don 
 Quixote — considered the climax of their courage. 
 
 1 That splendid prince who met his death, unhappily, while chasing 
 an ass. 
 
The King of the Beasts. 25 
 
 •' A man huge of limb, 
 Grey-eyed, with crisp-curled hair 'twixt black and brown, 
 Who had a lion's skin cast over him, 
 So wrought with gold that the fell showed but dim 
 Betwixt the shreds, and in his hand he bore 
 A mighty club." 
 
 It adds a dignity to the light offence of the fleet maiden 
 and her lover that for their disregard of her groves they 
 joined Cybele's chariot-team ; and even the firmament 
 borrows a splendour from its terrific lion-constellation. 
 Homer himself is the grander for his lions, and what 
 notable blanks there would have been on the gates and 
 walls of fortress and palace and city had there been no lion 
 for the sculptor, and what beauties been missing on canvas 
 and in literature. 
 
 Egypt was so indiscriminate in her zoological reverences 
 that it adds little to the dignity of the lion, that the 
 Pharaoh who bowed before beetles should have paid it 
 sacred honours, though there is something originally fine in 
 the fact that the priests of the " Lion-town " chanted during 
 its meal-times to the beasts as they crunched their bones. 
 Our church-gargoyles are said to be a relic of this worship 
 by the Nile, a vestige of the old-world homage paid to Leo, 
 in the ascendant at the rising of the Great River ; and 
 whether this be true or not — and we owe a great deal more 
 to the pagans than unfortunately, "Pagan being dead this 
 many a day," we can ever repay them — the Florentines 
 supply a half-way link in the coronation of the lions on St. 
 John's Day, the Solleone, when the sun enters that sign. 
 
 Individuals dignified with lion compliments are "too 
 numerous for specification." But they include British 
 sailors ("the lion-spirits that tread the deck") and British 
 soldiers (" the lion-heart of British fortitude ") ; most British 
 kings, from Richard I., "monarch of the lion-heart," to 
 George III., and a very large number of heroes from St. 
 
26 The Poets' Bea 
 
 Geor_e t: Nelson, as also most European ce'.ebrities — 
 Henri IV, Napoleon, Tell, Charles NIL. Luther, and 
 others; " classical : ' nc .rying in degrees of tat 
 
 from Ulysses to Tarquin, and all the heroes of poe. 
 the Douglases. Alberts, and Tracy de Veres, besides a pro- 
 digious series of miscellaneous personages of vc ned 
 character. ! g from Cain to Jonathan, and from the 
 Messiah to Satan. 
 
 The singular el:.- .on idea is thus abunda: 
 
 But when we remember that in Ho'.y Writ the 
 animal stands as the symbol of such very different thin_- 
 
 and falsehood, courage and craft, the enemies of 
 truth and of wickedness : that in one part of Ho'.y Writ it 
 typifies the devil, in another is a type of the Saviour : also, 
 that in all fables the lion is presented to us in even* possible 
 variety of character, from supreme grandeur to ridiculous 
 meanness, we perceive that the poets have been faithful to 
 their sources of information. 
 
 But it is in the metaphors and morals which the King of 
 Beasts affords that his many-sided nature is perhaps best 
 illustrated. Independence is (in Smollett) "Lord of 
 lion-heart;" Ambition is (in Co--- e lion-s.. 
 
 Truth, u lion-bold ; " Danger (in Akenside) has a -'lion- 
 
 — 
 
 •• And him beside rides fierce c 
 
 D a lion, loth for to be led." 
 
 Passion and War (in Churchill), " fierce as the lion roaring 
 for his prey, or lioness of royal whelps foredone," are on 
 one side, whiie Peace, Cruelty, and Self-interest (in Young) 
 may be cited on the other. Tennyson has a nob'.e simile — 
 
 - _>wly comes a hungry people as a iion creeping nigher, 
 Glares at one who nods and winks behind a slowly eying : 
 
 The sea is often a lion, and sometimes with ad::. 
 
TJic King of the Beasts. 27 
 
 force. Thus, in Hood, " Three monstrous seas came roar- 
 ing on like lions leagued together ; " or, in Hemans, " Like 
 angry lions wasting all their might." So Montgomery. 
 " the ocean roaring in his wrath, mad as a Lybian wilder- 
 ness by night, with all its lions up, in chase or fight." In 
 Jean Ingelow, Time, "A grim old lion gnawing lay, and 
 mumbled with his teeth a regal tomb." Into innumerable 
 other facets is the lion-stone cut. It does homage (in 
 Grahame) to the announcing angels of Bethlehem — 
 
 " The prowling lion stops, 
 Awe-struck, with mane upreared, and flattened head, 
 And, without turning', backward on his steps 
 Recoils, aghast, into the desert gloom ; " 
 
 it spares the prophet, thus characteristically " Emblem "-ed 
 by Quarles, — 
 
 " Fierce Lyons roaring for their prey ! and then 
 Daniel throwne in ! and Daniel yet remaine 
 Alive ! There was a Lion in the Den 
 Was Daniel's friend, or Daniel had been slaine. 
 
 Among ten thousand Lions, I'd not feare 
 Had I but only Daniel's Lion there ; " 
 
 it is soothed, in Darwin for instance, by music — 
 
 " So playful Love on Ida's flowery sides 
 With ribbon rein the indignant lion guides ; 
 Pleased on his brindled back the lyre he rings 
 And shakes delirious rapture from the strings. 
 Slow as the pausing monarch stalks along 
 Sheaths his retractile claws and drinks the song; " 
 
 and is a pattern of connubial constancy — 
 
 " The lion's constant to his only miss 
 And never leaves his faithful lioness, 
 And she's as chaste and true to him again." — Dut'er. 
 
 This may be true of the lion — for Nature has enforced 
 monogamy upon nearly all dangerous or noxious (male) 
 
28 
 
 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 beasts — but it is far from the truth with regard to the 
 lioness. She is a very Messalina, at once faithless and 
 cruel. 
 
 " In consequence of the great mortality of female cubs 
 during the process of dentition, she possesses over European 
 ladies the advantage of not being 'redundant,' as Mr. Greg 
 calls it — nay, of being, on the contrary, at a high premium. 
 Every third lion prowls about the desert sands, roaring 
 vainly for a mate ; and the consequence is, of course, an 
 immense exaltation of value, and perhaps, also, some addi- 
 tional cruelty on the side of the lioness." Miss Cobbe 
 then goes on to give a terrible illustration of this cruelty — 
 but the facts are, perhaps, too familiar to need repetition. 
 Suffice it to say that the lioness manages by her coquetry to 
 bring rival suitors into each other's presence, and, having 
 excited them to combat, leaves them to bleed to death for 
 her sake while she strolls away in search of fresh conquests. 
 
 "The lion," says Professor Kitchen Parker, "enjoys the 
 honourable distinction of being strictly faithful to his 
 spouse, although report says she is by no means so virtuous, 
 but only cleaves to her mate until a stronger and handsomer 
 one turns up." 
 
II. 
 
 THE HEPTARCHY OF THE CATS. 
 
 Nothing can be more unsatisfying than the poets' treat- 
 ment of the splendid family of the Cats. Excepting the 
 lion, to which, as I have shown, they do conspicuous justice, 
 the poets have apparently no appreciation whatever of the 
 grand Parable of the Carnivora. They say the tiger is very 
 fierce, and the leopard and the panther very beautiful ; but 
 there they end. Their powerful compeers, the jaguar, puma, 
 ounce, and cheetah, which complete the Heptarchy — the 
 Lion-state enjoying the " hegemony " of the confederacy — 
 are not utilised, so that virtually the noble Beasts of Prey 
 afford the poets no more than two similes — one of exces- 
 sive cruelty, and one of personal elegance. Here and there, 
 of course, tradition, heraldic association, or Biblical mis- 
 translation, betrays the poet into some oblique injustice to 
 the proud vassals of the beast paramount — " the lonely lords 
 of empty wilds and woods" — but these aberrations do not 
 materially affect their treatment. They do not recognise 
 apparently the nobility of this family of courageous and 
 beautiful beasts in Nature's wild-life scheme, nor appreciate 
 the purpose they serve as her chief ministers of state. 
 
 Individually the tiger, leopard, and panther are each of 
 them largely utilised, but, as will be seen, with very meagre 
 
3° 
 
 aims and results, cons the possibilities of such 
 
 subje 
 
 "With regard, however, to th . ul and 
 
 dangerous be:. to the poets to point out that 
 
 antiquity used " pard " for the cheetah ; that tradition made 
 leopard" a hybrid between pards and lions; that the 
 thical panthera," of European fancy, was first imagined 
 somewhere about the I and has sur- 
 
 vived as the panther of modern times : that when heraldry 
 commenced : leopard was merely the lion in 
 
 certain al mixed up tigers with 
 
 leopards and par: : the emblematic retinue 
 
 of the Greek gods : that modern zoologists are still divided 
 as to the identity or leopard and panther ; 
 
 America calls the puma both "panther" and " mc 
 tain lion : " that in Ceylon the panther is called the " tige 
 
 can Colonies the leopard is called 
 ail over India the same native names 
 are hopelessly bewildered among not only : eopards, 
 
 and cheetahs, but also extended to hyaenas. 
 
 TIGER. 
 
 The Tiger — • the deep-mou id of the brown 
 
 man," as Morris calls it — i~ equent image with the 
 
 poets, whether "holding its solitude in desert dark and 
 rude,"" — "crouchir, ts helpless prey," — "darting 
 
 fierce, impetuous, on the prey his glance^ has doomed. — 
 or " returning to its den before the sun may see it" But 
 it has nevertheless only one aspec . of ruthless 
 
 voracity. T : is made to contribute. 
 
 The impetuosity, is used as if 
 
 denoting a r. of purpose greater than when the 
 
 royal lion does the same thing : and when it lies in 
 ambush — a particularly leonine trick m is con- 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 3 1 
 
 demned as savouring of treachery, though lions may do it 
 by right divine. 
 
 The tiger — "cruel and unkind, that with greediness thirsts 
 after blood," — " formed to cruel meals," stands, in fact, in 
 the poets for the symbol of pure bloodthirstiness — " with fell 
 clawes full of fierce gourmandise, and greedy mouth wide- 
 gaping like hell-gate " — 
 
 "As when some tiger, to his haunt from day 
 Returns, bloodfoaming, with his slaughtered prey, 
 Grim-pleased that there with undisturbed roar 
 He'll glut and revel o'er the reeking gore ; 
 Glares in wild fury o'er the gloomy waste, 
 And growls terrific o'er the mangled beast ; 
 Now drags relentless down the rugged va'.e, 
 And stains the forest with a bloody trail" 
 
 This episode from Wilson is characteristic of a hundred 
 other passages equally untrue to nature, for the tiger is not 
 by many fathoms such a fool as to drag his prey to his 
 haunt, "and stain the forest with a bloody trail" which 
 would inevitably lead to his destruction. Nor does he roar 
 at his meals. Another popular poets' error is preserved in 
 Montgomery, where, in an otherwise excellent passage, he 
 speaks of the tiger dragging the buffalo to his lair and 
 " crashing through the ribs at once unto the heart," for this 
 animal never commences its meal either at the heart, or, as 
 other poets say, at the throat, but at the buttocks of the prey. 
 "The tigress in her whelpless ire," " the cubless tigress 
 in her jungle raving" (Byron), " the tiger-dam with red 
 fangs" (Cook) — is*a very favourite simile for supreme fero- 
 city, carried in Marvell even to the point of suicide — 
 
 "So from Euphrates' bank, a tigress fell 
 After her robbers for her whelps doth yell, 
 But sees enraged the river flow between. 
 Frustrate revenge, and love by loss more keen, 
 At her own breast her useless claws does aim — 
 She tears herself." 
 
- 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Arcite in the " Knights Tale 
 
 " There w;s no tigre in the Vale of Gala: 
 When that hire whelpe is stole 
 So cruel." 
 
 But, after all, where shall we give the palm of maternal 
 fondne- ? As Byron sa; 
 
 • The love of offspring's nature's general law, 
 From tigresses and cubs to ducks and ducklings ; 
 There's nothing whets the beak, or arms the claw, 
 
 x an invasion of their babes and sucklings, 
 And all who have seen a human nursery, saw 
 How mothers love their children's squalls and chuckling' 
 
 Connubial affection is not the tigress's forte, for, with all 
 wild animals of her sex, she shares the deplorable tendency 
 to transfer her charms from her spouse to any other male that 
 overcomes him in battle, and is indeed much maligned if it 
 be not true that she actually incites her lord and master to 
 fight, as if not altogether indifferent to a change of hus- 
 bands. The lines u Oh, e'en the tiger slain hath one who 
 ne'er doth flee, who soothes his dying pain," are not there- 
 fore in invariable or even frequent harmony with the facts 
 of the tigers wedded life. For the tigress licks the wounds 
 of the conqueror, irrespective of previous domestic rela- 
 tions. 
 
 Nor, as a matter of fact, is the tiger a specially ferocious 
 criminal. As the greatest authority ^>n Indian natural 
 history says, it is "a harmless, timid animal." It feeds on 
 animals that are prodigiously injurious to crops, and there 
 are on record in India the complaints of villagers about the 
 increase of deer and wild pigs in consequence of the de- 
 ction of the tigers in their neighbourhood. When it 
 gets too feeble to catch wild animals it begins to eat tame 
 ones, or easier victims still, the men or women who are in 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 33 
 
 charge of the cattle. It then becomes, as a "man-eater." a 
 criminal against humanity — and death cannot overtake it 
 too soon. 
 
 But it is only those who know the Hindoos thoroughly 
 who can credit their amazing apathy, even when in immi- 
 nent danger. So long as it is not actually visible they 
 refuse to take precaution against peril, and I remember 
 during the Afghan War having to thrash some lazy camp- 
 followers in order to arouse them to a proper sense of the 
 necessity of saving their own lives. They had squatted down 
 to smoke by the roadside in the Khyber Pass, though they 
 knew the enemy was lurking both in the rocks above them, 
 and in the grass-jungle behind them, and though they had 
 with their own eyes seen the corpses of camp-followers lying 
 where they had been murdered — when, like themselves, they 
 had sate down contrary to orders to smoke. In the very 
 same way, the herdsman comes loafing home in the twilight, 
 shouting out a song at the top of his voice as he goes (to 
 let the beast know that he is coming probably), and sud- 
 denly the tiger flashes out of the sugar-canes, and there is 
 an end of that herdsman. But the next man will probably 
 do the very same thing. He will take another road of 
 course on his way home, but he will lag behind his catde 
 and sing to himself in the same ridiculous way, and out from 
 under the bair-tree springs the same old tiger. 
 
 Indeed, it is one of the problems of Indian administra- 
 tion how to keep the natives from suicide. They prefer to 
 have half the village down with small-pox and then to carry 
 a dead chicken round the stricken hamlet on the end of a 
 pole, than to be vaccinated. They prefer to lose a pro- 
 digious number of their acquaintances by drowning rather 
 than protect their open wells. They prefer to have tens of 
 thousands of men and women bitten by snakes in the toes 
 and thumbs, and die therefrom, than to let enough light into 
 a hut to see the difference between a faggot and cobra. 
 
 c 
 
34 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Not that I wish to extenuate the immorality of the tiger 
 in eating human beings, even when it finds them lying 
 about, so to speak, as if they were worth nothing. It is a 
 practice that should be discouraged even more forcibly than 
 it is, and be made an imperial matter. But, on the other 
 hand, it is unfair, even to tigers, to speak of them as if they 
 were for ever going about mangling. They are ferocious 
 enough — indeed, they set the lion a very splendid example 
 — when they are attacked and have to fight. But such 
 ferocity is not to be spoken ill of. It is heroism. The 
 historian can give our handful of soldiers in the Indian 
 Mutiny no further praise when he has once said that " they 
 fought like tigers." The poet, therefore, who calls Bertram 
 a tiger, because he has not enough courage to show fight 
 against odds, does the noble beast a gratuitous injustice. 
 Scott, moreover, stretches his metaphor beyond its capacity 
 when he makes Bertram, couching in the brake and fern, 
 hide his face " lest foemen spy the sparkle of his swarthy 
 eye ! ■ 
 
 Nor, in the poets, does any majesty appertain to the 
 tiger, " that doth live by slaughter. - ' It is " tameless " — 
 which of course tigers are not, seeing that they have very 
 frequently been tamed — and affords frequent similes for 
 irresistible ferocity. But there is no dignity attaching to 
 the beast apart from his pre-eminence in criminal fury. It 
 is. in fact, described as rather a mean animal, toying, as in 
 Hurdis, with the kids when caught, " whetting his appetite 
 by long restraint," and, in Spenser — 
 
 " When he by chance doth find 
 A feeble beast, doth felly him oppress." 
 
 It worries sheepfolds, stalks "gentle fawns at play "' — 
 
 " As a tiger, who by chance hath spy'd 
 In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play, 
 h-traight cinches close, then rising changes oft 
 
7 he Heptarchy of the Cats. 35 
 
 His couchant watch, as one who chose his ground 
 Whence rushing he might surest seize them both 
 Gripped in each paw " {Dryden\ 
 
 kills for killing's sake, " roams all abroad and grimly slays," 
 and continues to slaughter even when dying itself. 
 
 "Asa grim tiger whom the torrent's might 
 Surprises in some parched ravine at night 
 Turns, even in drowning, on the wretched flocks 
 Swept with him in that snow-flood from the rocks, 
 And to the last, devouring on his way. 
 Bloodies the stream he has no power to stay." 
 
 Moore's zoology, however, is, as a rule, of the wildest 
 kind ; but it is strange that the notorious fact — notorious 
 at any rate from the days of the Ramayana and before 
 Homer — that in presence of a common danger tigers and 
 sheep lay aside their mutual antipathies, should not have 
 made his metaphor move more cautiously. I have myself 
 known of a tiger and a herd of cattle on the same half- 
 acre of ground during a flood, and the tiger seemed the 
 most ill at ease of all the company. Thus accurate Tenny- 
 son, "Gareth and Lynette," has, the "lion and stoat isled 
 together in time of flood;" and Leyden, in the "Scenes of 
 Infancy" — 
 
 " When the storm through Indian forests runs, 
 
 Floats far and loud the hoarse, discordant yell 
 Of ravening pards, which harmless crowd the dell. 
 
 The barbarous tiger whets his fang no more 
 To lap, with torturing pause, his victim's gore. 
 Curb'd of their rage, hyaenas gaunt are tame, 
 And shrink, begirt with all-devouring flame." 
 
 Its appearance, the poets say, commands no such re- 
 spect from other beasts as the lion's is said to do — though 
 Livingstone says those who meet a lion will be much dis- 
 
36 Posts' Beasts. 
 
 appointed if the} - expect to see anything but a very large 
 dog-like animal. Its eyes are "glowing flames" (Chatterton), 
 and " fire-ball " eyes u that make horrid twilight in the sun- 
 less jungle 1 ' 1 (Montgomery) ; they "flash" and "glare." 
 But there is nothing of awe in the aspect of the tiger, 
 according to the poets, except to such poor things as lambs 
 and kids and fawns. Blake is a notable exception, in the 
 poem commencing — 
 
 "Tig 
 
 In the fore 
 
 immortal hand or eye 
 Could form thy fearful ?ymme: 
 
 Its voice is "dreadful/' it "growls terrific," but it has 
 no effect upon the surrounding forests and its inhabitants, 
 such as the roar of lions is supposed to have when they 
 
 " From dreams (raked by maddening thirst, 
 
 a the lone caves, in which they shrank from light, 
 - through the hideous night, 
 When darkness seems alive, and all the air 
 Is one tremendous uproar of despair." — Montgomery. 
 
 The - tiger's yell,'" "hideous howl,'' "voice more 
 
 horrid than the roar of famished tiger leaping on his prey,'' 
 and other expressions of objection to the sound are very fre- 
 quent, but none of them give any notion at ail of the supreme 
 awfulness of the real voice in nature, that literally hushes 
 the jungle and fills the twilight with horror. Not that tigers 
 roar much. When, as in Darwin, "with kindling flame, he 
 hears the love-lorn night-call of his brinded dame," the 
 t has a vl . and dreadful utterance, but Mont- 
 
 - So Jean Ir.~t" m — 
 
 les of the jungle reed 
 Whose heats are lit with tiger eyes." 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. $7 
 
 gornery comes nearer to the actual sound when he calls it a 
 "groan." As a matter of fact, it is something between a 
 cough and a groan. 
 
 Is the lion or the tiger the superior in courage and 
 strength ? There is little evidence on record to help us to 
 a decision, but all that there is is completely in favour of 
 the tiger. The two animals have often been put together 
 to fight, but the lion has invariably declined the combat. 
 They have accidentally got into each other's cages, and 
 the tiger has killed the lion. Feats of strength are authen- 
 ticated of the tiger to which the lion can, on evidence, lay 
 no claim ; and as regards their comparative courage in the 
 presence of man, the evidence goes to prove the superiority 
 of the tiger. Says Livingstone, for instance, " Lions would 
 seem to be inferior in power to the Indian tiger." For 
 myself, then, I give the preference without hesitation to 
 the tiger. 
 
 Yet in the poets the tiger forms, of course, part of the 
 courtier-retinue of the lion — "Gaunt wolves and sullen 
 tigers in his train" (Collins) — for the lion, as Spenser, Allan 
 Ramsay, and others state, defeated the tiger in single com- 
 bat, when the prize was the sovereignty of the animal world. 
 Cowley speaks of the lion as thirsting for tigers' blood, and 
 again of the " dreadful " (that is, full of dread) tiger trembling 
 at even the slumbering lion — 
 
 " When he lies down the woods a dreadful silence keep, 
 And dreadful tigers tremble at his sleep." 
 
 Southey, imitating this fancy, does the same, and speaks of 
 tigers " trembling " while the lion sleeps ; while several others 
 describe the two as meeting, and the tiger giving way. 
 Thus Wilson — 
 
 " The shaggy lion rushes to the place, 
 With roar tremendous seizes on his prey. 
 Exasp'rate see ! the tiger springs away, 
 
3S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Stops short, and maddens at the monarch's growl ; 
 And through his eves darts all his furious soul. 
 Half willed, yet half afraid to dare a bound, 
 He eyes his loss, and roars, and tears the ground. 1 ' 
 
 Yet in spite of the poets I am of opinion that a very 
 considerable dignity attaches to the Raja of the Jungles. 
 Sportsmen know well what a solitude the tiger creates for 
 itself by its simple presence, and what an overwhelming 
 awe possesses all wild life when its voice is heard. The 
 wild boar, it is true, will turn upon it, but then the wild 
 boar is the type among the beasts of a chivalry that is 
 Quixotic in its rashness ; and the tiger by this presump- 
 tuous conduct often arrives at pork that he could not other- 
 wise have captured. Sometimes, however, he is killed by the 
 boar. But what supremacy in the world is not challenged at 
 some time or another by foolhardy subjects or overweening 
 rivals ? Does the lion " walk his kingly path " unchallenged ? 
 On the contrary, he has to yield the path very often. 
 
 In the tiger's manner of life, lording it over the unrivalled 
 jungles of India, there is an undoubted majesty, while its 
 amazing physical powers bespeak the monarch of a king- 
 dom where might is right, and befit it as the steed of Hari 
 and the emblem of Shiva. 
 
 In metaphor, therefore, though frequently recurring, the 
 tiger has but a very narrow range. Spenser's Spumnador 
 rides on one — 
 
 •• Upon a tygre swift and fierce he rode, 
 That as the winde ran underneath his load, 
 \\ ile his long legs nigh raught unto the ground." 
 
 All very bloodthirsty personages, like royal enemies of 
 ('.reat Britain, "daring the lion," or their soldiers — "Gallia's 
 tigers,'' for instance, who " fight with tiger zeal ; " or disre- 
 putable heroes of the Byronic Corsair or Moore's Ghebir 
 type ; or wicked sycophants of the powerful, or oppressors 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 39 
 
 of the weak, are all "tigers." So Wrong itself and Evil 
 Passions are symbolised by the tiger, Wrath is "tiger- 
 passioned " (Keats), and — the climax of insidious and abomi- 
 nable cruelty — the gout is " half tiger, half a snake " (Arm- 
 strong). Once only is the beast amiable, and that is in a 
 general revolution of animal character which Darwin delight- 
 fully imagines in his "Loves of the Plants : " — 
 
 " Charmed on the brink, relenting tigers gaze, 
 And pausing buffaloes forget to graze ; 
 Admiring elephants forsake their wood, 
 Stretch their wide ears, and wade into the flood. 
 In silent herds the wondering sea-calves lave, 
 Or nod their slimy foreheads o'er the wave ; 
 Poised on still wing attentive vultures sweep, 
 And winking crocodiles are lulled to sleep ; " 
 
 and once again, when Chatterton sees them " wanton with 
 their shadows in their stream." 
 
 But in Chatterton all things were permissible ; x and 
 Moore, perhaps, need create no surprise when he assures 
 us that even the hungriest tiger will not eat a " Ghebir " 
 man, knowing him to be "a thing untamed and fearless as 
 themselves." But why does Shelley make tigers fight with 
 sea-snakes out in mid-ocean? or Campbell sing of tigers 
 stealing along the bank of a North American river? or 
 Somerville describe them in Mexico ? or why do Cowley 
 and Byron speak of spotted tigers ? 
 
 " The tiger's litter ; but whoe'er 
 Would seek to save the spotted sire or dam 
 Unless to perish by their fangs?" 
 
 1 For instance, this impossible convention of animals — 
 
 " The rampynge lyon, felle tygere, 
 
 The bocke that skyppes from place to place, 
 The olyphaunte and rhynocere 
 
 Before me throughe the greene-woode I did chase." 
 
 — Parlyamente of ' Spry! a. 
 
40 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " He swells with angry pride, 
 
 And calls forth all his spots on every side." 
 
 For once the poets have nearly managed to make a wild 
 beast a real wild beast, and these variations from nature are 
 as deplorable as they were unnecessary. 
 
 As I have said before, " there is no nonsense about the 
 tiger, as there is about the lion/' He does not go about 
 imposing on people. Wolves may, if they like, pretend that 
 are only dogs gone wrong from want of a better bring- 
 ing-up, and the lion swagger as if he were something more 
 than a very large cat ; but the tiger never descends to such 
 -rication, setting himself up for better than he is, or 
 claiming respect for qualities which he knows he does not 
 possess. There is no ambiguity about anything he does. 
 bis character is on the surface. " I am," he says, " a 
 thoroughgoing downright wild beast, and if you don't like 
 me you must lump me ; but in the meanwhile you had 
 better get out of my way." Tnere is no pompous affecta- 
 tion of superior "intelligence" about tigers. If they are 
 met with in jungles, they do not make-believe for the 
 purpose of impressing the traveller with their uncommon 
 magnanimity, or waste time like the lion in superfluous roar- 
 of heads, or "looking kingly." On the con- 
 trary, they behave honestly and candidly, like the wild 
 beasts they are. They either retire precipitately with every 
 confession of alarm, or in their own fine outspoken way 
 w go for the stranger." Nor when they make off do they 
 do it as if they liked it or had any half mind about it — as 
 the lion, that Livingstone tells us trots away slowly till it 
 thinks itself out of sight and then bounds off like a grey- 
 hound — wasting time in pretentious attitudes or in trying 
 to save appearances. They have no idea of showing off. 
 If they mean to go, they go like lightning, and don't for 
 a dt. nk of the figure they may be cutting. But 
 
 if, on the other hand, they mean fighting, they give the 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 4 1 
 
 stranger very little leisure for misunderstanding their in- 
 tentions. 
 
 The tiger, therefore, deserves to be held in respect, as a 
 model wild beast, for he knows his station, and keeps it, 
 doing the work that Nature has given him to do with all 
 his might. Life has only one end for him, the enjoyment 
 of it, and to this he gives the whole of his magnificent 
 energies. Endowed with superb capabilities for taking 
 lives and preserving his own, he exercises them to the 
 utmost in this one direction, without ever forgetting for an 
 instant that he is only a huge cat, or flying in the face of 
 Providence by wishing to be thought anything else. One 
 result of this is that the tiger finds no place in folk-lore 
 outside of India and (in a demoniacal form) Cathay. There 
 was, it is true, a stream somewhere in Fairyland that turned 
 donkeys into " tigers," but the name is used here only as 
 the extreme antithesis of the inoffensive ass. 
 
 LEOPARD. 
 
 Owing to the mystery in heraldry about the identity of 
 the Leopard, and the confusion in myths and folk-lore, not 
 only between this animal and the panther — which is allow- 
 able, seeing that science is still unable to decide the question 
 of their variety — but even between the leopard, lion, 1 and 
 tiger, the poets have found in it (whether we call it libbard, 
 pard, pardel) a thoroughly suitable subject for poetical 
 treatment. Having no definite individuality, it can be 
 treated very liberally as to manners, appearance, "and attri- 
 butes, and there is little margin for criticism of the liberties 
 which poets may take. 
 
 They have, therefore, this justification for their " leopards," 
 that the sources from which they usually draw their zoolo- 
 
 1 Thus Broome makes Achilles terrific in "a leopard's spotted 
 spoils." 
 
42 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 gical information are exceptionally muddy on the question 
 oifelis pardus. 
 
 Thomson calls " the lively shining leopard, speckled o'er 
 with many a spot," " the beauty of the waste ; " Wordsworth 
 has u the lively beauty of the leopard ; " Dryden, " the lady 
 of the spotted muff;"' Morris has '"spotted leopards t 
 that through the cane-brakes move, unseen as air ; " Moore, 
 " such beauties might the lion warm : " Jean Ingelow has 
 " the fair leopard, with her sleek paws laid across her little 
 drowsy cubs," and so on : while the other touches of Nature 
 — " elegant." " light," " of easy grace " — all connote a thing 
 of beauty. " Freckled like a pard,"' says Keats, wishing to 
 enhance the loveliness of the Lamia snake ; and Tennyson 
 has, " eyed like the evening s 
 
 In Darwin it is the lover — 
 
 " And now a spotted Pard the lover .- 
 Plays round her steps and guards her favoured walks. 
 As with white teeth he prints her hand, caressed, 
 And lays his velvet paws upon her breast, 
 O'er his round face her snowy fingers strain 
 The silken knots." 
 
 In Leyden, the " brinded panther fierce " does not a 
 but why should Heber, with his Indian experience, say " the 
 brindled pard?" Truly may Herbert, though in another 
 significance, say, M in a leopard the spots are not observed."' 
 Campbell, with his characteristic independence in matters of 
 fact, places "panthers "' in New South Wales. 
 
 Otherwise they have no place in poets' Nature. Keats 
 has "pard with prying head,"' a delightful phrase: Hood 
 speaks very happily indeed of a sound "distantly heard, as 
 of some grumbling pard," and Morris, always in sympathy 
 with Nature, has " the stealthy leopard whining '' as it creeps 
 from out the thicket. But except Moore's absurd conceit 
 of leopards mistaking loosened stones for prey, and 
 
The HeptarcJiy of the Cats. 4 3 
 
 " Long heard from steep to steep, 
 Chasing them down their thundering way," 
 
 and one or two incidental " pards " that happen to fit into 
 rhymes, the animal does not appear. 
 
 Yet when we remember the importance of the leopard in 
 heraldry, and its frequent appearance both in art and the 
 fancies of antiquity, it seems somewhat curious that it should 
 have found such scanty favour. As part of "panthered 
 Bacchus' jolly retinue " we meet with it in Keats and one or 
 two other poets, while' in Shakespeare, Scott, and elsewhere, 
 allusion is made to our national "leopard." As referred to 
 in Holy Writ in connection with the indelible Ethiopian, 
 it receives due notice from the worthy Hurdis and from 
 Cowper as being a beast of prey, and therefore, in the 
 coming days of a universal peace, predestined to lie down 
 with the lamb. 
 
 Sacred to Pan, Chief President of the Hills, and the 
 favourite of Dionysus, its skin was once the honourable 
 badge of priesthood ; the Greek gods and Greek heroes 
 wore it on state occasions, and it is still one of the supreme 
 insignia of royalty in Africa. 
 
 PANTHER. 
 
 When the Panther — "the viceroy panther " of Dryden's 
 parable — is mentioned by name, it generally adds something 
 of solitude to the leopard idea. The poets' leopard is a 
 graceful, pretty beast, fit to be a lady's pet. The panther 
 is of a somewhat gloomier sort. It "ravens" occasionally, 
 and is often found in the dreadful company of tigers, 
 hyaenas, and other beasts of reproach. A savour of covert 
 malignity attaches to the animal. 
 
 But it is still beautiful. Says Dryden, " fairest creature 
 of the spotted kind ; " Shelley, " a pard-like spirit, beautiful 
 
44- The Poets Beasts. 
 
 and swift,"' and again, "sleeping in beauty on the mangled 
 prey, as panthers sleep ; " Wordsworth — 
 
 " He was a lovely youth ! I guess 
 The panther in the wilderness 
 Was not so fair as he," 
 
 and so with others. In the East a " panther waist," " panther 
 elegance," is a stereotyped phrase in the description of 
 Oriental beauty. But even in these (Dryden's having a 
 covert significance), the touch of the beast of prey is not 
 wanting — it is fleet of foot, a thing of the wilderness, sleeping 
 on its mangled prey — while in the majority of references it 
 is a downright wild beast — " skulking," the guilty accomplice 
 of wolves, '•' the bloody panther " by which A. Wilson must 
 mean the cougar or puma, or else mean nothing, for there 
 is no large spotted carnivore in North America, "ruthless 
 panther," " furious pard,' ! and so forth. At sunset it rushes 
 out after prey " from the roots of Lebanon." ravages the red 
 man's "fold" (in E. Cook — whom the Saints preserve!); 
 "in his desperate fierceness, defying and bold;" is found 
 (in Glover) on Hydaspes' side or Eastern Indus cooling his 
 "reeking jaws" after "feasting on the blood of some torn 
 deer," 
 
 " Which nigh his cruel grasp 
 Had roamed unheeding in the secret shade ; " 
 
 and very often besides is spoken of as a fierce carnivorous 
 brute — which, in spite of its beauty and fragrance, the 
 panther or leopard undoubtedly is. To kill this animal, 
 therefore, was, the poets tell us, " the highest glory and 
 the greatest joy " of North American foresters, and its spoils 
 "the prime trophy" of Ethiopian spears. Somerville, 
 therefore, includes the panther in the beasts of chase, and 
 gives the following singular receipt for the successful hunt- 
 ing of the beast, though it might be objected that the carry- 
 
TJic Heptarchy of the Cats. 45 
 
 ing about of large mirrors, when out after panthers, in such 
 scenes as they inhabit would be a cumbrous matter — 
 
 " Fierce from his lair springs forth the speckled pard, 
 Thirsting for blood and eager to destroy ; 
 The huntsman flies, but to his flight alone 
 Confides not : at convenient distance fix'd, 
 A polish'd minor stops in full career 
 The furious brute ; he there his image views : 
 Spots against spots with rage improving glow. 
 Another pard his bristly whiskers curls, 
 Grins as he grins, fierce menacing, and wide 
 Distends his op'ningjaws; himself against 
 Himself oppos'd, and with dread vengeance arm'd, 
 The huntsman, now secure, with fatal aim 
 Directs his pointed spear, by which transfix'd 
 He dies, and with him dies the rival shade." 
 
 The poets, in fact, divide their leopard into two (as many 
 sportsmen do for the sake of augmenting their trophies) so 
 as to seem to be talking of more than one animal, reserving 
 the leopard to convey ideas of grace without undue ferocity, 
 and the panther for ferocity that even personal beauty does 
 not condone. It is a " bearded " beast of " panther-peopled 
 solitudes " (Shelley), that " howls " in the wilderness (Camp- 
 bell), and dies of the sirocco in African deserts (Darwin). 
 And, indeed, in Nature, it is by no means a mere plaything. 
 For the " panther" — by which name Oriental sportsmen call 
 the larger specimens or, as some zoologists affirm, the larger 
 species of leopard — is very often a man-eater. And this not 
 from the necessities of decrepitude, as with the tiger, but 
 from choice. For the panther frequently enters huts to 
 carry off an inmate, though the village cattle, past which 
 it had come, offered a less perilous capture. Its strength 
 is surprising, for it can break the neck of full-grown cattle, 
 and carry sheep over a wall seven feet in height. When 
 attacked, it is, in the opinion of many sportsmen, quite as 
 formidable as the royal wearer of the stripes. It feeds only 
 
46 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 on the largest game, the sambhur stag, nilghai, cattle, horses, 
 and man — one panther in the Gwalior state having been 
 known to kill fifty human beings in one district. If wounded 
 from a tree it will climb up to its assailant and attack him 
 there, and will charge an elephant as cheerfully as the 
 tiger does. 
 
 The leopard (I am here accepting the theory that there 
 really are two species of the animal), though not so formid- 
 able, is still a dangerous antagonist, but, as a rule, it does 
 not aspire to larger victims than sheep and goats, the smaller 
 varieties of deer and antelope, calves, and, above all, dogs. 
 Now the poets, as Broome and Somerviile. seem to think 
 the leopard looks upon the dog as its natural master and 
 conqueror, whereas the fact is that the leopard looks upon 
 the dog as its natural food. The leopard's taste for dogs is 
 certainly one of the most extraordinary phenomena in natural 
 history. We say that cats like fish and that monkeys are 
 fond of nuts, but these are mere passing whims, caprices of 
 the moment, compared to the constant passion of leopards 
 for dogs. It is a very Chinaman for its delight in puppy, for 
 it will follow a man for miles like his shadow if a dog be at 
 his heels, — and it will be a very extraordinary dog indeed if 
 it does not at last give the leopard its chance. The best of 
 them sometimes commits the indiscretion of loitering behind 
 its master or running out of sight round a corner in front of 
 him, and if it does this with a leopard on the track nothing 
 more is ever seen of the dog, and nothing more heard of it 
 but a last squeal as it is swiftly snatched up off the path and 
 carried, with a sudden rustle of foliage, down the hill-side. 
 At night, leopards will prowl round the tent, sniffing under 
 the canvas for the dog that they can smell within, or in the 
 hill stations will boldly come down among the houses and 
 carry off the pet of the establishment, though servants may 
 be moving about. It is on record that in the station of 
 Gumsoor not a single dog escape 1, and nearly every 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 47 
 
 resident of India who has ever camped out in the jungle 
 where leopards are, or has lived in " the hills," has had some 
 tragic experience of this mania of the leopard for dogs. 
 
 In about the same degree, but obviously for very different 
 reasons, the monkey takes the most profound interest in 
 the leopard, and when one is afoot the four-handed folk 
 follow him as closely as they dare, shaking the branches in 
 their absurd rage, chattering furiously at their enemy, and 
 making faces at him. Sometimes, however, the leopard 
 stops abruptly and glares at them, and the wretched 
 monkeys, gathering overhead, get so excited in their demon- 
 strations that one of their number is pretty sure to lose its 
 balance and tumble into the leopard's mouth. 
 
 A tradition was once widely current that the panther was 
 sweetly-scented — says Dryden, "the panther's breath was 
 ever famed for sweet " — and that this fragrance was so fas- 
 cinating to some small animals that it enticed them to their 
 death in the jaws of the aromatic beast. 1 It is a fact, how- 
 ever, that the panther itself is peculiarly sensible to perfumes, 
 and among other instances is one of undeniable authen- 
 ticity of a panther being tamed with lavender water. 
 
 A part of this tradition is no doubt the existence of a 
 mythic animal called the " panthera," of which the bones 
 were of great lustre and exquisite odour. One of the 
 three "rarities" which Reynard the Fox pretended he 
 had got for the Queen was a comb. " This comb was 
 made of the bone of a noble beast called Panthera, which 
 lives between the greater India and earthly Paradise. He 
 is so beautiful that he partakes of all the loveliest hues 
 
 1 Spenser thus alludes to another tradition — the power of the panther 
 to fascinate, like the snake, by sight — 
 
 " The panther, knowing that his spotted hyde 
 
 Doth please all beasts, but that his looks them fray, 
 Within a bush his dreadful head doth hide, 
 
 To let them gaze whylst he on them may prey." 
 
4S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 under heaven ; and the smell of him is so sweet and whole- 
 some that the very savour cures all infirmities. He is 
 the physician of all animals that follow him, and has one 
 fair bone, broad and thin, in which, when slain, are contained 
 the whole virtues of the animal. It can never be broken 
 nor consumed by any of the elements : yet it is so light 
 that a feather will poise it, and it can receive a fine 
 polish."' 
 
 In metaphor these twin animals are very unfruitful in the 
 poets' hands. As being beautiful but of faulty character, 
 they supply the fabulist with a satire — in Dryden on the 
 English Church, in Gay on a vain beauty, in Spenser a 
 cruel one, in Moore a dissolute one. And as being fierce, 
 a simile for impetuous soldiery, as "the sword of the 
 Moslem," and the British attack. 
 
 JAGUAR, PUMA, CHEETAH. OUNCE. 
 
 Two or three poets mention the "Jaguar*" and the "fell 
 Puma that feeds on the colt and the steer." and once by 
 inference (in Somerville) the cheetah is indicated. Nor 
 in the case of the last-named is obscurity altogether unjusti- 
 fiable, for, except as part of the hunting equipage of princes, 
 Asiatic and African, or — in the case, for instance, of Semend- 
 manik, the favourite of Akhbar — as royal pets, the cheetah 
 is an inconspicuous animal in its own countries. 
 
 At the same time it should not be forgotten that the 
 cheetah is the real " pard " of the ancients, and therefore 
 the animal that the poets really mean, though they do not 
 know it, when they refer to "leopards" of antiquit)'. 
 
 But, in the case of the other two furred princes, the truly 
 royal jaguar, and the very picturesque and sometimes very 
 ferocious puma — or cougar, 1 mountain lion, or panther of 
 Western America — such neglect is perhaps more noteworthy. 
 
 1 " Cougar's deadly spring." — Mrs ILmans. 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 49 
 
 The lives of these creatures are in themselves poems, when 
 we think of the territories they rule over, and the romances 
 of the country — Mexican, Red Indian, Peruvian — in which 
 they lord it, among the ruins of a desolated civilisation in 
 the midst of dwindled nations. Around these animals 
 numerous legends have of course gathered. Thus, the 
 jaguar and boa are supposed to have an hereditary blood- 
 feud — a fact Shelley would have delighted to know — and 
 the jaguar, again, will not harm children, while the pretty 
 story of Maldonata and her puma revives with graceful 
 additions the old Androcles tradition. 
 
 Shelley and Keats both mention the Ounce by name, the 
 former in error for the cheetah, in the line — 
 
 " As hooded ounces cling to the driven deer," 
 
 the latter to get a rhyme for "pounce" — "pard or ounce." 
 This animal, however, is simply the leopard adapted by 
 nature for existence in a bitterly cold climate, and is pro- 
 bably the most beautiful wild-beast on our earth — and one 
 of the most powerful. It is the " snow-leopard " of Eastern 
 sportsmen, and its fleecy skin, silvery white or primrose 
 yellow, with black rings and rosettes and rather larger than 
 an average leopard's, is one of the choicest trophies of the 
 Himalayan shikarry. The Zoological Gardens have never 
 possessed a specimen of this rare and lovely carnivore. 
 
 To conclude this chapter with a quotation from my Essay 
 in Unnatural History a — 
 
 "The lesser carnivora," as they are called, play a very 
 important part in the political system of the beasts. They 
 are the great feudatory princes or viceroys of the wild world. 
 Claiming kinship with royalty, they possess within their 
 respective earldoms all the privileges of independent 
 
 1 "Noah's Ark, an Essay in Unnatural History." Sampson, Low, 
 &Co. 
 
 D 
 
50 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 sovereigns, and the powers of life and death. At the head 
 of fierce clans, they often defy the central authority, and, 
 retiring within their own demesnes, maintain there almost 
 royal state. Such are the puma, jaguar, leopard, and 
 panther. The two latter are to the East what the others 
 are to the West, and their lives, whether we consider the 
 kindliness of Nature to them in their beauty and strength, 
 or their strange immunity from harm, are equally to be 
 admired and envied. They live, it is true, within the empire 
 of the lion, but only as, in the days of the Heptarchy, the 
 Mercian or the Northumbrian prince would have called 
 himself "within the realm" of the Bretwalda; as in the 
 early days of France the Dukes of Soissons or Burgundy 
 acknowledged their vassalage to Paris ; or, earlier still, only 
 as Acarnacia or Locris confessed the supremacy of Sparta. 
 There is respect on both sides, and therefore a large 
 measure of peace within the satrapies of the Cats." 
 
 Though it cannot claim an equal dignity with any of the 
 seven animals I have grouped under the Heptarchy, the 
 Lynx is distinctly of the aristocracy. Moreover, it is a 
 delightful wild beast, savage, carnivorous, and something of 
 an assassin, as wild beasts should be — and all the more 
 delightful for being European. We have so few picturesque 
 ferine touches in the domesticated Nature of our civilised 
 Continent that the lynx could hardly be spared. There is 
 the wolf, of course — but the wolf is, perhaps, too serious an 
 animal. Failing sheep, it will content itself with children. 
 There is the bear too, but the bear is seldom in the way. 
 Its habits are retiring; its diet, by preference, innocent. 
 So that it cannot be considered a disagreeable addition to 
 European Fauna. The lynx comes midway between the 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 5 1 
 
 two. It has a taste for mutton, but would prefer the lambs 
 coming into its private retreats to having to go and fetch 
 them out of the public meadow. Now, when we speak of 
 the ravages that wild animals commit, we forget that they 
 are usually of our own prompting or creating. We set to 
 work and cultivate a district, and populate it, driving out 
 or exterminating the natural food of the beasts, and then 
 fill large spaces with our own helpless " domestic " animals. 
 After this, if the wild beasts eat these we exclaim against 
 them, quite overlooking the fact that in most cases we have 
 made such consumption a necessity of ferine existence, and 
 in all have put temptation in the wild beasts' way in a most 
 immoral manner. 
 
 And lynxes do not hesitate to avail themselves of their 
 opportunities, and this with such wastefulness that they will 
 kill far more sheep than they eat. But then beasts do not 
 know any better. When they get amongst lambs they are 
 like children among daisies, who murder the poor innocent 
 flowers by thousands, leave them lying in heaps close by 
 where they picked them, and go dripping daisies along the 
 road all the way home. 
 
 For some reason or another these animals have acquired 
 the reputation of an extraordinarily piercing eyesight, and 
 from thee arliest times have been credited with the power of 
 seeing through opaque bodies. This fiction would appear 
 to constitute its chief claim to poetical regard. " Watchful," 
 Crabbe, Byron, Drayton, and others call it. 
 
 " Thus parents also are at times short-sighted, 
 Though watchful as the lynx." 
 
 Nor is the epithet misapplied, for, like every other species 
 of cat, it is very watchful, and indeed in the patience of 
 its ambuscades exhibits a somewhat special vigilance. So 
 "calculation"' is, poetically, lynx-eyed. It is the antithesis 
 of the mole and bat. The prophet borrows its vision — 
 
52 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Now with a lynx-eye 
 I see, looking into future time," 
 
 says Cowper's Adam. From this reputed keenness of sight, 
 "lynx" comes to signify a cruel eagerness in detection, as 
 of officers of the Inquisition ; and Keats, by a curious form 
 of what may be called metastasis, make the eyes which 
 can see far be themselves seen from a distance — 
 
 " As deep into the wood as we 
 Might mark a lynx's eye." 
 
 He does not, of course, mean a long distance, but the 
 transference is worth nothing. 
 
 Mrs. Hemans, referring to the Piedmontese variety, has 
 the armed Jager pursuing it 
 
 " Above the clouds of morn ; " 
 
 and there is probably no length to which the hunter, if he 
 saw any chance of bagging it, would not follow such a 
 quarry, for the lynx wears a very valuable and beautiful fur 
 — said to be worth three times as much as the sable's — and 
 is moreover a beast well worth the hunting if only for its 
 endurance and courage. It is still to be found in Scandi- 
 navia, the greater part of Central Europe, and, of course, in 
 Russia, and as one of the three beasts of prey worth calling 
 such — the other two being the bear and the wolf — deserves 
 to be considered really notable. 
 
 But it is not, as is supposed, "untamable." The Gaek- 
 war of Baroda has a regular pack of trained lynxes, for 
 stalking and hunting pea-fowl and other kinds of birds. I 
 have myself seen a tame lynx that had been taught to catch 
 crows — no simple feat — and its strategy was as diverting as 
 its agility amazing. It would lie down with the end of a 
 string in its mouth, the other end being fast to a stake, and 
 pretend to be asleep, dead asleep, drunk, chloroformed, 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 53 
 
 anything you like that means profound and gross slumber. 
 A foot or so off it would be lying a piece of meat or a 
 bone. The crows would very soon discover the bone, and 
 collecting round in a circle, would discuss the probabilities 
 of the lynx only shamming, and the chances of stealing his 
 dinner. The animal would take no notice whatever, but lie 
 there looking so limp and dead that at last one crow would 
 make so bold as to come forward. The others let it do so 
 alone, knowing that afterwards there would be a free fight 
 for the plunder, and the thief probably not enjoy it after all. 
 So the delegate would advance with all the caution of a crow 
 — and nothing exceeds it — until within seizing distance. 
 Then it would stop, flirt its wings nervously, stoop, take a last 
 long look at the lynx to make sure that it really was asleep, 
 and then dart like lightning at the bone. But if the crow 
 was as quick as lightning, the lynx was as swift as thought, 
 and lo ! the next instant there was the beast sitting up 
 with the bird in its mouth ! 
 
 Now its procedure was very singular. It knew that it 
 was no use jumping straight at the crow ; it would be 
 sure to miss it, and go under it. So at the moment 
 that the bird darted at the bone, the lynx flashed up 
 into the air, and caught the crow at the instant it had left 
 the ground. 
 
 Next time it had to practise a completely different 
 manoeuvre. The same crows are not to be " humbugged " 
 a second time by a repetition of the being-dead trick. So 
 the lynx, when a sufficient number of the birds had 
 assembled, would take the string in its mouth and run 
 round and round the stake at the extreme limit of its tether 
 as if it were tied. The crows, after their impudent fashion, 
 would close in. They thought they knew the exact circum- 
 ference of the animal's circle, and getting as close to the 
 dangerous line as possible without actually transgressing it, 
 would mock at and abuse the supposed-to-be-tethered brute. 
 
54 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 But all of a sudden the circling lynx would fly out at a 
 tangent right into the thick of its black tormentors, and, as 
 a rule, bag a brace, right and left 
 
 Cowley has a very singular passage in one of his Juvenile 
 Pieces, which is this — 
 
 •' Let Cygnus pluck from the Arabian ww 
 The ruby of the rock, the pearl that j i 
 Great Neptune's court ; let eve:; bear 
 
 From the three sisters" weeping bark z. 
 Let spotted lynxes their sharp talor.i 
 With crystal, fetch'd from I - .i.ean hill ; 
 
 Let Cytherea's birds fresh wreaths compose, 
 Knitting the pale- fa: 
 
 The reference here — the lynx bringing crystals — is to the 
 old-world fable of the " lyncurium/' a misnomer of the 
 lapidaries of the time for " the Ligurian stone " (a repetition 
 of the "g" in the Greek making the error of sound a \ 
 easy one) or "jacinth." This gem was supposed to be pro- 
 duced naturally by the lynx, that of the male being held in 
 higher estimation than that of the female, as of purer colour 
 and finer lustre. The jacinth is a lovely cr ..uch 
 
 more agreeable and superior in tint to the best Brar 
 topaz " (King's Nat. Hist, of Gems), but modern jewellers 
 would appear to have confounded it with one of the garnets 
 or cinnamon stones. The ancients, however, prized the 
 "lynx-stone"' highly, and attributed to it strange potencies 
 against jaundice and other ailments. 
 
 In European fables the lynx is rarely mentioned, its place 
 being filled for minor affairs by the cat, for greater by the 
 leopard. But it has its traditions. Its con- 
 
 sidered so piercing that it could see through solid n.. 
 and long paces of time, so that Lynceus, who could see 
 three weeks ahead, and Apoilonius' lynx, that looked through 
 the earth and observed the proceedings of the devils in 
 hell, are quite within its legendary potentialities. Another 
 
The Heptarchy of the Cats. 
 
 55 
 
 Lynceus was one of the Argonauts, and discovered obstacles 
 long before they were in sight, to the great advantage of the 
 Heroes — as every schoolboy knows. The Lynx Academy 
 of Rome tcok the name as significant of the depth and 
 keenness of the insight into Nature to which, in their 
 studies, they hoped to attain. 
 
III. 
 
 BEARS AND WOLVES. 
 
 " Slender. Why do your dogs bark so? be there bears i' the town ? 
 
 " Anne. I think there are, sir ; I heard them talked of. 
 
 " Slender. I love the sport well ; but I shall as soon quarrel at it, as 
 any man in England. — You are afraid, if you see the bear loose, are 
 you not ? 
 
 "Anne. Ay, indeed, sir. 
 
 " Slender. That's meat and drink to me now : I have seen Sackerson 
 loose twenty times, and have taken him by the chain : but, I warrant you, 
 the women have so cried and shrieked at it, that it passed : but women, 
 indeed, cannot abide 'em ; they are very ill-favoured rough things." 
 
 In Nature, bears and wolves have very little indeed in 
 common. They are opposed in appearance, habits of life, 
 and character ; yet it would be difficult in all Poetry to 
 find two wild animals more intimately associated. The 
 shambling, fruit-eating, retiring, straightforward, and mild- 
 mannered bear 1 differs most conspicuously from the agile, 
 flesh-preferring, aggressive, crafty, and ferocious wolf. Never- 
 theless in poetry they are as punctually bracketed together 
 as larks and linnets. 
 
 BEARS. 
 
 Bruin, poor beast, has lost caste in public estimation, first 
 of all, from the ignominious familiarity which its dancing 
 
 1 English poets never speak of the grizzly bear, and I do not therefore 
 include it in this epithet. 
 
Bears and Wolves. 57 
 
 and being baited have induced ; and, secondly, from its 
 apparently awkward personal appearance. 
 
 Yet in freedom it is by no means a clumsy or ridiculous 
 animal. When it sets itself going after any one it wishes to 
 catch, the bear displays an agility and address which those who 
 have been hunted by it declare to be amazing. And when it 
 wants to extract beetle-grubs from the ground, or ants out of 
 their nest, honey from a bee-tree, fruit off a slender bough, or 
 birds' eggs out of a nest, it shows itself to be as ingenious 
 and skilful as any other animal that has to live by its wits. 
 To get, for instance, at the beetle-grubs, it scratches off the 
 upper earth and then sucks them up out of the ground — an 
 application of a scientific process which no animal without 
 a prodigious reserve of air-force could hope to accom- 
 plish. When it wishes to empty an ant-hive, it knocks 
 the top off with its paws, and then, applying its mouth to 
 the central gallery of the nest, inhales its breath forcibly, 
 thereby setting up such a current of air that all the ants and 
 their eggs come whirling up into his mouth like packets 
 through a pneumatic tube. When robbing a hive it keeps 
 one paw over its nose, its only vulnerable point, and when 
 in quest of wild apricots or acorns it not only balances 
 itself with all the judgment of a rope-walker, but uses its 
 weight very cleverly so as to bring other boughs within 
 reach of its curved claws. Nor, while doing this, does it 
 guiltily conceal what it is about. On the contrary, when 
 sucking at an ant-heap or grub-hole it makes such a noise 
 that on a still evening it can be heard a quarter of a mile 
 off, and when up a tree, and not alarmed, it goes smashing 
 about among the boughs as if bears were not only the rightful 
 lords of the manor, but as if there were no such things as 
 enemies in the world. 
 
 This secluded, simple-minded, unsuspecting animal con- 
 trasts very strikingly with the guilty-seeming, stealthy, blood- 
 preferring wolf. The poets, however, bring the two beasts 
 
58 The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 into company as if they v. :ant associates in real 
 
 life and habitual accomplices in crime. 
 
 In poetry there are two kinds of bears— r.d-wood 
 
 bear " and the bear at the end of a chain. The former is 
 divided into the polar animal and the bear general — which 
 also, it should be noted, is something polarish also ; Southey 
 speaking of the common bear as seeking its food " o'er track- 
 less snows," Thomson of it as icicled and so forth. The 
 latter, that is to say, the captive bear, is also subdivided into 
 the purely saltatory and the baited bear. 
 
 Neither of them is popular with the bards. For the 
 former, "the wild-wood bears," an unjust suspicion that it 
 eats human beings, — a suspicion as old as our ballads — 
 
 .:h bears he lives, with bears he feed=, 
 
 appears to prejudice the minds of some of our poets. Many 
 others look upon them as animals I - as in 
 
 :;.ii: :.i'::: : i:.i :;.::.- A: L_:"..r. 
 
 " Bears naturally are bea.- 
 
 They are " cruelly fanged," as . and gloat over 
 
 victims before devouring them, as in Spenser. " The 
 bloody bear, an independent be. Drycen. In this 
 
 aspect they are "rugged," "shapeless," and "shagged," 
 on bears," and (in Heber) "heathen bears.'' They 
 " howl " and ' 
 
 h more true to Nature is Hiawatha's apostrophe — 
 remembering only that "coward" : _ Jar phrase of 
 
 Red Indian challer.. 
 
 " Hark you, Bear, yon are a coward, 
 
 Ar 1 :. - l::v; ^r jron ^:e:er.iti ; 
 
 yoa would not cry and whimper 
 Like a miserable woman ! 
 
Bears and Wolves. 59 
 
 Bear ! you know our tribes are hostile, 
 Long have been at war together. 
 Now you find that we are strongest, 
 You go sneaking in the forest, 
 You go hiding in the mountains ! 
 Had you conquered me in battle 
 Not a groan would I have uttered : 
 But you, Bear ! sit here and whimper, 
 And disgrace your tribe by crying, 
 Like a wretched Shangodaya, 
 Like a cowardly old woman." 
 
 Bret Harte's address to the " Grizzly " is perfection. 
 
 But it is to the maternal triumph of licking her cubs into 
 shape that the poetical attention is chiefly drawn ; l the 
 poet's supercilious satisfaction being very much increased 
 by the discovery that after all her labours the mother pro- 
 duces nothing better than a bear. Thus Shenstone — 
 
 " What village but has sometimes seen 
 The clumsy shape, the frightful mien, 
 Tremendous claws and shagged hair, 
 Of that grim brute yclep'd a bear. 
 He from his dam, the learn'd agree, 
 Receiv'd the curious form you see, 
 Who with her plastic tongue alone 
 Produced a visage — like her own." 
 
 And Pitt— 
 
 " Thus when old Bruin teems, her children fail 
 Of limbs, form, figure, features, head or tail ; 
 Nay, though she licks her cubs, her tender cares 
 At best can bring the Bruins but to bears." 
 
 1 It is too late in years to refute this fiction seriously. But Sir 
 Thomas Browne's argument against its verity (after having otherwise 
 shown its complete fallacy) is worth quoting. "Besides," says he 
 " (what few take notice of), men hereby do in a high measure vilify the 
 works of God, imputing that unto the tongue of a beast which is the 
 strangest artifice in all the acts of Nature." 
 
60 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 And Pope — 
 
 " So watchful Bruin forms with plastic care 
 Each growing lump, and brings it to — a bear ! " 
 
 Not, for myself, that I see anything derogatory to a she- 
 bear in being the mother of bear-cubs, and nothing more. 
 
 Nevertheless, the bear-cub she has not licked affords a 
 delightful point. Thus Churchill, u a bear whom, from the 
 moment he was born, his dam despised and left unlicked 
 in scorn;" and Byron, "the she-bear licks her cub into a 
 sort of shape ; my dam beheld my shape was hopeless." 
 
 It is evident, though, that the poets are conscious of their 
 want of familiarity with the wild animal. For, whether we 
 meet it in a hot country as "the shaggy monster of the 
 wooded wild," or see, with Darwin, 
 
 " Slow o'er the printed snows with silent walk 
 Huge shaggy forms across the twilight stalk ; " 
 
 or with Savage, " the crackling vales, embrown'd with melt- 
 ing snows, where bears stalk, tenants of the barren space," 
 it is an undefined, mysterious, and, so to speak, still un- 
 licked monster. Not, however, without a weird majesty ; 
 in strict sympathy with the natural facts in Jean Ingelow — 
 
 " The white bears all in a dim blue world, 
 Mumbling their meals by twilight." 
 
 Spenser's "white bears" are creatures of fancy — 
 
 " I saw two Bears, as white as any milk, 
 » together in a mighty cave, 
 Of mild aspect, and hair as soft as silk, 
 That savage nature seemed not to have, 
 
 after greedy spoil of blood to crave ; 
 Two fairer beasts might not elsewhere be found, 
 Although the compassed world were sought around. 
 But what can long abide above this ground 
 In state of bliss, and stedi'as: happiness ? 
 
Bears and Wolves. 61 
 
 The cave, in which these Bears lay sleeping sound, 
 Was but of earth, and with her weightiness 
 t'pon them fell, and did unawares oppress, 
 That, for great sorrow of their sudden fate, 
 Henceforth all worlds felicity I hate." 
 
 As a performer on the village green, or as a retainer of 
 the household, "creeping close amongst the hives, to rend 
 an honeycombe," it has a distinct individuality, but as a 
 wild beast none. Perpetually in use as an adjunct of savage 
 scenes, it never seems to be described from the life. It 
 always looms out from a distance, or from gloom,' and 
 seldom comes close enough to us to be tangible or seen in 
 detail. It is a convenient beast, but a shadowy one. and 
 Butler (in his portrait of Potemkin) seems to me to sum up 
 with tolerable fairness the whole of the poets' bear-lore— 
 
 " The gallant Bruin march'd next him, 
 
 With visage formidably grim, 
 
 And rugged as a Saracen, 
 
 Or Turk of Mahomet's own kin, 
 
 Clad in a mantle delle guerre 
 
 Of rough impenetrable fur ; 
 
 And in his nose, like Indian king, 
 
 He wore, for ornament, a ring : 
 
 About his neck a threefold gorget, 
 
 As rough as trebled leathern target ; 
 
 Armed, as heralds cant, and langued, 
 
 Or, as the vulgar say, sharp-fanged ; 
 
 For as the teeth in beasts of prey 
 
 Are swords, with which they fight in fray, 
 
 So swords, in men of war, are teeth 
 
 Which they do eat their vittles with. 
 
 He was by birth, some authors write, 
 
 A Russian, some a Muscovite, 
 
 And 'mong the Cossacks had been bred, 
 
 Of whom we in Diurnals read, 
 
 That serve to fill up pages here, 
 
 As with their bodies ditches there. 
 
 Scrimansky was his cousin-german, 
 
 Y\ ith whom he serv'd and fed on vermine ; 
 
62 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 And when these fail'd he'd suck his claw?, 
 And quarter himself upon his pa 
 
 Unlike the Puritans, who hated bear-baiting — not because 
 it gave pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to the 
 spectators — the poets condemn the pastime as being cruel 
 to Bruin. 
 
 " How barbarously man abuses power ! 
 Talk of the baiting, it will be replied 
 Thy welfare is thy owner's interest, 
 But wert thou baited it would injure thee, 
 Therefore thou art not baited. For seven years — 
 Hear it, O heaven ! and give ear, O earth .' — 
 For seven long years this precious syllogism 
 Hath baffled justice and humanity."' — Southey. 
 
 Their sympathy is always with the bear that has "off-shakt" 
 the "curres," and when the " cruell dogs'' get the better 
 of him the poets punctually note that the bear was chained 
 or muzzled. They use the simile of " ragged roaring bears 
 rearing up against the baiters : ' ! for nobles attacked by 
 those of lower degree, or for men of might beset by 
 numbers. They knew well the spectacle — 
 
 '■ When through the town, with 
 Slow and solemn air, led by the nostril, 
 Walked the muzzled bear." 
 
 The Bankside bear-garden and Hockley Hole were familiar 
 names, and the dancing Bruin has given at least three poets 
 the subject for a poem, Leyden drawing the " moral '" from 
 the exhibition that men learnt to dance from the bear, and 
 might still improve their own saltations by imitating it — 
 
 " From bears the dancer's art at first began, 
 To monkey next it past and then to man ; 
 
 1 Hood borrows the expression for the waves during a storm, "t 
 jagged billows rearing up in war, like ragged roaring bears again - 
 ba-.ter." 
 
Bears and Wolves. 63 
 
 And still from bears, by Fate's unerring law, 
 
 Their dance, their manners, men and monkeys draw " — 
 
 and Southey, with excellent humour, using the old slave- 
 trade arguments to persuade the bear that dancing is good 
 for it — 
 
 " We are told all things were made for man, 
 And I'll be sworn there's not a fellow here 
 Who would not swear 'twere hanging blasphemy 
 To doubt that truth. Therefore as thou wert born, 
 Bruin, for man, and man makes nothing of thee 
 In any other way, most logically 
 It follows, that thou must be born to dance, 
 That that great snout of thine was formed on purpose 
 To hold a ring, and that thy fat was given thee 
 Only to make pomatum. 
 
 To demur 
 Were heresy. And politicians say 
 (Wise men who in the scale of reason give 
 No foolish feelings weight) that thou art here 
 Far happier than thy brother bears who roam 
 O'er trackless snows for food ; that being born 
 Inferior to thy leader, unto him 
 Rightly belongs dominion ; that the compact 
 Was made between ye when the clumsy feet 
 First fell into the snare, and he gave up 
 His right to kill, conditioning thy life 
 Should thenceforth be his property. Besides, 
 'Tis wholesome for thy morals to be brought 
 From savage climes into a civilised state, 
 Into the decencies of Christendom." 
 
 Xor were they ignorant of that other elegant Elizabethan 
 pastime of "whipping blind bears." 
 
 But of the "awkward," "uncouth," "shuffling" beas 
 which they are so ready to put into their verse — 
 
 " Rough tenant of the shades, the shapeless bear, 
 With dangling ice ail horrid " — 
 
 they had only the most delightful ignorance. 
 
64 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Yet what a large place the bear has fil'ed in the past. 
 And how multitudinous and honourable are its associations. 
 As the God of Thunder, the Bear-king of Storms, Bruin is 
 perfectly majestic in cloud-myths. The tempest demons, 
 black-bearded, are his children, and the thunder-clouds, 
 ragged and gloomy, go rolling and roaring and foaming 
 overboard, bears every one of them, and close on the heels 
 of their prey. Turn it round to the sun-myth, and lo ! " the 
 shining ones," the luminous sky, the bear — "Woful Calisto, 
 when that Dian grieved was." In the one aspect horrific, as 
 the bear-fiends of Dardistan or the shaggy terrors, every hair 
 of iron, that awe the Russian peasant ; in the other, benign, 
 " the honey-finder," or in Lapland, " the dog of God," or in 
 Russia, " the old man with the fur cloak." On the one 
 hand, the cruel instrument of the prophet at Bethel, a 
 synonym for lurking mischief in the classics and in Holy 
 Writ ; on the other, the nurse of Paris and of Atalanta — 
 
 " Folk say that her, so delicate and white 
 As now she is, a rough root-grubbing bear 
 Amidst her shapeless cubs at first did rear. 
 In course of time the woodfoik slew her nurse, 
 And to their rude abode the youngling brought, 
 And reared her up to be a kingdom's curse " {Morris) — 
 
 the docile disciple of Saints, the gentle animal that played 
 at soldiers with the children and so prettily befriended 
 Snow-White and Rose-Red. 
 
 Poetry, however, so diligent sometimes in availing itself 
 of legend, takes no cognisance of the unusual prominence 
 of the bear in history, heraldry, art, and folk-lore. The story 
 of Valentine and Orson affords the subject of a ballad. 
 
 " ' But who's this hairy youth ? ' she said, 
 ' He much resembles thee.' 
 ' The bear devoured my younger son, 
 Or sure that son were he.' 
 
Bears and Wolves. 65 
 
 ' Madam, this youth with bears was bred, 
 And reared within their den, 
 But recollect ye any mark 
 To know your son again ? ' " 
 
 And the Russian and "the Persian beares," the badges of 
 Warwick and Leicester, are referred to. But not a word 
 for the legends of St. Ursus and St. Ursula, St. Maximin, 
 St. Anthony, and St. Medard ; for Oursine or the Orsinis ; 
 for the Cities of the Bears or the Bear Hills ; for the 
 virgins of Artemis or the unhappy rival of Juno, mother of 
 constellations, the terror of the Tyrrhenian mariners, who 
 had unawares given Bacchus a free passage ; nor the bears 
 of story, Gundramnus the church-builder, Restaurco the 
 musician, and Tony Lampkins' bear that only danced to 
 " the genteelest of tunes ;" Sackerson and Martin, Rollo and 
 Marco, "the good bear of Lorraine," the ursine monsters of 
 the Ramayana — the bear-kings, friends-in-arms of the Solar 
 Hero — or all the hundred bear-myths of the world. How is 
 it that not a hint of these distinctions in literature, and of 
 ten times as many more that I have omitted, do not find 
 even a passing reference in the poets ? Is it possible that, 
 having formulated a bear of their own, which is " obscene " 
 in Nature and ridiculous in captivity, they purposely avoided 
 all appearance of countenancing the condoning dignities of 
 Bruin's past? 
 
 Once more, then, whence arose this strange antipathy to 
 the bear? It could not have come from previous informa- 
 tion, for all precedent honoured the animal. Nor was it 
 from any knowledge of the bear in Nature. For the bear 
 in Nature — I am speaking of the species which the poets 
 supposed themselves to be speaking of — is really almost a 
 lovable animal. It is a vegetable and fruit feeder, when it 
 can get such food, and, failing its favourite viands, eats by 
 preference insects. It is a delightful touch where Wilson 
 makes the bear gaze ferociously en — beech-nuts. But, above 
 
 £ 
 
66 Poets - 
 
 everything, it doats c: remember the 
 
 shabby trick of Sir Reynard when he : ;r Bruin from 
 
 Malepardus to the carpenter's house on the pretence of 
 
 im honeycombs? 
 
 of the defaulting fox. and finds Re; . 9 be 
 
 sick. He had eaten, h. \ reed 
 •with him. K Wbal was be bear with a friendly 
 solicitude. 
 
 to know ? The 
 food was simple and mean 
 
 but are glad to eat from Dec . r mere wanton- 
 
 ness. Yet not to del-; :-s honeycombs, large, 
 
 full, and v ; ] 
 
 modf 
 
 quoih Bruin, 'honeycombs, do j id yon them in such 
 
 I emperors 
 
 :ney combs, and 
 command me while I live : for:: : or servant 
 
 ■ beshrew ■ ■ 
 am in such serious good ean : same yon 
 
 shall count me 
 
 I 
 not be able to eat the whole at a mei 
 for I wish ; :urs in return, which 
 
 : ten of us ! ' cried the bear . 
 had 1 
 of it very shortly myse 
 
 So Bruin g a and 
 
 f nearly killed. 
 fe is particularly innocent, and its ma: a role, 
 
 -.he reverse of ft is. Hav:\ 
 
 berries and buds, the bear returns to its pat- 
 
 ting its paws into its mouth, lies hum:. 
 I baby, sucking its thumbs and • 
 precautic • -.surprise. Haw- 
 
 berries or acorns till the sun is 
 go into a deti 
 
Bears and Wolves. 67 
 
 contentedly to itself, and so loudly that sportsmen are 
 frequently guided from a distance to the purring spinning- 
 wheel sound 1 which betrays it. 
 
 There is something very touching, so I think, in the story 
 of the men who, following up a wounded bear, found the 
 beast behind an ice-boulder trying to staunch the flowing 
 blood with snow. I like too to think of the other which dis- 
 covered an empty whaling boat and got in, and — the moor- 
 ings giving way under its somewhat violent boarding — went 
 off on a cruise on its own account, and was seen by the 
 unfortunate owners of the boat sitting up in the stern with 
 every appearance of the most complete satisfaction. 
 
 Folk-lore, as a rule, is just, and folk-lore is always kind 
 to the bear. There are no fairy-tales or legends in which 
 the bear is a villain. He is a blundering fool in several 
 fables, but he is never unamiable. 
 
 Writing many years ago on the il Fairies of Dardistan," 
 I put into a hunter's mouth the following fragment of local 
 folk-lore : — 
 
 " I myself have never seen either Fairies or Demons, but I am a 
 familiar of the Bears. It is not generally known, perhaps, but bears 
 are the offspring of a man who, unable to pay his debts, went off to the 
 woods and never came back again, for he married some wild forest 
 thing and lived amongst the fir-trees to the end of his days. And his 
 descendants understand our language, fall in love with human beings, 
 
 1 Cuvier's bear " was particularly fond of sucking its paws, during 
 which operation it always sent forth a uniform and constant murmur, 
 something like the sound of a spinning-wheel." 
 
 " The sucking of the paw, accompanied by a drumming noise when 
 at rest, and especially after meals, is common to all bears, and during 
 the heat of the day they may often be heard puffing and humming far 
 down in caverns and fissures of rocks." The cause of this has often 
 been speculated on, but Tickell imagines that it is merely a habit 
 peculiar to it, and he states " that they are just as fond of sucking 
 their neighbours' paws or the hands of any person as their own 
 paws" (Jdrdcn). 
 
6S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 and marry their children to each other much een a 
 
 ding. It was just after the Fesst of F 
 back tired along the Ghilgit road from Astor across the hi 
 suddenly chanced upon a great convention of bears There were a 
 hundred at least — brown and black, big and little — and ihey were all 
 dancing round the wood-fires which they had lighted. Some of I 
 had wreathed their heads i of straw and flowers, and were 
 
 dancing solemnly, each by himself. Others had in the —ocks 
 
 of long grass and faggots of fir- wood which they used as partners, a 
 others danced two and three together, holding hands and p 
 round and round. At each corner sate a I . 
 for the others to dance in time to. And while [ was watching 
 an old Belle ear of the conv from where he 
 
 had been eating honey, with a long fir-branch in h :.i made all 
 
 the others fall into two long lines, and then the bride and 
 groom (who had been up a tree all I were called down and 
 
 placed at the end of the row. And : 
 
 danced, turning slowly round and round, down between the long 
 of bears, and when they reached the other e gate a 
 
 howl together, and scattering themselves among the woods began 
 lecting viands for the feast. As some of them came in my 
 ran off as l':. no more" 
 
 Sir Bruin of the Reineke Fuchs is of the common type. 
 He has great physical strength and fidelity of character, but 
 he is so simple that adversaries always outwit him. He is 
 no match for foxes, any more than the bear-heroes Sir 
 Bors, or Jubal or Earl Arthgal of the Table Round, or any 
 of those heavy slumberous giants, upon whose persons small, 
 agile, and invincibly-armed heroes performed suchproc.- 
 of valour. 
 
 The bear is the sleepy summer thunder of Scandinavian 
 myth. It is of a mumbling grumbling kind, happy en 
 in an old-country-gentleman sort of way when unmolested, 
 but testy in the matter of strange neighbours and trespassers. 
 It is a stubborn Conservative, a Legitimist, a protest of 
 Routine against Reform. Daniel makes it a symbol of 
 faithlessness ; but he evidently did not know as much about 
 bears as he did. or ought to have known, about lions, or he 
 
Bears and Wolves. 69 
 
 would have been aware that bears are very generous, never 
 returning to harm a helpless or fallen adversary. "Women," 
 says Slender, "cannot abide them, they are very ill-favoured 
 rough things ; " but there is an abundant dignity about 
 them nevertheless. They are among the seniors of the 
 quadrupeds in Nature, and in Art they brought no declen- 
 sion from eminence to such as bore them on their shields 
 — the greatest of monarchs, of earls, and of painters. 
 
 wolves. 
 
 " ' Well is knowne that,' sith the Saxon king, 
 ' Never was wolf seene, many nor some, 
 Xor in all Kent, nor in Christendom.'" 
 
 But there was a time, as Keats says, " while yet our Eng- 
 land was a wolfish den," when our ancestors called January 
 "the wolf month," and prayed in their litanies for defence 
 against them when estates were held on wolf-head tenure ; 
 and many poets, Dryden, Somerville, Drayton, Addison 
 amongst them, gratefully allude to the purging of our isles 
 of these destructive pests. 
 
 "Cambria's proud kings (tho' with reluctance) paid 
 Their tributary wolves, head after head, 
 The full account, till the wood yields no more, 
 And all the rav'nous race extinct is lo?t." 
 
 To the poets, therefore, with their allowable extensions 
 of horizon and chronology, the wolf is a British animal : 
 not in the way that the lion has become one, but on the 
 more practical basis of previous existence in the country. 
 
 " Full many a year his hateful head had been 
 In tribute paid, nor since in Cambria seen." 
 
 So it comes, perhaps, more familiarly off their pens than 
 other animals. Its name, moreover, has become, almost 
 
70 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 universally, a synonym for twilight ferocity, so that the poets 
 are to some extent justified in their attitude of detestation. 
 In the cloud myth, the rough dark wolf is of course the 
 night, and the white morning sheep-clouds escape from 
 its clutches. But more especially it is the twilight, " the 
 grey one" — in Holy Writ it is always "the evening wolf," 
 or the "wolf of the evenings," — that wolf-gloom wherein 
 malign influences are abroad, aitre chien et . 
 
 Sir Isegrim in Reynard the Fox is the type of the rapacious 
 baron. The king, more distant from the people, may pass 
 for a lion, but the baron in his castle on the rock yonder, 
 domineering over the servile plain, is the wolf, a present 
 power for evil. So folk-lore and fables represent under this 
 symbol the sentiments of European serfs or "villeins" to- 
 wards their feudal oppressors. The hectoring style of 
 argument with lambs ; the use of forced labour from 
 asses ; evasion of contracts with cranes ; double-dealing 
 affabilities to old she-goats with kids ; insidious counselling 
 of dogs for disastrous combinations against their shep- 
 herds ; treachery towards neighbouring wolves — in these and 
 a score of other features the resemblance between wolf 
 and baron is traced in popular literature. 
 
 Worked in with these symbolical sketches are touches 
 straight from the real wolf-life. Its surpassing cunning, its 
 more than ferine intelligence, "effrayant de sagacite* et de 
 calcul," distinguish it as the Bandit of the Beasts, and like 
 all other communities of outlaws and criminals, the wolves 
 are singularly superstitious. Elsewhere I note how easily 
 they may be frightened, but I cannot help thinking that 
 there is in this trait a striking analogy to the suspicious, 
 superstitious timidity which characterises every gang of 
 human wolves ; and which, sooner or later, brings them to 
 the gallows or their deserts. But it is very interesting to 
 remark the poetical method of bringing the wolf within the 
 sweep of poetical opprobrium. 
 
Bears and Wolves. 71 
 
 By daylight they make it the accomplice of vultures, and 
 by night of owls, so that there is nothing too bad to say of 
 the wolf. The fact is true enough of the animal in Nature, for 
 it really is the Thug among the beasts. In other languages 
 besides our, own Saxon, the criminal outlaw, the bandit, was 
 said in legal phrase to be "wolf-headed" — there was a price on 
 his life, and his destruction as a beast of prey was authorised 
 and rewarded. But the synthetical process by which the poets 
 arrive at the full compass of the wolf's iniquity is very pleas- 
 ing. Tyranny and darkness are their special aversions, so 
 the poets construct a wretch that preys by preference on the 
 very weak, the most innocent, and the youngest, and then 
 make it commit its violences by night. By this means the 
 wolf not only alienates all the sympathies of the chivalrous 
 and generous, but is branded as the nocturnal companion 
 of such obscene, night-prowling things as owls and bats, 
 night-ravens and hyenas. A dash of man-eating is then 
 thrown in to exasperate the general sentiment of the sanctity 
 of human life ; and, finally, to enlist against it human reve- 
 rence for the dead and the beautiful maternal instinct, the 
 beast is touched up with such details as the desecration of 
 graves, corpse-eating, and baby-snatching. 
 
 It is the "night-prowling," "savage," "fierce-descend- 
 ing," "insatiate," "surly," "stern," "grim," "gaunt," 
 "guilty," "wild," "shaggy," "black-jawed," "robber" 
 wolf. Its voice is a "long" and "deep" howl, or "shrill" 
 or "a low whine," "lugubrious dreary yell," and "death- 
 boding." 
 
 A dreadful adjunct of all scenes of dismal horror — " Near 
 him the she-wolf stirred in the brake, and the copper-snake 
 breathed in his ear" (Moore). Whenever a tragedy is on 
 hand, the neighbouring thicket holds a wolf, or the rocky 
 pine-glen yonder knows their lurking tread. There are few 
 circumstances of more than ordinary wretchedness that are 
 not accompanied by one of these animals, or a pack of 
 
J 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 them, and at night the wolf's "howls" rise almost as 
 punctually as the moon. It may be in Wilson's wild 
 country — 
 
 " Shrill, wildly issuing from a neighbouring height, 
 The wolf's deep howlings pierce the ear of night ; 
 From the dark swamp he calls his skulking crew, 
 Their nightly scenes of slaughter to renew ; 
 Their mingling yells sad savage woes express, 
 And echo dreary through the dark recess." 
 
 Or in (Faber's) civilisation — 
 
 " From time to time a restless watch-dog bayed, 
 And a cock crew, or from the echoing hill 
 The wolf's low whine, prolonged and multiplied, 
 Possessed the ear of night and over-ruled 
 All other sounds." 
 
 Being thus a thing of night, it becomes in poets' phrase 
 " obscene," as in Leyden — 
 
 " Beasts obscene frequent the lonely halls, 
 Howling through windows waste the wolf appear'd." 
 
 Or in egregious Thomson — 
 
 "Wolves and bears and monstrous things obscene, 
 That vex the swain and waste the country round ; " 
 
 and it is punctually associated with that delightful fiction 
 of the poets, the poetical owl. They are as thick as thieves, 
 these two creatures, and always " on the patter " together. 
 If you see Charley Bates coming up the street you may 
 be sure the Dodger is in the immediate neighbourhood. 
 The rascals converse in highwayman's slang. " The owlet 
 whoops to the wolf below." The chances are they are 
 decoys for each other, and divide the spoils of the victims 
 whom they assassinate in company. Was there ever such an 
 abominably comic partnership in crime — owls and wolves ! 
 
Bears and ll'ok'cs. 73 
 
 And just as owls, after taking all the lower degrees of 
 criminality, become in poetry " shrikkes " (which are of a 
 specially venomous sort), ■ so wolves graduate into u were- 
 wolves'' or " war-wolves " — that fearful fancy of the loup-garoit 
 that has kept its hold upon popular terror in every country 
 ever since the day when " wild Lycaon, changed by angry 
 gods, and frighted at himself, ran howling through the 
 woods." Their hairs are then used like owls' feathers by 
 witches to mix with "madd dogges foames and adders 
 eares. : ' They haunt Coleridge's woods with "vampyres" 
 and other monstrosities, and their voices are alike "death- 
 boding." 
 
 This were-wolf superstition is a more ancient and persis- 
 tent one. The horrid " Hyrcanians " were said to " become 
 wolves " in the heat of battle, a more allowable metaphor, 
 since historians talk commonly of British soldiers being 
 " lions " and " tigers." So also the Xewri and Hirpini : and 
 much later the same simile was frequently used in the Sages 
 for the Berserkers ; and later still, in our own time, for the 
 men of Norway and of Iceland, who " become wolves " in 
 conflict. In Ireland I suspect the phrase would be found 
 still extant, for the Irish, according to their own legends, 
 are specially liable to being "people not of one skin," which 
 is a euphemism for lycanthropes. Many individual instances 
 are on record, notably that of the family whom St. Nathalie 
 turned into were-wolves for seven years. But these could 
 retaliate on occasion, as, for example, when St Patrick 
 turned Vereticos, king of Wales, into a wolf. Ireland, 
 indeed, would in this matter appear to be our Arcadia — 
 the land of superstition ; for that province was conspicuous 
 for its wolf traditions. Lycaon himself was a king of 
 Arcadia, and the loup-garou was a household word in that 
 "emerald-state." The hyaena and the vampyre are in some 
 countries curiously mixed up with the wolf-myth, but by 
 itself it possesses a very dreadful individuality. 
 
74 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Therewith stalked forth into the way 
 From out the thicket a huge wolf and gray, 
 And stood with yellow eye,s that glared on me. 
 
 Qy made me see 
 No wolf, but some dread divinity in him." 
 
 log.) 
 
 To this day the supernatural wolf is an article of popular 
 belief in Europe, and, if I am not mistaken, the men-wolves 
 are far more dreaded than the beast-wolves in, say, Lithe- 
 rania. At the feast of the Nativity they used to assemble 
 in the churchyards, so it was said, and proceed at midnight 
 to search for the dead or the belated living. They were, in 
 fact, ghouls. Indeed the literature of this amazing supersti- 
 tion passes belief. What are we to say of a whole multitude 
 turning were-wolves in the canton in Jura, hunting for 
 human flesh in pack, and being executed six hundred at 
 one time ! 
 
 Beware of men with meeting eyebrows : it is from these 
 that legend says the were-wolves recruit their packs. 
 
 That wolves — "assiduous in the shepherds' harms'" (King) 
 — prey on flocks, is in itself quite sufficient to set poets 
 against them. Does not the vulture suffer miserably in 
 poetry from being accused of " pouncing " doves ? And 
 are not doves and lambs equally engaging; and is not, 
 therefore, the wolf as detestable as the vulture, with which, 
 indeed (when it is seen abroad in daylight), it is nearly 
 always to be found in partnership. So the poets have little 
 sympathy for "the grim wolf that with privy paw daily 
 devours apace," even when it is most hungry. Hunger, 
 indeed, would hardly seem to be allowable at all in wolves : 
 " wolf s-nagen " is a term of reproach. It is an aggravation 
 of the offence instead of a palliation. If they would con- 
 sent to eat strawberries they might fare no worse than the 
 bears, but, as it is, that they should deliberately go forth 
 and satisfy their detestable cravings with mutton — and now 
 
Bears and Wolves. 75 
 
 and then with the mutton-herd himself — enrages the ordinary 
 poet. Nor, when this infamous appetite for butchers' meat 
 is indulged by a meal of lamb, are even the better poets able 
 to control their generous indignation — 
 
 " The gaunt wolf crouches to spring out on the lamb, 
 And if hunger be on him, he spares not the dam." 
 
 Worse than this is Colin's complaint — 
 
 " They often devoured their owne sheepe, 
 
 And often the shepheards that did hem keepe ; 
 This was the first source of shepheard' s sorrow." 
 
 The last line is a delightful one. 
 
 Savage, Akenside, Rogers, and others extend their tender- 
 ness from the lamb to its cousin the kid, but there is always, 
 curiously enough, a reservation of sympathy from the fact 
 that the kid was "straying." The lamb, on the other hand, 
 is generally where it should be, " bleating near its fleecy 
 dam ; " and the unprincipled conduct of the wolf takes 
 therefore a deeper dye from the outrage on the ewe's feel- 
 ings which accompanies that on the lamb's, while if the 
 victim be carried out of a sheepfold there is the crime 
 of housebreaking superadded. Supreme, however, in this 
 particular class of offence was that wolf who married a lamb, 
 and then ate her up after they had been only wedded 
 a week. 
 
 But sometimes it arrives that the shepherds get the better 
 of the wolf, as in Chatterton's " Battle of Hastings " — 
 
 " As when the shipster in his shadie bower 
 Hears doublying echoe wind the wolfin's rore, 
 That neare hys flocke is watchynge for a praie, 
 With trustie talbots to the battel Hies, 
 And yell of men and dogs and wolfins tear the skies." 
 
 Or in " The Wanderer " — 
 
76 Poets' Beasts. 
 
 " When lo ! an ambush'd - linger bold, 
 
 Spr. prejr and fierce invades the fold, 
 
 But by the pastor not in vain de 
 
 : our arch-foe by some celestial guide." 
 
 Or in Cowley — 
 
 wild heart and e ; 
 (Robbed, as he thinks, unjustly of his prize), 
 Whom unawares the shepherd spies, and draws 
 Tne bleating lamb from out his ravenous ; 
 
 In metaphor this salvation of the lamb (and its attendant 
 parents) is a very frequent figure, showing very pleasantly 
 the general tendency of the poets to rejoice with the vir- 
 tuous and innocent over their escape from consumption, 
 and with the loyal custodian of another's property over his 
 
 iph against the wicked-minded vagabond. 
 :: is wonderful to note how often the legendary wolf 
 appears in a benign aspect. For instance, we are told by 
 Baronius that a number of wolves attacked a mona; 
 and slew all the monks therein who held heretical opinions. 
 Another pack tore to pieces the sacrilegious soldiers of the 
 Duke of Urbino who had plundered the Loretto shrine. 
 
 as a wolf that guarded the head of St. Edmund the 
 Martyr from the other beasts, and a wolf that stepped in 
 to defend St. Oddo, when on pilgrimage, from the attacks 
 of wild boars. Just as it showed the Abbot of Cluny his 
 way home, so the legend says it guided Adam, and the 
 
 :s of Ceres, ani Deucalion. It dragged the cart of St. 
 
 I Drgius, and tended the sheep of Xorbert. In Italy and 
 
 Sicily its hide and head are supposed to endow the wearer 
 
 with courage : they are charms against many perils, and a 
 
 more than Stygian panacea for pain of all kinds. As a foster- 
 
 •:- the she-wolf is perpetually recurrent in an amiable 
 light, and legends in which the animals are benign are very 
 numerous indeed. In Red Indian stories the amiable 
 and pathetic sides of the wolf-idea are well brought out. 
 
Bears and Wolves. yy 
 
 Thus Manobozho the mischief-maker meets a magician and 
 his family, who are wolf-wizards, and is changed into the 
 same form. They are very good to him, and keep him alive 
 during a very severe winter. At times they play practical 
 jokes upon him, but each has its moral for his advantage, 
 and eventually Manobozho leaves them with much regret. 
 In another story also the magician takes the wolf-shape in 
 order to befriend the hero. In the legend of " Sheem the 
 Forsaken " the benevolent trait is even more conspicuously 
 illustrated. The child has been deserted by his elder 
 brother and sister — the family being orphans — and is on the 
 point of starvation, but seeing some wolves at their meal 
 he goes up to them and, waiting till they have finished, 
 picks up the morsels they have left. This he continues to 
 do, until at last the animals take notice of their small 
 dependent, and hearing his story are lost in amazement at 
 the cruel heartlessness of human beings, and adopt Sheem 
 on the spot. Now it happens that one day Owasso, the 
 elder brother, comes in his canoe to the place, and hearing 
 a sorrowful voice of wailing on the bank, thinks he re- 
 cognises the deserted child, and landing goes to seek him. 
 All of a sudden there leaps out from the bushes a creature 
 half-wolf, half-boy, which flies from him along the shore. 
 Owasso calls out to him, "Stay, brother!" But the wolf- 
 boy goes leaping on his way, and crying as he goes, " Neesia, 
 Neesia — a-wee ! You left me, going away in a canoe, and I 
 am half-changed into a wolf — E-wee. Half-changed into a 
 wolf — E-wee ! " and he howled between his words. And 
 Owasso, stricken with brotherly love, cried after him, "Sheem ! 
 Sheem ! Sheem ! " But the child fled on, alternately com- 
 plaining and howling, and all the while kept changing more 
 and more into a wolf. Then all of a sudden he reached a 
 bank, and leaping on to it turned, and, looking back at his 
 brother, cried in tones of most pathetic reproach, "lama 
 wolf" — and vanished. On the other hand, it is beyond 
 
;S The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 doubt that the image was one used, as a rule, to represent 
 a fraudulent, double-dealing, heartless, and pitiless monster. 
 Night, and Winter, and Cold put on the wolf's skin. It is 
 then gloomy, sinister, malignant, diabolical. How terrible, 
 for example, are those wolves of Odin, "Gari and Freki,"' 
 who hunt down his enemies — the " Odin's hounds " of more 
 modern folk-lore — the truly awful Feuris-wolf whom the 
 gods tried to bind with chains but could not, but at last 
 was fettered by most delicate links to the rock Amsvartner 
 to await Ragnarok — those dread Finland jinns who live in 
 the Wolf-Valley by the Lake of the Wolves — the red wolf 
 that waylays the souls of bad men going to the nether 
 world. 
 
 But the wolf's name would not have been terrible in legends 
 had it merely plundered the sheepfold. It is its crimes 
 against mankind that have made it so gruesome a beast in 
 folk-lore and so perilous in Nature ; and the poets do not fail 
 to take note of the solitary pilgrims, mountaineers, goat- 
 herds, and travellers that the wolves make their prey, nor of 
 the horrid duties they share with birds of carrion on deserted 
 fields of battle ; nor yet of greater crimes than all these 
 — the murder of infants in their mothers' arms, and their 
 violation of graves. In the following truly Thomsonian 
 nonsense the poet catalogues the animal's iniquities : — 
 
 " Cruel as death, and hungry as the grave! 
 Burning for blood ! bony, and gaunt, and grim, 
 Assembling wolves in raging troops desce: 
 And, pouring o'er the country, bear along, 
 Keen as the north wind sweeps the glossy snow. 
 All is their prize. They fasten on the steed, 
 Press him to the eartli, and pierce his mighty heart. 
 Nor can the bull his awful front defend, 
 Or shake the murdering savages away. 
 Rapacious at the mother's throat they fly, 
 And tear the screaming infant from her breast. 
 The godlike face of man avails him nought. 
 Even beauty, force divine ! at whose bright glance 
 
Bears and Wolves. 79 
 
 The generous lion stands in softened gaze, 
 
 Here bleeds, a hapless undistinguish'd prey. 
 
 But if, appris'd of the severe attack, 
 
 The country be shut up, lured by the scent, 
 
 On churchyards drear (inhuman to relate !) 
 
 The disappointed prowlers fall, and dig 
 
 The shrouded body from the grave ; o'er which, 
 
 M:x'd with foul shades and frightened ghosts, they howl." 
 
 Each enormity in Thomson's catalogue finds abundant 
 individual condemnation in the poets. Thus Leyden — 
 
 " The prowling wolves that round the hamlet swarm 
 Tear the young babe from the frail mother's arm ; 
 Full gorged, the monster, in the desert bred, 
 Howls, long and dreary, o'er the unburied dead." 
 
 Chaucer's wolf, " with eyen red and of a man he ete ; " 
 Dodd's gaunt wolf, that, " blood-happy, growling feeds on 
 the quivering heart" of the belated Switzer : l Mackay's 
 score of wolves " rushing like ghouls on a corse new- 
 dead;" Montgomery's "gorged wolves, howling in con- 
 vulsive slumber o'er their corses ; " and Webster's 
 
 " But keep the wolf far hence, that's foe to men, 
 For with his naiis he'll dig them up ag 
 
 How this ghoul attribute of the wolf gained currency it 
 is not easy to guess, for no work of natural history charges 
 the wolf with doing that for which it is by nature unfitted 
 to accomplish. A wolf might of course scratch up a corpse 
 that was only lightly covered with soil, but it has not got the 
 claws necessary for rifling any decent grave. 
 
 The climax of horror is of course reached when, like 
 Wordsworth's, the wolf is a baby-eater — 
 
 " Vexed by the darkness, from the piny gulf, 
 Ascending nearer, howls the famished wolf, 
 
 1 The mountaineer, naturally, is more often the prey of poets' \\ 
 than other classes of solitary-lived men, shepherds alone excepted. 
 
8o The Poets Beasts. 
 
 While through the stillness scatters wild dismay, 
 Her babe's small cry that leads him to his prey." 
 
 But surely Thomson unjustly aggravates the wolf's obli- 
 quities when he makes it loitering on sea-shores "there 
 awaiting wrecks;" 1 as Shelley when he says — 
 
 " They knew his cause their own, and swore 
 Like wolves and serpents to their mutual wars 
 Strange truce, with many a rite which earth and heaven abhors." 
 
 But inasmuch as the poets sometimes need to use the 
 wolf, their symbol of ruthless cruelty, as comparing favour- 
 ably with men whom they consider worse than wolves, they 
 have to absolve the animal from its supreme crime of 
 cannibalism in order to have this one extra point in infamy 
 to reproach human beings with. So men are wolves and 
 "cannibals" in addition, though it is a fact that of all 
 animals in the world the wolf is itself the most egregious 
 cannibal. Most wild beasts will eat their own species on 
 occasion, but the wolf habitually does so. No other 
 explanation of this, of course, is needed than the hunger 
 of the hour aggravating a natural bloodthirstiness ; but if 
 it were, it would doubtless be found in the instinct that 
 tells these brutes that they, of all wild beasts, cannot afford 
 to have lagging comrades, and that it is better therefore 
 for the commonwealth to eat them up as soon as they are 
 crippled. In the same way savages on the war-path mas- 
 sacre their sick (and sometimes eat them), for they cannot 
 afford to drag about with them in time of war a burden of 
 invalids. 
 
 While, on the one hand, therefore, the wolf escapes a 
 reproach that he is fairly liable to, man, on the other, is 
 libelled by the unjust comparison — 
 
 1 Philiips has "the starving wolves along the main sea prowl." 
 Neither poet is referring to the Arctic wolf. 
 
Bears and Wolves. Si 
 
 " Whoever saw the wolves that he can say, 
 Like more inhuman us, so bent on prey, 
 To rob their fellow wolves upon the way. 
 
 The fiercest creatures we in nature find 
 
 Respect their figure still in the same kind ; 
 
 To others rough, to these they gentle be, 
 
 And live from noise, from feuds, from factions free." 
 
 And again — 
 
 " But man, the wildest beast of prey, 
 Wears friendship's semblance to betray ; 
 His strength against the weak employs, 
 And where he should protect, destroys." 
 
 Not that I would be thought to defend our kind from these 
 charges, for they may be well founded. I only complain 
 of the wolf not being fished with the same net. 
 
 But the chief feature of the wolf-symbol appears to me 
 neglected — namely, the altogether disproportionate acces- 
 sion of horror that surrounds wolves when in a pack, as 
 compared with the solitary animal. Individually the animal 
 is almost despicable, collectively it is terrific. Alone, the 
 wolf is a highwayman, an individual bandit ; in company 
 they are furies. A small dog, a little child, a burning stick, 
 Campbell's " wolf-scaring faggot," a fluttering rag, a " bogy- 
 trap" of any kind, will suffice to keep off a single wolf; 
 but a squadron of cavalry will hardly stop the rush of a 
 pack. The hunter hears a solitary howl and looks to his 
 rifle ; but the wind brings down to him a chorus of voices, 
 and he thinks only of escape. Men ride down single wolves 
 in the snow and kill them with whips ; but the hunters 
 become the hunted when a dozen wolves sweep down from 
 the rocks — 
 
 " The death-doomed man 
 
 Felt such a chill run through his shivering frame, 
 
 As the night-traveller on the Pyrenees, 
 
 Lone and bewildered on his wintry way, 
 
 F 
 
82 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 When from the mountains round reverberates 
 The hungry wolves' deep yell ; on every side 
 Their fierce eyes gleaming as with meteor fires, 
 The famished troops come round." — Southey. 
 
 To its craftiness — the stealthy '"'evening wolf" of the 
 Bible — the poets bear ready witness, but not probably 
 since Hobbinole discoursed with Diggon Davie on the 
 Kentish Downs has wolfish cunning received more amazing 
 and delicious testimony. Diggon tells his companion how 
 " a wicked wolfe, that with many a lambe had gutted his 
 gulfe," taught itself how to bark (" learned a curre's call "), 
 and then, dressing up in the fleece of one of its victims 
 ('• his counterfeit cote "), allowed itself to be penned up with 
 the flock in the fold at night ; and how at midnight it would 
 begin to howl, at which Roffin the shepherd would send out 
 his big dog Lowder to scour the country, and how, while 
 Lowder was away scouring the country, the wolf would 
 ' ; catchen his prey, a lambe, or a kid, or a weanall wast. 1 
 and with that to the wood would spce.ie him fast." But 
 this was not the worst — 
 
 " For it was a perilous beast above all, 
 And eke had he cond the shepheard's call, 
 And oft in the night came to the sheep-cote 
 called Lowder, with a hollow throte, 
 it the olde mnn selfe had beene ; 
 The dogge his maister's voice did it weene, 
 Yet half in doubt he opened the dore 
 And ranne out as he was wont of yore. 
 No sooner was out, but swifter than thou:: 
 by the hyde the wolfe Lowder c 
 I had not Roffy rer.ne to the 
 Lowder had been slaine thilke same even." 
 
 In metaphor the wolf does not fail to meet with its desc 
 or what are supposed to be such. Rapine, Lust, Cru. 
 Treacher)' are all wolves. Spenser sees Envy " riding on a 
 
 1 Voun^linj. - N 
 
Bears and Wolves. 8$ 
 
 ravenous wolf." Crime (in Mackay) has a " wolfish grin ; " 
 Plague (in Shelley) is "a winged wolf;" Pride and Avarice 
 (in Cowper) "make man a wolf to man;" Bigotry (in 
 Watts) is " half a murdering wolf ; " and again, in Shelley — 
 
 " Wolfish Change, like winter, howls to strip 
 The foliage in which Fame, the eagle, built 
 Her aerie, while Dominion whelped below." 
 
 Dryden calls the Presbyterians, and Milton the Papists, 
 " hireling wolves," and mischievous teachers " grievous 
 wolves " — 
 
 " Help us to save free conscience from the paw 
 Of hireling wolves whose gospel is their maw." 
 
 Pomfret bewolfs the soldiers of Kirke, Southey those who 
 fought against Joan of Arc, Byron the enemies of Greece, 
 and Scotch Reviewers, and Gay the Irish. Holy 'Writ, 
 no doubt, gives the poets their inspiration for many of 
 their expressions — " ravening," " in sheep's clothing," and so 
 forth ; and the animal is used throughout the Scriptures as 
 the symbol of a cunning blood-thirstiness, from princes 
 of Moab to a false prophet. As an emblem of ferocity 
 it was given to Benjamin, whose standard bore the wolf 
 couched in a field of green corn. 
 
 Poetical proverbs about the wolf are numberless : as a 
 specimen the following — "The wolf knows what the ill 
 beast thinks " — " As wolves love a flock, these love the weak " 
 — " A bad dog never sees the wolf" — " The death of a young 
 wolf doth never come too soon " — " The wolf must die in his 
 own skin " — " Who hates a wolf for his master needs a dog 
 for his man " — " Wolves give a good account of sheep, left 
 to their vigilance to keep" — "The wolf unseen and trem- 
 bling lies, when the hoarse roar proclaims the lion near " — 
 " Hungry wolves, though greedy of their prey, stop when 
 they find a lion in their way." 
 
 The Assyrian was not more fierce in his attack upon 
 
84 
 
 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 doomed Jerusalem ; Orcas "his wolfish mountains rounding" 
 not more fearful; Satan "lighting on his feet" in Eden 
 not more bold-stealth)*, than the wolf that "leaps with ease 
 into the fold." Even Rome's founder — so bitter is the poets' 
 hostility to " the howling nurse of plundering Romulus " — 
 is followed into after-life by reflections upon his wet-nurse. 
 
 Byron, however, makes, in a single stanza, a large measure 
 of amends — 
 
 "And thou, the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome ! 
 She-wolf ! whose brazen-imaged dugs impart 
 The milk of conquest yet within the dome 
 Where, as a monument of antique art, 
 Thou standest : — Mother of the mighty heart, 
 Which the great founder suck : d from thy wild teat, 
 Scorch'd by the Roman Jove's ethereal dart, 
 And thy limbs black'd with lightning — dost thou yet 
 Guard thine immortal cubs, nor thy fond charge forget ? " 
 
IV. 
 
 SOME BEASTS OF REPROACH. 
 
 Poets use wild beasts chiefly as terms of reproach. They 
 seem to see no moral beauty, and recognise little good, in 
 them. Being wild beasts, they are bestial, and being bestial, 
 they are types of corresponding deformities in human nature. 
 For poets do not, as a class, seem to have the generosity 
 that belongs to the true lover of Nature, to admire the wild- 
 beastiness of wild beasts, and to contemplate them in the 
 orderly scheme of creation, outside the hackneyed phases 
 of popular ignorance, or beyond the sphere of man's own 
 common needs. 
 
 Servile animals they overload with flattery. The inde- 
 pendent wild beast they traduce. Sheep are virtuous 
 Christians : tigers are the infamous heathen. 
 
 A certain number of animals contemplated by the poets 
 as being harmless — the camel, giraffe, elephant, hippopo- 
 tamus, kangaroo, opossum, beaver, and bison — are used, of 
 course, as similes of patience, stateliness, sagacity, bulk, 
 agility, timidity, vigilance, and strength respectively — and 
 among the British fauna the deer, hare, rabbit, squirrel, and 
 dormouse are symbols of admirable docility, amiable weak- 
 ness, cheerfulness, and dozy contentment. Yet even each 
 of these receives, in turn, more or less cynical treatment at 
 times, while all of them are mentioned so casually, or con- 
 templated from a standpoint of such lofty condescension, 
 
S6 The Pods Beasts. 
 
 that the poets' sentiment towards them is more than 
 
 one of acidulated toleration. 
 
 Sheep, cattle, deer, and dogs, the domesticated animals 
 in fact, are favourites of the poets. For very few poets view 
 Nature except in its relations with man. It is the chief 
 charge against the wolf that it eats the mutton intended for 
 human beings: and if an owl frightens Chaw-bacon, il 
 therefore, an obscene and death-boding fowl. But sheep 
 and cows, horses and dogs and deer, being servile anit. 
 are flattered with the same exaggerated attentions as ■ 
 meek birds of the dove-cot " that fill pigeon-pies, and the 
 bees that " yield their honey'd stores " for the poet's break- 
 fast. Yet even with these, their inordinate favourites, the 
 poets sometimes fall out. They are never tired of remind- 
 ing sheep that they are sill}-, abusing the bull for using his 
 horns against men, libelling dogs when of low degree, and 
 horses that are "jades." So that neither the "harmk 
 animals nor the " domesticated " meet with complete 
 urbanity. 
 
 But outside these two classes stand nearly all the Wild- 
 Beast world, and to them, the bravest and most beautiful 
 of Nature's ministers, the poets are all uncharitableness. 
 The lion is the one exception, but then the lion of poem- 
 is a magnificent creation of the poets, and not the creature 
 of Nature at all. For the rest, the lords of the forest and 
 plain, the peerage of jungle-duchies and desert-earldoms, 
 the marquisates of river-side and canon — the tiger and 
 leopard, panther, puma and jaguar, ounce, ocelot and Ij 
 cheetah, bear, wolf, rhinoceros — there is nothing but re- 
 proach. And for what reason ? Only the most egotistical 
 and whimsical Those that are not afraid of man are, on 
 that account, monsters of ferocity, and when they despoil 
 man's property, they are called utterly abominable : while 
 the rhinoceros, grand old recluse of reedy hermitages, is 
 abused for having a horn on the tip of his nose, just as the 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. cS 7 
 
 hedgehog and porcupine are calumniated for having quills 
 on their backs. 
 
 The monkeys, again, another large and admirable feature 
 of wild nature, are pelted with unmitigated scorn because 
 they seem to resemble man, and can be taught to burlesque 
 him, as if the poets really believed that all the monkeys of 
 the world live in cages or on barrel-organs. Or take 
 another class, the foxes and jackals, delightful parables 
 both of them, or the hyaena, one of the gloomiest touches 
 in Nature, and we find it is the same, and that the poets 
 are similarly deficient in sympathy and tenderness. Now, 
 for myself, keeping no poultry-yard, I like young foxes just 
 as much as I do chickens or ducklings ; and having no 
 friends buried in Syria or Abyssinia, I can view the hyaena 
 apart from corpses. For the poets, of course, it will be 
 argued that they project themselves into the affections of 
 others, and feel for the chickens of neighbours and the 
 graves of Ethiopians as keenly as if they were their own. 
 
 I had once in India a favourite dog carried off by a 
 leopard ; yet I do not hate leopards on that account. I 
 also kept a pet leopard once, and I liked it just as much as 
 I did the terrier which its relatives previously consumed. 
 The leopard did quite right to eat my dog, even though it 
 might have known it would provoke me to ill-nature by 
 doing so ; and though I should have been glad at the time 
 to see that particular one murdered, I certainly bore no 
 grudge against all the leopards of the world, much less 
 against all their glorious congeners as well. So that the 
 poets, even after they have presumably projected their sym- 
 pathies into everybody's hen-roost and thus absorbed the 
 concentrated sentiments of all the poultry-fanciers of the 
 world, are still, I take it, not justified in abusive generalities 
 about foxes. That these pretty beasts eat chickens is solely 
 our own fault, for we have deprived them of every other 
 source of food. But the great majority of foxes in the world 
 
83 Poets 
 
 never even saw a chicken or heard of one, while every 
 chickenivorous or not, is a beautiful and useful animal. 
 
 It is ferocious. But of this the poets take no heed. 
 For the ferocity of the fox is not directed against the person 
 of man, just as the weasel, quite as ferocious as the tiger, 
 ti:i -5 :t; ::-:':. :r. :r.:s ;:::t. :t:;_:t .: : f. .; ; _~s :...—.- 
 ti-.tr. 
 
 The poets, then, judge the great beast-world from a 
 what narrow and selfish point of view, and seem to award 
 their praise or blame in proportion to the direct utiii". 
 man of the animal under notice. To make a wild- w i 
 :r.e:e:':re. :':.-.: i'r.-.-'.i it :: ::.t r.i-j-.r' :_5:t _■-•;. \-tis: :r. 
 it ought to contribute either wool or butchers' meat to the 
 needs of human beings, and there ought not to be a four- 
 legged thing afoot with more ferocity in it than a be 
 Tr.tv -.-'. i ...i : _t: : :: ~e;r : ::-A -;--:■". : v r ; . i-.i rhir.:- 
 ceroses, before going abroad, to unscrew their horns. 
 '•V: '.•••■:: :'-. : _'. i : t f.tt" y ;r.i ;:.y •■':::. : : 1 :v : r. :'-.::.: :. .- 
 :: : :"..r? ; . 
 
 A~:-._- :;•• 5'-::^' It*;:? ::' r-.t_-::.:". - :• :: -r.urr.: 
 ri'.ti =-:-.r. :i:= :;:-:::. : . :':: ts : t ;i '•::.".. :.-. : ::.: 0:r.tr-. 
 ::' :: .rn. ::: ^ :.•-;'.;•■ -it: :';: :'-.; 5i:;.t ; _:; : =r. Thus. ;:..- 
 ::-:;::; ; ; :..- :: ::' ::i:r.'.t = = :...:... :ry. ::' 1 : -.■•;>;- : issiir.. 
 of silly conceited buffoons, of despicable men generally — 
 
 " She to the window rans where she had spied 
 Her much-esteemed dear friend, the moni: i 
 
 V." •;. ■': r;. :::. .t- i; ~ i: y i -.; ; .. ; 
 
 7:.i --::_■ :'-.:-.::r.:.j-::.--.t:;:.i:- ': :::t- '. 
 A- : -i:e .-.•';._? f.-.t •.e--t: : r:\ i: Lii: ■ 
 >1 : - t- :: - :-: . = ~ .:. - .:- ;:-.--. 
 
 '.'. -:.:_• . i" :: - 7 -f. ■-"■;:-. : 
 
 m . : ;;.:. :.-.-. -.- ■: :.-; - ■..-. -.-.- ■ 
 
 A".::''.:!-;. •■•■':=: '■'■;•;; r.::.v : :'.; ;-•..;; iivs ::::.; :;s-, 
 1 Rochester. 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 89 
 
 is the emblem of all that is solemnly stupid, perverse, 
 ignobly meek — 
 
 " Half witty and half mad, and scarce half brave, 
 Half honest (which is very much a knave) ; 
 Made up of all the<e halves, thou canst not pass 
 For anything whatever but an ass. " 
 
 The heavy mule — "a thing of jadish tricks" — "who, if 
 they've not their will to keep their own pace, stand stock- 
 still " — provides the poets with as easy a nickname as its 
 relative the ass — 
 
 " Some neither can for wits nor critics pass, 
 As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass " {Pope) ; 
 
 and the worst kind of all is " that reasoning mule " — a man. 
 But I have myself only a very qualified sympathy with the 
 mule, which is, after all, not a natural animal, but an 
 artificial. Man made mules, and may abuse his own pro- 
 ductions if he chooses. I have the utmost admiration for 
 the mule's intelligence — 
 
 " Shunning the loose stone on the precipice, 
 Snorting suspicious — while with sight, smell, touch, 
 Trying, detecting, where the surface smiled ; 
 And with deliberate courage, sliding down, 
 Where, in his sledge, the Laplander had turned 
 With looks aghast" — 
 
 and for the intrepid self-reliance (to which I have myself 
 been indebted for personal safety) which Rogers celebrates 
 in verse ; and consider its capacity for finding water one 
 of the most conspicuous marvels of all marvellous Nature. 
 But I do not, all the same, count the mule as a regular 
 animal. 
 
 Bears are types of either monstrous imbecility or rugged 
 brutality. In freedom, they are the terror of the wood ; in 
 captivity, the jest of every clown ; in death, pomatum. Un- 
 
go Beasts. 
 
 couth men with unkempt manners are, therefore, be 
 Misshapen and abortive plans are Bruin's cubs. 
 
 The cruel fair are panthers. Tif standards of 
 
 cruelty by which to measure the greater enormities of man. 
 As in Pomfret — 
 
 rse, for 'tis beyond dispute, 
 N : nends ;o cruel as a reasoning brute." 
 
 hat tygre or what other salvage wight 
 Is so exceeding furious and fell, 
 
 yog when it hath armed itselfe with might? 
 
 N r r.: c.:r.-;: :.-.-: r. :'. ::. '. t v .\. rt-= :. ~t'."..' - 
 
 And so, too. the wolf. " Rapacious, rough, and bold 
 Moore's description, and all the poets use it as the beast- 
 symbol of pitiless ferocity among men, distributing the 
 epithet impartially among all classes — u For man to man is 
 fiercer than the woif, more cruel than the tiger" — Churches 
 ifferent creeds, politicians of different parties, cruel 
 wickedness of all kinds. 
 
 The hyaena " that feeds on women's flesh " is a pet 
 abhorrence — 
 
 >ones out of her hidden cave she cald 
 An hideous beast of horrible aspect, 
 That could the stoutest corage have appald : 
 
 .reus, mishapt, and ail his backe was spect 
 With thousand spots of colours queint e'. . . 
 Thereto so swifte that it all beasts did pas ; 
 
 lid living eie detect ; 
 But likest it to an hyaena 
 That feeds on women's flesh, as ot'ers feede on g 
 
 Among this animal's epithets are — "dire," " fell," " fellest 
 of the fell " (Thomson), and they are not from a poetical 
 standpoint altogether misapplied, for the hyaena may veri- 
 tably be called the ghoul among the beasts. Its alternating 
 cowardice and fierceness, its shadow)' mist-of-evening colour, 
 its laughter, broken by sobs and groans, are all horribly 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 91 
 
 ghostly. And as if to keep up this imposture of being 
 phantom-beasts, they move more stealthily and silently 
 than even the wolf itself, and are,' in fact, perpetually mis- 
 taken by those who see them (especially on nights when 
 clouds are driving across the moon) for shadows on the 
 ground. They can be heard breathing before they can be 
 seen, and have been observed sniffing at a sleeping watch- 
 dog. 
 
 It is not, therefore, surprising that the poets should con- 
 sider hyaenas fair subjects for imaginative writing. So we 
 find it meeting " the vulture and the snake, in horrid truce 
 to eat the dead " — revelling in scenes of carnage from which 
 "the very vultures turn away, " — "smiling" over a "rank 
 corse" (Leyden) — "over his loathed meal, laughing in 
 agony, raving " (Shelley) — " shedding tears and biting the 
 while she's howling" (Barry Cornwall) — "tearing and 
 grinning, howling, screeching, swearing, and with hyaena- 
 laughter died despairing " (Byron). But, inasmuch as it is 
 essential for complete horror that the hyaena shall be the 
 direct foe of man, it is described as "bursting" upon man, 
 and man as " flying the hyaena's famished howl." 
 
 " And oh ! to see the unburied heaps 
 On which the lonely moonlight sleeps ; 
 The very vultures turn away. 
 And sicken at so foul a prey ! 
 Only the fiercer hyama stalks 
 Throughout the city's desolate walks 
 At midnight, and his carnage plies. 
 Woe to the half-dead wretch who meets 
 The glaring of those large blue eyes 
 Amid the darkness of the streets." — Moore. 
 
 In metaphor the hyaena is unexpectedly infrequent. 
 But women in general are called hyaenas. In Otway — 
 
 "Tis thus the false hyaena makes her moan 
 T draw the pitying traveller to her den. 
 Your sex are so ! " 
 
92 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 So, in particular, are the Delilas. Samson cries — 
 
 M Out, out. hyasna ; these are thy wc i 
 
 I arts of every woman ..ee. ? ' 
 
 Cruel foemen, the priests of the Inquisition, and unnatural 
 mothers are hyaenas, and so are bigotry, tyranny, and lust — 
 
 " And tyranny, I : ung, 
 
 Dreading the sound, shall farrow in affright, 
 And drop, still-born, her sangui: Mackay. 
 
 That the jackal is " the lion's provider " is one of those 
 antique articles of belief which, in the light of modern 
 observation and knowledge, it is very difficult to discredit — 
 
 " Be you the lion to devour the prey : 
 I am your jackal to provide for y 
 There will be a bone for me to pick.'" — Dr 
 
 That the jackal for some mysterious reason very frequently 
 accompanies the tiger is beyond all doubt ; and the lion is 
 (in India) a neighbour of the tiger. Is there any reason, 
 then, for supposing that the jackal will not do as much ft r 
 the one as for the other? The poets certainly do not think 
 so ; among others. Byron — 
 
 " Ye jackals ! gnaw the bones the lion le.v. 
 But not even these till he pern. 
 
 And again — 
 
 " So lions o'er the jackal s 
 The jackal points, he fells the prey. 
 Then on the vu"._ 
 To gorge the relics of sue: 
 
 ey has — 
 
 " The jackal of Ambition's lion-rage.' 1 
 
 And Dryden — 
 
 " Meantime the Belgians tack upon our rear, 
 And raking chase-guns thro' our sterns they sen 
 Close by, their fire-ships like jackals appear, 
 Who on their lions for the prey at 
 
Sovic Beasts of Reproach. 93 
 
 As befits such a mean sycophant as they suppose it to 
 be, " the thin jackal's " turn comes last at the feast. In 
 Byron — 
 
 " So when the lion quits his fell repast, 
 
 Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last : 
 
 Flesh, limbs, and blood, the former make their own, 
 
 The last, poor brute, securely gnaws the bone." 
 
 Its voice chiefly attracts the poets. Crime has a "jackal- 
 cry." Leyden calls it a " dismal shriek ; " but Heber 
 (writing in Bengal) says — 
 
 " The jackal's cry 
 Resounds like sylvan revelry ; " 
 
 and of the two Heber is certainly more correct. Faber's 
 " like plaining infants wearied the still air " is pure fancy ; 
 while Byron again (writing from Greece, a jackal country) 
 describes it as 
 
 " A mixed and mournful sound, 
 Like crying babe and beaten hound ; " 
 
 A stubborn, ugly, dirty, gluttonous, discontented, quarrel- 
 some swine is the poet's pig. Says Burns — 
 
 " In seventeen hundred forty-nine, 
 Satan took stuff to make a swine 
 
 And cuist it in a corner ; 
 But wilily he changed his plan, 
 And shaped it something like a man, 
 
 And ca'd it Andrew Turner." 
 
 So we may guess what Andrew Turner was like. And 
 all men that are either stubborn, ugly, dirty, gluttonous, 
 discontented, or quarrelsome, are called swine. It is the 
 "filthy," "guzzling," "whining," "wallowing," "grumbling" 
 hog; it lives in an "impure" and "stinking" "sty;" it 
 eats " greasy draff." Thomson gives an unlovely sketch 
 of the porker on its way to market — 
 
 " Even so through Brentford town, a town of mud, 
 An herd of bristly swine is prick'd along ; 
 
94 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 The filthy beasts, that never chew the cud, 
 
 Stiil grunt, and squeak, and sing their troublous song. 
 And oft they plunge themselves the mire among ; 
 
 But aye the ruthless driver goads them on, 
 And aye of barking dogs the bitter throng 
 
 Makes them renew their unmelodious moan ; 
 
 Nor ever find they rest from their unresting fone." 
 
 Their voice, appearance, gait, food, habit of wallowing, 
 and sleeping, all suggest comparisons with other " vi'.e 
 noises," other " hog-snouted features," or " pigs' small 
 eyes ; " other " bestial indolences," other " miry wsr 
 
 Fat men are compared with " the fattest hogs in Epicurus' 
 sty," and crowds with "rampant raging herds of swine;" 
 gormandisers are fit only to "grunt with glutton swine," and 
 indolent folk, as in Parnell — 
 
 " Very silent and sedate, 
 Ever long and ever late, 
 Full of meats and full of wine, 
 Take their temper from the swine." 
 
 Yet as a feature of rural woodland life, where it is a 
 cleanly, cheerful, active animal (as it always is in a natural 
 state), the porker could not be overlooked. So we meet in 
 Clare with — 
 
 " The grunting noise of rambling hogs 
 Where pattering acorns oddly drop, 
 And noisy bark of shepherd dogs 
 The restless routs of sheep to stop." 
 
 In Gay we see them revelling " 'mid a feast of acorns ;" in 
 Montgomery grubbing " for dainty earth-nuts and nutritious 
 roots;" in Johnson "returning home fat with mast." 
 
 A common object of the country is Joanna Baillie's 
 " grumbling sow that in the furrow feeds," nor far off her 
 is Drayton's hog — 
 
 "And in the furrow bye where Ceres is much spilled, 
 Th' unwieldy larding hog his maw there having filled, 
 Lies wallowing in the mire, thence able scarce to rise." 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 95 
 
 Nor unfamiliar is the mud-mashed corner, by the farm- 
 yard gate, where Gay's " batt'ning hogs roll in the sinking 
 mire," — for your " pig is a philosopher, who knows no pre- 
 judice." 
 
 But Blomfield is emphatically the poet of the pig, and 
 some of his vignettes are delightful. Thus the indolent pig 
 being tickled by geese — 
 
 " As when by turns the strolling swine engage 
 The utmost efforts of the gander's rage, 
 Whose nibbling warfare on the grunter's side 
 Is welcome pleasure to his bristly hide ; 
 Gently he sleeps, or stretched at ease along, 
 Enjoys the insults of the gabbling throng 
 That march exulting round his fallen head." 
 
 Or this other of the frequently occurring panic among 
 piglings— 
 
 "No more the swains with scatter'd grain supply 
 The restless wandering inmates of the sty ; 
 From oak to oak they run with eager haste ; 
 And wrangling share the first delicious taste 
 Of fallen acorns ; 
 
 The trudging sow leads forth her numerous young, 
 Playful, white and clean, the briars among ; 
 Till briars and thorns increasing fence them around. 
 
 With bristles raised the sudden noise they hear, 
 And ludicrously wild, and wing'd with fear, 
 The herd decamp with more than swinish speed, 
 And snorting dash thro' sedge, and rush, and reed ; 
 Through tangling thickets headlong on they go, 
 Then stop and listen for the fancied foe, 
 The hindmost still the grunting panic spreads" 
 
 Clare, too, was a pig-observer, and here is an excellent 
 touch of the evening farmyard — 
 
 " Hogs with grumbling deafening noise 
 Bother round the server boys, 
 And far and near the motley group 
 Anxious claim them suppering up : 
 
c6 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 From the rest, a blest release, 
 Gabbling home, the quarrelling geese 
 Seek their warm straw-littered shed, 
 And waddling, prate themselves to 1 
 
 This frequent connection of pigs and geese is characteristic 
 of the best observers of country life. I have noticed it 
 already in Drayton, Leyden, and Blomfield, and Ciare 
 again has — 
 
 ;< In autumn time he often stood to mark 
 What tumults 'tween the hogs and geese arose, 
 Down the corn-littered street" 
 
 So that Miss Frances Power Cobbe's exquisite story of the 
 e that used to make the pigs run the gauntlet of the 
 flock every evening, and grab their fat skins and tweak 
 them as they passed, is a real incident of this funny feud. 
 
 But I have read Charles Lamb too well to be unamiable 
 to the pig, for whom a far better defence can be made 
 than Southey's humorous odes. For in its natural state it 
 is cleanly both in food and person, of remarkable intelli- 
 gence, activity, and courage. They are perpetually bathing, 
 they eat only fresh vegetable food, are as difficult of 
 approach as wild geese, and as nimble in escape as goats ; 
 while for downright pluck, there is not a single animal in 
 all the round world — the wolverine, perhaps, excepted — that 
 can compare with it At any rate, it is the only living 
 beast that will wilfully challenge the tiger to combat. Nor 
 is the tiger always the victor. 
 
 In a domesticated state, except on the best mai 
 farms, appearances are very much against hogs. But the 
 young pig, the porkerling, is a very queer and engaging 
 little person. Its inquisitiveness, resulting, as a rule, in 
 tumultuous panic, its utterances, so full of interrogations- 
 and astonishments, its manner of sidelong frisking and 
 urcxpected cavorts, are all immensely diverting. Nor are 
 adult swine without their humour and sentiments. Farm 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 97 
 
 hands sometimes grow curiously attached to their grunting 
 charges — 
 
 " But now, alas ! these ears shall hear no more 
 The whining swine surround the dairy door; 
 No more her cave shall fill the hollow tray, 
 To fat the guzzling hogs with floods of whey. 
 Lament, ye swine ! in grumbling spend your grief, 
 For you, like me, have lost your sole relief." — Gay. 
 
 And need I refer to the national affection that exists 
 between the Irish peasantry and their pigs ? Among the 
 poets who refer to this Hiberian taste is Wilson — 
 
 " Here streams of smoke the entering stranger greet; 
 Here man and beast with equal honours meet ; 
 The cow loud bawling fills the spattered door, 
 The sow and pigs grunt social round the floor ; 
 Dogs, cats, and ducks, in mingling groups appear, 
 And all that filth can boast of, riots here." 
 
 In the matter of those bedevilled hogs of Gadara, and 
 the prodigal son, with other references to them in Holy 
 Writ, the pig arrives at some adventitious consequence. 
 Further dignity, too, attaches to him from the ceremonious 
 consumption at Yule-tide of his head, "crested with bays 
 and rosemary," and of the " brawne of the tusked swine " 
 that Chaucer respected so sincerely. Indeed, its complete 
 edibility (for which it has been called " a perfect gentle- 
 man, eatable from the tip of his nose to the tip of his tail ") 
 set Islam a problem which, to this day, the Moulvies have 
 not solved. But it must be confessed that the poets are 
 very chary of compliments to swine, the sagacious truffle- 
 hunting animals "that grubbed the turf and taught man 
 where to look for dainty earth-nuts and nutritious roots," 
 and that, next to their " dirtiness," they seem to recognise 
 most keenly their absurdity. That they are credited with 
 seeing the wind gives them a joke against the pig, and the 
 ring in its nose, the curl in its tail, and the absence of wool 
 
 G 
 
98 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 on its back, are all considered as fair subjects for ridicule 
 as the soaped pig hunted at the fair — 
 
 " Painful regale 
 To hunt the pig with slippery t. 
 
 says Green ; and Clare — 
 
 " And monstrous fun it makes to hunt the pig, 
 As soaped and larded through the crowd he flies ; 
 Thus turn'd adrift he plays them many a rig, 
 A pig for catching is a wondrous prize, 
 And every lout to do his utmost tries ; 
 Some snap the ear, and some the curly tail, 
 But stili his slippery hide all hold denies." 
 
 Now the hog, if regarded aright, is by no means a con- 
 temptible creature. It is a purely modern fancy (and one 
 that the poets are, to a very great extent, responsible for) 
 that swine are things to laugh ill-naturedly at For, as a 
 matter of fact, the vast majority of contemporary mankind, 
 and all antiquity, invest the hog with a very strongly marked 
 intelligence and strength of character. Whatever else it 
 may be, they never call it ridiculous. 
 
 In one aspect, the pig is positively terrific. The Vedic 
 pig is a thunderbolt, red, 1 bristling, terrible. In the solar 
 myth the deities and powers of the elements frequently 
 assume the swine form when in troublous, threatening 
 moods, and the sun himself when malignant is a hog. It 
 is then, in fact, a demoniacal symbol. At other times it is 
 simply potent without malignity, as when Freya's chariot, 
 in Scandinavian myth, is drawn by a hog with a luminous 
 head, or when the Hindoo Indra appears to the earth in 
 his boar avatar, or Vishnu is " the tusked one." 
 
 1 Chaucer's pigs by the way, are red, " rede as the bristles of a sowe's 
 eres ; " and again, " his beard as any sowes or fox was rede." So too 
 in all ballads the " rede " swine. 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 99 
 
 At other times, again, it is the placid emblem of fatness, 
 an honourable obesity. For it is only in modern civilisa- 
 tion that fatness has been laughed at. In more than half 
 the world it commands respect, for beyond the energetic 
 limits of Europe, physical exercise after manhood is con- 
 sidered one of the disagreeable accidents of poverty, the 
 fate of the necessitous, just as leanness of limb is the livery 
 of the underfed. And the Oriental, therefore, receiving as 
 he does the deference of his neighbours on account of the 
 portliness of his person, prefers to move about in the 
 adipose discomfort of a well-to-do appearance rather than 
 to be seen in the pauper's uniform of bones. 
 
 I do not go so far as to say that I would join the super- 
 stitious in their vigils in pig-styes on Christmas eve — at 
 least not with becoming alacrity — or would join in the train 
 of suitors for the wealthy pig- faced lady, or " hog- faced 
 gentlewoman," as the chap-book of the period styles her. 
 But, on the other hand, I have no propensity to faint, as that 
 stout marshal of France used to do at the sight of one, 
 nor to object to being taxed, as the country folk thereabouts 
 do, with being born at Hogg's Norton. I do not share 
 Isaiah's prodigious objections to pork. 
 
 Indeed, between an excessive enthusiasm .and a bigoted 
 detestation there is the more becoming medium of sobriety, 
 and I am content, therefore, to commit myself no further 
 than to say I had rather hear the cheery horn of the swine- 
 herd calling his charges to their banquet under the Cam- 
 panian oaks, than the last squeals of the hog on the altars 
 of Bacchus. 
 
 The poets, therefore, are not romping on such safe 
 grounds as they think when they frolic over the fatness of 
 swine. Nor should they have forgotten to allow pig-legends 
 to temper their severity. It is only by giving all evidence 
 its due weight that judges arrive at the cold neutrality of 
 impartiality. Now, was not the hog sacred to Thor, and is 
 
ioo The Poets 1 Beasts. 
 
 it not under the very special protection of St. Anthony. 1 
 the friend of all animals and protector of weddings? Did 
 they never hear that pork gives the eater acuteness of ear 
 and intelligence? That a | \ les have strange occult 
 
 influences when the proper arrangements are made for 
 working a charm ? That Rome, " the namele- nee 
 
 had the hog, " the nameless beast," for its badge and cog- 
 nisance ? That " please the pigs," now a contemptuous 
 phrase, really means ' ; please the Holy Virgin," or i 
 mean "please the girls"?- To laugh at "a hog in 
 armour" is a poor jest enough even for those who think 
 " hog " means a pig. and wherein lay the joke of a China- 
 man's queue — a lank dependent plait of hair four feet in 
 length — being called a " pig-tail " I never could understand. 
 The pig's tail, by the way. provides the poets with as much fun 
 as it does, when soaped, the clowns who try to catch hold of 
 it, and there is a proverb to the effect that it is beyonc 
 
 city of human ingenuity to convert the caudal appen- 
 dage of a swine into an instrument of sibilation. But 
 is not the case, as in the city of Chicago I myself saw a 
 tie made out of a pig's tail, and an excellent one. not 
 one that would merely on occasion emit an exiguous squeak, 
 but arousing whistle that would fetch every hansom, wil 
 a radius of half a mile, to your door. 
 
 That the tail should curl amuses the poets ; but I 
 not sure that such flippancy is not blameworthy. They co 
 not even care whether it curis to the right or I Yd 
 
 it depended once upon the direction of the twist whether 
 the hog was acceptable in sacrifice or not. All deities of 
 taste abhorred the twist-sinister. 
 
 In short, I cannot .inking that there has been 
 
 1 " St. Anthony is universally known for the patron of hi. 
 a pig for hi? page in all pictures." — Fk 
 
 2 Pigeon maiden (Danish), hog youth of both sexes (Gaelic). Sic . 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 101 
 
 much mutual misunderstanding between the poets and their 
 pigs. Indeed, if only on the ground of the pig's eatable- 
 ness throughout, I should have expected some occasional 
 scintillations of gratitude from men and women with such 
 far-reaching and subtle sympathies as poets claim. 
 
 For there is no finicking reservation of himself about the 
 pig : he keeps back nothing, excepts no part of his person 
 from the general consumption. He puts himself up to be 
 eaten " without reserve," generously closing the door against 
 possibilities of subsequent misunderstanding. He goes the 
 whole hog with himself. The inventory of his effects is 
 complete, and without any fraudulent withholding of items ; 
 he puts himself into your hands bag and baggage. When 
 you have finished eating him, there is no gleaning after you — 
 
 '• I: would be well, my friend, if you and I 
 Had, like that pig, attained the perfec. 
 Made reachable by nature." — Southey. 
 
 The hog, then, is unanimous, and from this fact have 
 risen two singular phenomena so opposed in character that 
 it is a wonder they should have sprung from the same 
 source. The first is the Moslems' consumption of the entire 
 animal ; the second, the Jews' entire abstinence from it. 
 
 Mahomet, as is well known, enjoined upon all the Faithful 
 that they should not eat pork ; for, said he — 
 
 "There is a part in every swine, 
 N i friend or follower of mine 
 May taste, whate'er his inclination, 
 On pain of excommunication." — 
 
 But the prophet did not actually specify the sinful part, 
 but left the point at large, to the great perplexity of Islam, 
 and no little discontent, inasmuch as 
 
 " For one piece they thought it hard 
 From the whole hos: to be debarred." 
 
102 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 The Moulvies, therefore, met in consultation to settle 
 what joint Mahomet had in mind. And Cowper goes on — 
 
 " Much controversy straight aro?e : 
 These chose the back, the belly those, 
 By some 'tis confidently said 
 He meant not to forbid the head ; 
 While others at that doctrine rail, 
 And piously prefer the tail. 
 Thus, conscience freed from every clog, 
 Mahomedans eat up the hog."' 
 
 There was no intermediate position tenable, for so 
 numerous and bigoted were the admirers of the several 
 good points of a cooked animal that it was impossible to find 
 any one bit of the animal that somebody did not swear was 
 the very best morsel in him. Yet see to what contrary ends 
 the same symmetry of perfection worked with regard to the 
 Jews. Not only did they not eat swine, but, recognising 
 the solidarity and homogeneity of the animal, the very 
 strictest Jews refused even to admit that such an animal 
 existed ! 
 
 They would not rest even at the half-w. don of 
 
 Accadian nomenclature, and fetch a compass about it by 
 calling it " the one that wears a ring in his nose," or M it 
 with a tail like a ringlet," or "the bristly thing that grunts." 
 They decreed at once its complete banishment into the 
 limbo of nameless nothings. 
 
 So they spoke of it as "the other thing," the "you know 
 what 1 mean." the " what do you call 'ems," the u abomina- 
 tion." They were afraid even to utter the insidious word 
 "pork." To talk of ''crackling" was. they knew well, the 
 first step to eating it. So they cut the name out of their 
 language. But what a pitiful illustration of moral weakness ! 
 Not to be able to look a pig in the face without incon- 
 tinently debauching on brawn ! 
 
 But this weakness is in my opinion aggravated by the 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 103 
 
 suspicion that these same strict Jews, who would not for the 
 world think of mentioning the name of the pig, used, as a 
 matter of fact, to have it served surreptitiously. Or how is 
 it that we find pigs so numerous in the Judaea of Holy 
 "Writ ? Were they all Gentiles' pigs ? 
 
 Not that my suspicion is altogether pure assumption. For 
 — apart from the fact that we never find preachers denounc- 
 ing practices that do not exist — history tells us that the 
 Egyptians tried very hard indeed to keep from pork, but 
 could not do it. They formally anathematised it as " im- 
 pure ; " but formally also they ate it, affecting, by the vast 
 ceremony with which they consumed their bacon, that they 
 were performing a religious rite. They were never tired of 
 saying that it was abominable and vowing it to Tycho, the 
 spirit of evil, but with all this fuss of terrible abnegation, 
 they solemnly gave themselves up twice a year with a pro- 
 fusion of ceremonial and dumb-crambo to eating pigs. And 
 mark the sagacity of the ancient Egyptians, those " serpents 
 of old Nile." On the two authorised pork-days they "sacri- 
 ficed " (so they pleasantly termed it) immense numbers of 
 hogs to their equivalent for Bacchus. But did they destroy 
 them by fire before his shrine ? waste the precious carcase 
 by useless incineration ? Not a bit of it. They gave the 
 bodies to the swineherds. And why ? Why f To be made 
 into bacon, of course. 
 
 The swineherds lived on the preserved flesh of their 
 charges, and understood these little matters of smoking and 
 curing. Nor is it without significance that the Egyptians 
 were very careful as to the age and condition of the pigs 
 they thus " sacrificed," and that they killed their pigs just 
 as farmers do nowadays, twice in the year. If any one, 
 therefore, would try to convince me that the jolly old 
 Egyptians did not have bacon and ham, brawn, tripe and 
 sausages, chine and pettitoes all the year round, I should be 
 as deaf as a wilderness of adders. Nor do I believe that 
 
104 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 the Jews were ever any stricter than they are now ; and I 
 think he would be a foolhardy man who should walk 
 past a Hebrew pickpocket with a rasher of bacon sticking 
 obviously out of his coat-tails. 
 
 It is not likely that any one, with eyes to see and ears 
 to hear, could write a paragraph descriptive of a summer 
 evening without mentioning the bat. So the regular occur- 
 rence of the bat-feature in Clare, Hurdis, Blomfield, 
 Wilson, Garth, Grahame, Wordsworth, Collins, Gay, Shelley, 
 and all the others who have sung of twilight, was only to be 
 expected. But it is curious that none should have made 
 remark of the fiitter-mouse's amazing eyesight, admired its 
 unrivalled dexterity on the wing, or wondered at its voice 
 — those needle-points of sound, which are too keen and 
 quick for many ears to catch. 
 
 Recent investigations by railway companies have shown 
 what a dangerous proportion of humanity is wholly or 
 partially colour-blind, and similar inquiries would prove 
 that a very large number of persons are unconscious of 
 their being partially deaf. A test case is the bat's acute 
 voice. So Tennyson, requiring a simile, says " our voices 
 were thinner and fainter than any fiitter-mouse shriek." I 
 have myself known four persons out of a company of six 
 unable to catch the sounds uttered by bats when hawking 
 overhead. Coleridge, for instance, says " the bat wheels 
 silent by," as if it was the regular thing for bats to be silent, 
 whereas the fact is, that it is very unusual for bats to be 
 silent when wheeling after insects. So the chances are 
 that Coleridge was bat-deaf. Yet he hears (in the same 
 stanza) "the solitary humble-bee singing in the bean-flower" 
 — one bee in a bean-field and not a score of bats overhead ! 
 But perhaps his humble-bee was really a cockchafer, or ten 
 thousand of them, busy among the beans. Crabbe could 
 hear the bats "feebly shriek," and speaks of the sound as 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 105 
 
 the note of " their melancholy love." Clare also calls the 
 bat " shrieking." But except for these and perhaps half-a- 
 dozen more, I do not know that any of the many poets 
 who have introduced the bat into their evening sketches 
 remark its extraordinary voice. 
 
 The flutter of its wings attracts their notice frequently. 
 Thus Collins has — 
 
 "The weak-eyed bat, 
 With short shrill shriek flits by on leathern wing." 1 
 
 Grahame — 
 
 " Round the strawy roof 
 Is heard the bat's wing in the deep-hushed air." 
 
 And again — 
 
 "The winning wing of the dark bat." 
 Now here again comes in the fact that the bat's flight is 
 singularly noiseless. When it turns a sudden somersault, 
 there is a supple flutter heard, and when it drops down out 
 of the air close to the watcher's face in pursuit of a dodg- 
 ing moth, the soft crumpling of its wings is audible. But 
 it does not " whir," nor, as Byron says, " flap " — 
 
 " The" long dim shadows of surrounding trees, 
 The napping bat, the night-song of the breeze." 
 
 But Byron perhaps, writing from Greece, heard the large 
 frugivorous bat. 
 
 As regards the flight itself, the descriptive touches are 
 commonplace enough. Clare's "scouting bats begin their 
 giddy round " is good, and so is Grahame's — 
 
 " And even the reremouse when the twilight sleeps 
 Unbreathing, spreads her torpid wings and round 
 From stack to house or barn and round again, 
 With many a sudden turn, flits and eludes 
 The eye : " 
 
 1 How many poets use the " leathern wing ? " Crabbe has " webby," 
 and Garth "sooty," but the rest when they specify the wing say 
 "leathern." 
 
io6 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 for each specifies a fact of observation — the " scouting " of 
 the bat, which, like a pigeon thrown up into the air, first 
 casts about in the sky for a while till it gets its bearings, 
 and then settles down to its work, and the sudden evanish- 
 its of bats on the wing, eluding the eye by marvellous 
 nimbleness. Shelley has "quick bats in their twilight 
 dance," and Hurdis. with his usual clumsy fidelity — 
 
 "What time the bat 
 Hurries precipitous on leathern m ing, 
 Brisk evolution in the dusky air 
 With sudden wheels performing."' 
 
 But all the rest of the "fluttering," "wavering," "flitting," 
 " mazy " bats are studiously commonplace, and thrown in 
 as it were by way of a touch of local colour, just as bees 
 are sprinkled about in a flowery verse by poets who need 
 a lit: ife. 
 
 But why should the bat be taunted as being "torpid," 
 "drowsy. liking? It is no lazier than the sky- 
 
 lark. The only difference is that it usually (not as a rule) 
 s all day, instead of sleeping all night Are the 
 ers of the London morning papers "torpid," "drowsy," 
 and hey have to do the same. One 
 
 poet only. A. Whson, does the little mouse-on-wings justice : 
 
 ■ bat, the busiest of the midnight I 
 That wing the air or sulky tread the plain, 
 rrioming open on each field and flower, 
 . ends her mazes in yon ruined tower.'' 
 
 So much for the poets' best side of the bat, the bat 
 natural ; but even to it, imperfect as it is. has to be added 
 the normal error of the poets of thinking that the bat was 
 a bird, "an ominous fowl" — 
 
 "Oui, je te recc: 
 Triste oiseau ! soeur du hibou funebre. " 
 
 So says Victor Hugo, and the error of the bird-bat is 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 107 
 
 probably, therefore, a widely spread one. ^Esop gave 
 countenance to it in his bat "half bird, half beast;" and 
 many poets give themselves the advantage of the doubt. 
 Spenser commences his list of " fatal birds " with " the 
 leather-winge'd bat." Southey makes fun of the mistake in 
 
 " The midnighte howre when all the fowles 
 Are housed and hushte save battes and owles, 
 Yatte screche they're bodynges shrille ; " 
 
 and Dryden makes a happy hit in the couplet — 
 
 " Nor birds nor beasts, but just a kind of bat, 
 A twilight animal, true to neither cause." 
 
 But why should Montgomery have included the bat among 
 his " Birds " or Scott perpetuated the fiction ? 
 
 On the other, its fanciful side, the bat is a thing of 
 reproach, pure and simple. Because it flies by night, it is 
 "obscene," and everything, therefore, that goes on by night 
 is bat-like. For it is no innocent thing this poets' bat. It 
 is " ghastly " and " blood-loving," the vampyre — 
 
 " In the air a ghastly bat bereft 
 
 Of sense has flitted with a mad surprise." 
 
 In this aspect, however, it does not belong to my present 
 subject, but to the Fauna of Fancy. But there is a modi- 
 fication of it that properly belongs to the Beasts of Reproach 
 — the "ill-omened bat " — and this is by far the most frequent 
 view which the poets take of the grotesque but harmless 
 creature. For then, the bat adds a desolation to desolate 
 places and a horror to the horrible. Shattered thrones, 
 empty harem-bowers, crumbling beds of state (Crabbe), and 
 rifted minster-spires, are the perches of bats ; ruins are their 
 pleasure-haunts, deadly nightshade their bower, and wolves 
 their boon companions — 
 
 " Come list and hark, the bell doth toll 
 For some but now departing soul, 
 
io8 TJic Poets Bea 
 
 And was not that some ominous fowl — 
 The bat, the night-crow, or screech-. 
 
 Rogers' bandit greets as old companions, in his hiding- 
 place, "the bat, the toad, the blind-worm, and the hl 
 
 and Darwin's naturalist hears 
 I 
 
 " Shrill scream, the famished bats and shivering 
 And loud and long the dog of midnight howls."' 
 
 "Through darksome gulfs the bats for ever skim, the 
 haunts of howling wolves and panthers grim " (Wilson) ; 
 "nocturnal bats and birds obscene" (Pope) : "the bat flies 
 transient o'er the dusky green, and night's foul birds along 
 the sullen twilight sail " (Beat: kes airy 
 
 round on leathern wing?, and the hoarse owl his w 
 dirges sings '' [G 
 
 It is easy, therefore, to anticipate the place that bats fill 
 in poetical metaphor. As " vampyre symbolise the 
 
 foulest crimes and the worst enemies of humanity. As the 
 bat ominous, they are all sorts and conditions of men that 
 are abroad at . evil intentions, and are emblematic 
 
 of hovering disaster. As the bat natural, they repre 
 drowsy, day-shunning indolence, purblind ignorance, and 
 from the weirdness of their form and feature suggest things 
 from another world — 
 
 ''Then did whisper low 
 Si me of the little spirits that bat-like clung, 
 i clustered round the opening.'" — Jcj>: - 
 
 This is permissible. It is quite fair to the bat to 
 that its gnome-like countenance and self-absorbed, self- 
 enwrapped attitudes should be used as similes for that 
 which is impish and uncanny, just as :hes 
 
 the wings of bats, and Parnell calls them the " dire imps of 
 darkness." But it is a crime against poetry to make the 
 bat itself obscene and abominable, a thing of reproach. If 
 
Sows JJlc?s/s of Reproach. 109 
 
 the poets wished to find hard things to say of the crea- 
 ture, why did they not say that its caves stink like a wilder- 
 ness of polecats, or that its fur is incredibly swarming with 
 vermin ? 
 
 To those who have seen the " flying foxes " of tropical 
 countries — stretching nearly five feet across the wings- 
 flapping their solemn way across the evening sky, or have 
 seen them with softly fanning wings wheeling round the wild 
 fruit trees, the ' ; vampyre " and generally weird idea of the 
 bat is easily explicable. But that the busy, merry, little 
 harlequin of our English twilight should have earned for 
 itself the ill name it possesses, shows a fertility of supersti- 
 tion which is very interest::. 
 
 "Bloody, blooey 
 Come into my hat ! 
 
 cics the country urchin, holding his cap over the bridge as 
 the tiny flickering things tumble about in the air in pursuit 
 of moths and beetles. He expects this prodigious spell to 
 fascinate ''the night-flier" into the cap which he holds out 
 for its reception. Nor are his elders more sensible. In 
 Scotland they call them " bawkie birds.'' things of iil-omen ; 
 ar.d over a large part of rural England they are supposed to 
 be blood-suckers, and in league with the inhabitants of 
 "the other work;/' But public opinion has been against 
 them from the first. 
 
 At the Creation, so they say, the bat affected (as did the 
 ostrich) to be neither beast nor bird, in the hope of escap- 
 ing the task which Allah was apportioning to all, but was 
 punished in the end by being told that all the day and all 
 the night were already distributed, and that it must make 
 shift for itself as it could with those hours which were neither 
 the one nor the other. The Mosaic law pronounced the bat 
 — " the fowl that creeps, going on all fours " — an abomina- 
 tion, and the Rabbis carried on the national prejudice. In 
 
1 1 o The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 Egypt, meanwhile, it had attracted attention, been adopted 
 into the menagerie of worship, and solemnly dedicated to 
 Darkness. Rome and Greece took their bat from Egypt, 
 and we find the bat drawing the car of Nox through the 
 sky, and transformation into the bat one of the gloomiest 
 penalties within the imagination of the myth-maker. 
 
 Here and there, however, it is redeemed from oppro- 
 brium, as by the Moslem legend of Isa making a bat, 
 " Khopash," out of clay and endowing it with life, so that 
 it might come and tell him in his seclusion among the 
 mountains when the sunset-hour for the suspension of the 
 Ramazan fast approached. 
 
 So to-day we find this useful little animal, a mouse on 
 wings, regarded by a majority of mankind with apprehen- 
 sion and dislike. Its appearance when seated is certainly 
 against it ; but on the wing it is the very incarnation of 
 buoyant happiness. Under the inquiries of science its 
 amazing sensitiveness to touch, amounting indeed almost 
 to the possession of a new sense, has been the admiration 
 of naturalists, while its extraordinary. suspension of life for 
 part of the year (differing altogether in character and degree 
 from the hibernation of dormice and bears) ranks certainly 
 among the wonders of Nature. But apart from science, is 
 not a word of gratitude due to a creature that has ventured 
 upon such originality in the matter of nose ? It is horn- 
 nosed, leaf-nosed, sometimes it wears a crest on the top of 
 it, sometimes a fleur-de-lys, sometimes a mimic horse-shoe ; 
 but it is always fantastic and unexpected. It is the very 
 orchis of noses. 
 
 Had I "the fox" for my subject, I should be over- 
 whelmed by it, for Reynard covers a whole volume of 
 legend and folk-lore. But, fortunately, it is only the poets' 
 fox that concerns me, and this is a very meagre and single- 
 sided beast. Not that it does not abound in verse — it 
 swarms. But, then, it is always the same old fox. It has 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 1 1 1 
 
 its den in solitudes, and issues stealthily forth to rob the 
 neighbouring poultry-yard, and by-and-by the huntsmen 
 meet and the "ruthless," "bloody-minded" fox is done to 
 death. It is, therefore, a suitable simile for all crafty and 
 guileful persons, especially those who meet with just punish- 
 ment for their crimes. 
 
 But this is not the animal that was made for the earth, 
 and of the two foxes I prefer the natural one. I should 
 like to have found here and there in the poets a reference 
 to the beautiful ruddy fox that by its simple presence, pass- 
 ing across a scrap of woodland scenery, startles the land- 
 scape into unwonted picturesqueness, and marshals all the 
 surrounding foliage into a back-ground for the little living 
 spark of colour moving in front ; or a word for the small 
 foxes, the prettiest wild-thing cubs in the world, with the 
 innocentest faces and most winning ways ; or a word of 
 sympathy for the vixen, that will run before the hounds 
 with a cub in her mouth for miles and miles, and after 
 hiding it, will double and turn upon her course, careless 
 for the time of her own life, in the hope of leading away 
 the hounds from her treasure — a word, in fact, for the 
 pretty little beast of prey that is still a native of England, 
 and, but for encroaching farmsteads and game-preservers, 
 would be abundantly content to live entirely upon wild 
 birds and animals. But of this creature, the beautiful 
 and brave little English fox, the poets know nothing. 
 Even its cheery voice is called "an ominous howl" 
 (Grahame), and said to "make approaching night more 
 dismal fall." 
 
 It is "ruthless," "gaunt," "noxious," "wicked," "false," 
 "greedy," "stinking," "obscene," "vagrant;" "the scoundrel 
 fox ; " " felon " and " villain ; " " the nightly robber of 
 the fold;" "abhorred alive, more loathsome still when 
 dead." 
 
 And why a"l this pother ? Simply because the fox eats 
 
1 1 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 the property of man. It runs off with a cock, and lo ! the 
 chorus of the poets ! — 
 
 " They crieden out, harow and wa'a wa ! 
 A ha the fox ! and after him they ran 
 And eke with staves many another man 
 Ran Colle our dogge, and Talbot and Gerlond, 
 And Malkin with hire distaf in hire bond, 
 Ran cow and calf, and eke the veray fa 
 So fered were for berking of the dog. 
 And shouting of the men and women eke, 
 They ronnen so, hem thought hir hertes breke. 
 They yelleden as fendes don in helle ; 
 The dokes crieuen as men wold hem quelle, 
 The gees for fere 
 
 Out of the hive came the swarme of bees. 
 So hideous was the noise, a benedicite ! 
 Certes be Jakke Straw, and bis meinie, 
 Ne maden never shoutes half so shrille, 
 Whan that they wolden any Fleming kille, 
 As thilke day was made upon the fox. 
 Of bras they broughten beemes and of box, 
 Of horn and bone, in which they blew and pouped, 
 And therwithal they shiiked and they houped : 
 It seem'd as that the heven shulde (:. 
 
 It inhabits "green ruins" and "gaping tombs," "looks 
 out from the windows of the desolate dwelling of Ml. 
 and lodges for the night in caves where none else but the 
 cold snake houses. This gives the fox the necessary d<._ 
 of "obscenity." But as the "subtle pilfering fox,*' "the 
 farmer's mortal foe." it has often to be found less remote 
 from the habitations of men and chickens. It is most 
 conspicuous, therefore, as a farmyard prowler, as a hen- 
 stealer. Sometimes, as in Somerville, it seizes " the poor 
 defenceless lamb, whose sweet warm blood supplies a rich 
 repast ; " or in Pope, Dryden, Dyer, Grahame, prowls round 
 the flock basking in the sun, the frisking lambs on the bank, 
 or the fold, "to seize a itragjir.g prey." And Piers tells 
 Palinode a wonderful story of the false fox that comes in 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 1 1 3 
 
 pedlar's guise and tempts little " Kiddie " to its doom, in 
 spite of his mother's warning words before she "yode forth 
 abroad unto the greene wood." Quoth she — 
 
 " Many wilde beastes liggen in waite, 
 For to entrap in thy tender state, 
 But most the foxe, maister of collusion, 
 For he has vowed thy last confusion. 
 Forthy, my Kiddie ; be rulde by me 
 And never give trust to his trecheree ; 
 And if he chaunce come when I am abroade, 
 Sperre the yate fast, for fear of fraude ; 
 Ne for all his worst, nor for his best 
 Open the dore at his request." 
 
 But of course Kiddie does, and of course the false fox 
 " ranne away with him in all hast." 
 
 But, as a rule, it is the rape of the hen that inflames 
 the poets to most indignant declamation, like Clare's — 
 
 " Housewives discoursing 'bout their hens and cocks, 
 Spinning long stories, wearing half the day, 
 Sad deeds bewailing of the prowling fox, 
 How in the roost the thief had knaved his way, 
 And made their market profits all a prey." 
 
 Vet it is not often that the poets attribute to the fox that 
 which in all other fabulists is its chief failing, namely, its 
 going about its larcenies by twilight. The Entre chien et 
 loup is "the great epical hour of the fox." It is the hour 
 of betrayals and perfidies, of doubts and mythical un- 
 certainties. 
 
 Some score of poets sing the glorious chase, and for 
 downright brutality commend me to your foxhunting 
 poet, Bloomfield emphatically excepted — and, of course, 
 Cowper. 
 
 "The reeking roaring hero of the chase 
 I give him over as a desperate case ; 
 Physicians write in hopes to work a cure 
 Never, if honest ones, when death is sure ; 
 
1 1 4 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 And though the fox he follows may be tanned, 
 
 A mere fox-follower never is reclaimed : x 
 
 Some farrier should prescribe his proper course 
 
 Whose only fit companion is his horse : 
 
 Or if deserving of a better doom 
 
 The nobler beast judge otherwise, his groom." 
 
 The squire, when he goes to the cover-side, never affects 
 a sympathy with chickens, or maudlcs about " the turkey's 
 callow care." Most of the hunt are there because they 
 enjoy the excitement of the hard ride, a few because they 
 take an extra pleasure in seeing hounds working well, but 
 all of them hunt the fox because it is brave. Probably, also, 
 not a man in the field, except the huntsman, cares whether 
 the fox is killed or not They want to overtake it, to break 
 down the pluck of the " game " little beast by a combination 
 of their hounds' sagacity, their horses' power, and their own 
 straight riding. The huntsman likes to see the fox killed 
 simply from a professional point of view. It encourages 
 the pack, and the brush is "good for a sovereign." But the 
 fox-hunting poet musters his hounds and huntsmen out of 
 sheer revenge, and murderously pursues the fox because it 
 has killed a chicken, and exults over the actual mangling 
 of the little body. 
 
 " Here, huntsman, from this height 
 Observe yon birds of prey ; if I can judge 
 'Tis there the villain lurks, they hover round, 
 And claim him as their own. Was I not right ? 
 See ! there he creep's along, his brush he drags, 
 And sweeps the mire impure : from his wide jaws 
 His tongue unmoisten'd hangs, symptoms too sure 
 Of sudden death. 
 
 Ha ! yet he flies, nor yields 
 To black despair. But one loose more, and all 
 
 1 " The fox's brush still emulous to wtrar, 
 He scours the county in his elbow-chair." 
 
 — Kogcrs : Pleasures of Memory. 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 1 1 5 
 
 I lis wiles are vain. Hark ! thro' yon village now 
 The rattling clamour rings. The barns, the cots, 
 And leafless elms, return the joyous sounds. 
 Thro' ev'ry homestall, and thro' ev'ry yard 
 His midnight walks, panting, forlorn, he flies. 
 
 Thro' ev'ry hole he sneaks, thro' every jakes 
 Plunging he wades besmear'd, and fondly hopes 
 In a superior stench to lose his own : 
 Lut faithful to the track th' unerring hounds 
 With peals of echoing vengeance close pursue. 
 And now distress'd, no shelt'ring covert near, 
 Into the hen-roost he creeps, whose walls with gore 
 Distain'd, attest his guilt. 
 
 There, villain ! there 
 Expect thy fate deserv'd. And soon from thence 
 The pack, inquisitive, with clamour loud, 
 Drag out their trembling prize, and on his blood 
 With greedy transport feast. In bolder notes, 
 Each sounding horn proclaims the felon dead, 
 And all th' assembled village shouts for joy. 
 
 The farmer, who beholds his mortal foe 
 Stretch'd at his feet, applauds the glorious deed, 
 And grateful calls us to a short repast : 
 In the full glass the liquid amber smiles, 
 Our native product ; and his good old mate 
 With choicest viands heaps the lib'ral board, 
 To crown our triumphs and reward our toils." 
 
 Now fox-hunting, I take it, requires no condoning from 
 anybody. But to go about to condone it, by pretending 
 that the fox is "the terror of the hamlet," "the farmer's 
 mortal foe," a " bloody-minded villain," and must be killed 
 itself in retribution for ducklings eaten, is to condemn the 
 sport as inhuman, and fox-hunters as monsters of cruelty. 
 
 " Give ye Britons ! then 
 Your sportive fury, pitiless, to pour, 
 Loose on the mighty robber of the fold ! 
 Him from his craggy winding haunts unearthed, 
 
1 1 6 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Let all the thunders of the chase pursue. 
 Happy he . . . 
 
 Who sees the villain seized and dying hard, 
 Without complaint, though by an hundred mouths 
 Relentless torn ! " 
 
 Cowper is bad enough, but read Leyden. The fox is 
 supposed to have gone to earth, but a terrier turns him 
 out — 
 
 " His guilt glares hideous when, in open day, 
 The villain stands revealed, with dumb dismay, 
 When guileful rapine's hoarded spoils are viewed, 
 And guilty caverns stained with guiltless blood. 
 None grieve when low the trembling felon lies, 
 Who unlamenting, 1 unlamented dies ; 
 His limbs the hungry brood of ravens feed, 
 Abhorred alive, more loathsome still when dead." 
 
 And all this about a fox ! The innocence of the poet as to 
 the procedure and incidents of " the thunders of the chase " 
 are as delightful as his animus is discreditable above all to 
 a poet. But Somerville is, perhaps, the most brutal of the 
 versifying fox-hunters, for he rejoices alike over the " greedy 
 transport " of a score of big hounds swallowing one small 
 fox, and over the killing of foxes in traps ! So that he not 
 only brutalises the sport which he professes to enjoy, but 
 sins against it in the worst manner a fox-hunter can. 
 
 '• Nor hounds alone the noxious brood destroy. 
 The plundered warrener full many a wile 
 Devises to entrap his greedy foe, 
 Fat with nocturnal spoils. At close of day 
 With silence drags his trail, then from the ground 
 Pares thin the close-grazed turf, and with nice hand 
 
 1 On this point of the silence with which the fox handsomely meets 
 death, compare Scott's " he took a hundred mortal wounds as mute 
 as fox 'mongst mangling hounds," and Thomson's " dying hard, with- 
 out complaint, though by an hundred mouths relentless torn." 
 
Some Beasts of Reproach. 1 1 7 
 
 Covers the latent death, with curious springs 
 Prepared to fly at once, whene'er the tread 
 Of man or beast unwarily shall press 
 The yielding surface. By th' indented steel 
 With gripe tenacious held, the felon grins 
 And struggles, but in vain ; yet oft 'tis known 
 When every art has failed, the captive fox 
 Has shared the wounded joint, and with a limb 
 Compounded for his life. But if, perchance, 
 In the deep pitfall plunged, there's no escape, 
 But unreprieved he dies, and bleached in air, 
 The jest of clowns, his reeking carcase hangs." 
 
 " We 1 can but raise our feeble voice in mild protest 
 against the cruel misrepresentations to which the fox ia 
 exposed in Reineke Fuchs, wherein he is credited with every 
 vice under the sun, and wins his final victory over hia 
 enemy Sir Isegrim by the basest perfidy on record. The 
 fox of natural history, we venture to plead, is not so bad 
 as all this. He is simply a robber — at once a highwayman, 
 burglar, and garotter — but he is not a hypocrite (at least, 
 more than his profession requires) ; and as to his private 
 morals, he is an excellent husband and pen de fatnille, tak- 
 ing unusual pleasure in the sweets of domestic life and the 
 gambols of his infant offspring. . . . The stories about the 
 race are mostly base fabrications. Fehieke Fuchs is, as we 
 have already said, one long unpardonable libel." 
 
 Now "Reynard the Fox" is exactly the fox of poetry, 
 and, indeed, it is very possible, considering the extraordr 
 nary popularity of that " pleasant history," that the poets 
 really borrowed their Reynard from that ancient work. 
 
 But in the Middle Ages the fox had a literature to itself, 
 and has been ever since one of the most conspicuous 
 features of folk-lore — but always in the same aspect of a 
 practical joker of a sinister kind. To my mind he resembles 
 the Manobohzo of Red-Indian legends, " the mischief- 
 
 1 Francis Power Cobbe, "False Beasts and True." 
 
n8 
 
 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 maker," and the Loki of Scandinavia. Earliest, perhaps, 
 of all myths is the so-called " solar," and in it the fox per- 
 petually figures as the grim humorist that is perpetually 
 keeping chanticleer in alarm. Each is perpetually out- 
 witting the other, and will continue to do so till the sun 
 ceases to rise and set. 
 
 The fox-twilight just comes on the scene as the cock- 
 daylight is disappearing from sight, and gets weary again of 
 waiting for the cock's return just as his patience was on the 
 point of being rewarded by the breaking of dawn. Towards 
 sunset the fox comes stealing into sight, but the cock is 
 at that moment making off. Next morning the cock, see- 
 ing his adversary (" the fox-shadows ") slinking away, pops 
 out his head and crows. And so the old contest goes on. 
 
 Following this ancient precedent, therefore, folk-lore 
 makes the fox get into trouble himself as often as into 
 mischief — for though Reynard is one of the most cunning 
 of beasts, his cunning, like that of the wolf, is constantly 
 overreaching itself. 
 
V. 
 
 ASSES AND APES. 
 
 Your asses and your apes, 
 
 And other brutes in human shapes." — Beattie. 
 
 ASSES. 
 
 "The ass, that heavy, stupid, lumpish beast" (Oldham) ; "slouth- 
 full " (Spenser) ; " whom Nature reason hath denied " (Groome) ; 
 "heavy-headed thing" (Wordsworth); "slow beast" (Southey) ; 
 "obstinate, dull," &c. (Swift, Gay, &c.) ; "serious" (King) ; "solemn, 
 puir lang-legs" (Allan Ramsay). 
 
 Glory has been pernicious to the ass. So saith an ancient 
 of wisdom ; and it may be that the donkey, satisfied with 
 past honours, and conscious of the worth that was once set 
 upon him, has become indifferent to the opinion of a de- 
 generate race of men who knew him not in his prime — his 
 golden prime, in the good old time of Haroun Al-Raschid. 
 So he retires from public favour, like some great actor or 
 author who has pleased the taste of his day, but finds a 
 generation overtaking him that has no congenial sym- 
 pathies; and so, loftily withdrawing with his obsolete 
 laurels, he walks the world wrapped as in a cloak with self- 
 conscious merit and voluntarily undistinguished. 
 
 For myself, when I watch a donkey at his work, be his 
 master a good or a bad one, there grows upon me somehow 
 a suspicion that the animal " whose talent for burdens is 
 wondrous " is deliberately concealing other talents, and that 
 
120 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 its meekness arises from condescension rather than submis- 
 sion ; that it prefers to subject itself to perennial crucifixion 
 rather than tediously prove its patents to nobility. Legend 
 says it bears the cross upon its back to keep men in recol- 
 lection of the exaltation of the humble to offices of honour, 
 and that its meekness is to remind us that even under such 
 honours we should still remain humble. 1 But legend is 
 often audaciously wrong. For when our Saviour went into 
 Jerusalem on an ass, He selected the beast upon which it 
 was then considered most honourable to ride. The donkey 
 was — as it still is — the steed of the rich, the high in place, 
 and the luxurious. There was no humility intended or ex- 
 pressed in that notable procession; on the contrary, it was 
 our Saviour's one and only assertion of personal conse- 
 quence, His solitary condescension to the earthly ambitions 
 of the disciples. Moreover, viewed naturally instead of 
 traditionally, the cross-stripe on the donkey's back gives 
 the " heavy-headed thing " a very interesting significance, 
 for it may be the last lingering vestige of a zebrine ancestry. 
 All the other stripes have been thrashed off its hide. Be- 
 wildered by ill-usage, they have run together and blended 
 into a colour that, like the character of the wearer, is mono- 
 tonous, dull, serious, solemn. I prefer then the natural and 
 matter-of-fact explanation of the emblem on the donkey's 
 back to the legendary one, for it directly associates the poor 
 animal with its proud wild-life past, and by a single line of 
 colour suffices to restore " the heavy, stupid, lumpish thing " 
 of the poets to its original Asiatic and African honours and 
 freedom. 
 
 " Didst thou from service the wild ass discharge, 
 And break his bonds, and bid him live at large ; 
 Through the wide waste, his ample mansion, roam, 
 And lose himself in his unbounded home ? 
 
 1 In Scotland, they say the stripe is the bruise of Balaam's staff". 
 
Asses and Apes. 121 
 
 By Nature's hand magnificently fed, 
 
 His meal is on the range of mountains spread ; 
 
 As in pure air aloft he bounds along, 
 
 He sees in distant smoke the city throng ; 
 
 Conscious of freedom, scorns the smothered train, 
 
 The threat'ning driver, and the servile rein." 1 
 
 The poets, more poetico, accept the dull significance of the 
 monkish fancy in preference to the more eloquent parable 
 of the scientific fact, and refer the cross to Calvary rather 
 than Central Africa. So Rogers, seeing " the panniered 
 ass browsing the hedge by fits," did not probably recognise 
 therein the old instinct of asinine vigilance when the wild 
 ass — "the ass of savage kind," as Watts calls it — grazed 
 only two steps at a time, and kept stopping between 
 mouthfuls to raise its head, in order to scan the horizon 
 and sniff the breeze. Nor perhaps did Wordsworth, who 
 saw the ass, 
 
 " With motion dull 
 
 Upon the pivot of his skull 
 
 Turn round his long left ear," 
 
 associate the gesture with days of suspicious freedom, when 
 the long left ear of the sentinel ass caught the first whisper 
 of approaching danger and gave timely warning to the herd 
 of otherwise fatal surprise. 
 
 For once upon a time the wild asses, the onagers, were 
 the only representatives of the family, and they were so 
 swift of foot and so courageous that the east and the south 
 wore their hides as robes of honour, and kings and chiefs 
 took the wild ass for their cognisance and badge. It was 
 hunting an ass, then a royal sport, that Bairam, Prince of 
 Persia, lost his life, plumping into the pool in the Vale of 
 Houris and being never seen again. Oriental children wore 
 shreds of ass-skin round their necks that they might grow 
 up generous and brave. Did Ali, " the Lion of the Lord," 
 
 1 Young's paraphrase of Job. 
 
i 2 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 intend any disparagement of the Prophet's favourite horse 
 when he named his own donkey Duldul after it? Thus 
 prized, the wild ass soon came under domestication, and 
 the under-sized drudge of the London streets is the latest 
 and most degraded variation of the species. But inter- 
 mediate between the proud vagabond of the desert and the 
 costermonger's "moke" come many animals more worthy, 
 physically, of their lineage. In Egypt, the white ass still 
 claims something of the respect, and fetches the high price, 
 of olden days ; and during the Egyptian war I remember 
 seeing more than one of these animals figuring conspicuously 
 in the British camp. A distinguished general, a baronet, 
 and two M.P.'s, rode to the front, as used to ride the fifty 
 sons of Jair. All over Asia Minor the donkey of superior 
 caste is the recognised " hack " of the well-to-do, and I have 
 seen them not only in the Levant, but in Southern Europe 
 and in Eastern Africa, sumptuously caparisoned as steeds, 
 and of a size and form that dignified their office far better 
 than some of the ponies of the Cossacks of the Don, the 
 tattoos of India, the bronchos of Western America, or the 
 rat-like chargers of Beluchi warriors. 
 
 And I have overwhelming authority from the Past for 
 my respect for donkeys. The purely stupid ass was un- 
 known to antiquity. Take Hindoo mythology alone. There 
 we find the donkey in divine, demoniacal, or Ghandarvic 
 aspects — that is, benign, malign, or merely vagabond and 
 loose-moralled — but never ignominious or ridiculous. The 
 ass of Indra is a potent personage, and, as the warrior that 
 conquers at Yama, rises to the dignity of the Solar Hero, 
 the Sun itself. Or, if you will, take the more familiar 
 Greek and Latin. What was the ass Lucius but the Sun ? 
 Sacred to Bacchus, it paced along triumphant in Dionysic 
 feasts ; it was honoured, as it well deserved, in the worship 
 of Vesta, and sacrificed as a worthy offering to the God of 
 War. 
 
Asses and Apes. 123 
 
 A god, it is true, gave Midas donkey's ears, but it was 
 just like the intolerance of a divinity to do so. The 
 perpetrator of the insult was Apollo (who ought to have 
 known better), whose music the Phrygian king had pro- 
 nounced inferior to that of Pan, and so — in order to gag 
 honest criticism — the god, forsooth, gave Midas donkey's 
 ears ! For myself, admiring fearlessness in critics, and 
 admiring also the music of Nature above that of art, I shall 
 always believe that Midas was right and that Apollo was 
 fairly beaten, just as I shall continue to believe that George 
 the Fourth was really fat even though Leigh Hunt had to 
 go to prison for saying so. And mark the mean ingenuity 
 of Apollo's retaliation. Pan, whom Midas preferred, some- 
 times wore asses' ears himself. They were his emblem of 
 acute hearing, of a perception open to the subtlest harmonies 
 of the woods and fields, and therefore in lengthening the 
 Phrygian's ears the sulky divinity thought to put an affront 
 upon Midas' patron too. It is for posterity to avenge the 
 critic on his petty-minded tormentor. 
 Again — 
 
 " Silenus on his ass, 
 
 Pelted with flowers as he on did pass 
 
 Tipsily quaffing," 
 
 is not, either in Keats or the classics, made ridiculous by 
 his vehicle ; for it should not be forgotten that the jolly 
 old man being placed on an ass points to the importance 
 of the animal in Bacchic worship, and is not intended to 
 derogate from the dignity of the boon companion of the 
 gods. Says a learned commentator upon the pageant, 
 " The ass was in fact the symbol of Silenus' wisdom and 
 his prophetical powers." 
 
 But I regret that the esteem in which it was held should 
 so often have marked out the donkey as a proper object 
 for sacrifice. But so it was. The Scythians slew it in 
 honour of the god of battles, and the Egyptians in honour 
 
124 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 of the god of learning. When it was a red one. the Copts 
 thrust it with much pious ceremonial over the top of a 
 precipice, as a " scape-ass " for the people. Hence, by an 
 oblique prolongation of the vicarious-sinner idea, " wicked 
 as a red ass " became a Coptic proverb. In the same vein, 
 the Nagas to this day select red cocks for augury and 
 sacrifice. Not that red was always an honoured tint. Cain's 
 hair, they say, was red, and Nebuchadnezzar's, for his sins, 
 was turned to the same colour. 
 
 As for its voice, "the loud clarion of the braying ass," 
 as Pope calls it, the donkey fares badly at poets' hands. 
 And, indeed, I defy any one to hear a donkey fairly out and 
 not to laugh at the cavernous melancholy of the animal's 
 concluding notes. It commences with an ardour that has 
 something of military enthusiasm in it, but suddenly, as if 
 the memory of secret griefs had supervened, the voice drops 
 from the full-breathed outcry that rings across the Bikaneer 
 wastes, to a dolorous pumping up of hollow groans and 
 husky sobs that had justified the venerable Philemon in his 
 mirthful death far better than the sight of a donkey eating 
 figs. But Philemon, poor dry old soul, was in his ninety- 
 seventh year, and needed no great excuse for dying. Yet 
 if I had to find some excuse myself for dying of laughter, 
 when I was only three years off the century, I think I 
 should have myself transported to some spot on the banks 
 of holy Ganges where Hindoo washermen congregate, and 
 there pleasantly demise while laughing at their donkeys 
 braying. 
 
 " To all the echoes south and north, 
 
 And east and west, the ass sent forth 
 
 A loud and piteous bray." 
 
 And again — 
 
 " Once more the ass did lengthen out 
 More ruefully an endless shout, 
 The long, dry, see-saw of his horrid bray." 
 
Asses and Apes. 125 
 
 Wordsworth, like the other poets, here recognises the 
 melancholy of the donkey's voice, but (like the others), 
 afraid of making the animal natural, takes no notice of the 
 unrivalled ludicrousness of the sounds it produces. When 
 it frightened John Gilpin's horse, the ass " did sing most 
 loud and clear," but this is the nearest approach to appre- 
 ciation of this great jest of Nature that I know of in verse. 
 
 Not that even its voice is altogether ridiculous. " The 
 braying of Silenus his ass " {iiitempestivos edidit ore sonos) 
 " conduced much to the profiigation of the giants." 
 
 " So, when at Bathos earth's big offspring strove 
 To scale the skies, and wage a war wiih Jove, 
 Soon as the ass of old Silenus brayed, 
 The trembling rebels in confusion fled." 1 
 
 And though the " auctor damoris " may be subsequently 
 sacrificed, it is not from any depreciation of his resonant 
 services, but rather in recognition of them. It finds honour- 
 able mention in Holy Writ, and in the Ass-mass of the 
 monks, commemorative of the flight into Egypt — 
 
 " Asinus egregius, 
 Asinus dominorum, 
 
 Super dromedarios 
 Velox Madianeos," 
 
 there was a hee-haw refrain, the choir on one side taking 
 the hee, and on the other the haw. Moreover, in the myths 
 of many countries, and the fairy tales of nearly all, the 
 donkey's voice plays sometimes a serious and important 
 part. 
 
 " Ah ! those dreadful yells, what soul can hear 
 That owns a carcase and not quake for fear ? 
 Demons produce them doubtless, brazen-clawed 
 And fanged with brass, the demons are abroad.'* 2 
 
 1 Garth, "The Dispensary." 2 Cowj.tr, "Needless Alarms." 
 
i 26 TJic Poets Beasts. 
 
 Its character in fable and folk-lore is not always that 
 which the poets attribute to it. It has other traits than 
 stupidity and credulity. For though it is outwitted and 
 betrayed by the fox, it outwits the wolf, and kicks all its 
 teeth down its throat. Though it absurdly proposes to 
 chirp like a grasshopper, and undertakes the role of lap-dog, 
 it philosophises very sagaciously on the fortunes of the 
 war-horse. 
 
 " The a^s, whom Nature reason has denied, 
 Content with instinct for his surer guide, 
 Still follows that and wiselier does proceed ; 
 He ne'er aspires with his harsh braying note 
 The songsters of the wood to challenge out ; 
 Nor, like this awkward smatterer in arts, 
 Sets up himself for a vain ass of parts." 1 
 
 The frogs, it is true, make fun of it, but the ass in turn 
 flouts the mule. Under a mistaken sense of its own powers, 
 it amiably proposes to serenade the beasts — Swift calls it 
 " the nightingale of brutes " — and, with a self-respect that 
 is not unbecoming, falls into the error of supposing that 
 the homage paid to the image which it carries is intended 
 for itself. But, on the other hand, it is always found sen- 
 sibly selecting creature-comforts over mere vain-glory, and 
 possessed of a considerable sense of humour. Till its glee 
 overcame its discretion, the donkey in the lion's skin had 
 a " high old time of it," as the Americans say, and kept all 
 the beasts of the forest in a ridiculous stampede by its well- 
 acted part ; and I can quite understand the long-eared one 
 laughing prodigiously over the consternation and hubbub 
 he was causing. Indeed, I am half inclined to think, with 
 Bloomfield, that when the donkey played the part of the 
 " Fakenham Ghost " he did so with full sense of the prac- 
 tical joke. 
 
 1 Oldham, "Satires of Baileau Imitated." 
 
Asses and Apes. 127 
 
 Xor while mirthful itself has it failed to conduce to mirth 
 in others, for, besides Philemon's disastrous cachination, 
 we know that Chrisippus also fatally over-laughed himself 
 on seeing an ass eat apples off a silver dish, and that 
 Agelastus (Crassus of that ilk) only laughed once in all his 
 life, and that was on seeing an ass eat thistles. 
 
 Butler, I may note, confounds these two catastrophes for 
 the sake of his rhyme — 
 
 " Or he that laughed until he choked his whistle 
 To rally on an ass that ate a thistle." 
 
 The poets, however, have recognised only one aspect 
 of the animal, namely, the familiar " cuddy," and, of its 
 classical and historical honours, only two or three. " The 
 blameless animal " of Balaam finds due reference ; but, so 
 it seems to me, in order to point a personality or a jest. 
 Thus Crashawe — 
 
 " The ass of old had power to chide its wilful lord, 
 And hast not thou the power to speak one word ? 
 Not less a marvel, sure, this silence is in thee, 
 Than that the ass of old to speak had liberty.'" 1 
 
 1 Crashawe has the same idea again ; applied, however, to the ass 
 that carried the infant Saviour into Egypt. He says to it — 
 
 " Hath only anger an omnipotence 
 
 In eloquence ? 
 Within the lips of love and joy doth dwell 
 
 No miracle ? 
 Why else had Balaam's ass a tongue to chide 
 
 His master's pride. 
 And thou (Heaven-burthened beast) hast ne'er a word 
 
 To praise thy Lord ? 
 That he should find a tongue in vocal thunder 
 
 Was a great wonder ; 
 But oh ! methinks 'tis a far greater one 
 
 That thou rind'st none." 
 
128 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Marvel has — 
 
 " We ought to be wary and bridle our tongue, 
 Bold speaking hath done both man and beast wrong. 
 When the ass so boldly rebuked the prophet, 
 Thou know' st what danger had like to come of it. 
 Though the beast gave his master ne'er an ill word, 
 Instead of cudgel Balaam wished for a sword." 
 
 As an occupant of the stable on the first Christmas Day, 
 it commands deference. Faber curiously and pleasantly 
 explains its patience thus — 
 
 " For long the ass with silent shadowy head 
 Gszed on the infant Saviour. 
 
 And for the ass 
 To gaze on Him who saves both man and beast, 
 Lifted his patient nature to a calm 
 Transcending far the purposes of sleep." 
 
 Allan Ramsay has a donkey that is a very particular fool 
 — " egregiously an ass," as Othello says; but Peter Bell's, 
 on the other hand, is an unnatural monster of drivelling 
 intelligence. Crabbe, however, strikes the just middle in 
 his " Resentment " — 
 
 " Close at the door where he was wont to dwell, 
 There his sole friend, the ass, was standing by, 
 Half dead himself to see his master die." 
 
 But there were many asses (besides those I have already 
 referred to) of which the world has wide cognisance. The 
 'Bricklebrit" donkey that wept sequins; Ali Baba's drove; 
 the ass with the silver nose that hunted hares, and the 
 little ass which the Queen bore and that itself married a 
 queen ; the donkey-cabbages and the musician of Bremen 
 — yet nowhere in folk-lore is it odious or even unlovable. 
 But the poets have need of an animal that shall illustrate, 
 as they think, an easy sneer, so when they do not use the 
 owl they use the donkey. 
 
Asses and Apes. 129 
 
 Metaphors and images are therefore abundantly drawn 
 from this animal. Every one, from Moore's Sovereign — 
 
 " A royal ass, by grace divine 
 And right of ears, most asinine," 
 
 to Crabbe's Schoolboy, is pelted with the epithet. 
 
 " The man's a donkey — let him bray," suffices in Mackay 
 to stand by itself as all-sufficient and not requiring explana- 
 tion. Mankind in general belong to the species : says 
 Cowper — 
 
 " Man is the genuine offspring of revolt, 
 Stubborn and sturdy, a wild ass's colt." 
 
 So do nations collectively and separately ; as in Byron — 
 
 " The world is a bundle of hay, 
 
 Mankind are the asses who pull ; 
 Each tugs it a different way, 
 
 And the greatest of all is John Bull." 
 
 Or as Oldham in his Satires, placing a donkey in London, 
 asks — 
 
 " What would he think on a Lord Mayor's Day 
 Should he the pomp and pageantry survey, 
 Or view the judges and their solemn train 
 March with grave decency to kill a man ? 
 
 What would he say, were he condemned to stand 
 For one long hour in Fleet Street or the Strand ; 
 To cast his eyes upon the motley throng, 
 The two-legged herd, that daily pass along ? 
 
 If, after prospect of all this, the ass 
 
 Should find the voice he had in /Esop's days, 
 
 Then, doctor, then, casting his eyes around 
 
 On human fools, which everywhere abound, 
 
 Content with thistles, from all envy free, 
 
 And shaking his grave head, no doubt he'd cry, 
 
 Good failh ! man is a beast as much as we ! " 
 
 I 
 
150 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Individual classes of persons are specifically asses. Thus, 
 in Falconer, kir.gs — 
 
 " 'While fools adore and vassal lords obey, 
 
 :he great ■ 
 
 and. in Barry Corr. . aldermen — 
 
 " Oh ! the tradesman he is rich, sirs, 
 The bna well :: | 
 
 The soldier he's a lion, 
 The alderman's an a- 
 
 Lovers — "the grave lover ever was an ass" (Johns:: 
 sailors — "though he. plays the ass on shore, he is lion of 
 the sea" (Cook); and courtiers (Moore — 
 
 r.o one imr 
 To the Court any fancy to persecute brutes, 
 Protests, on the word of himself and his cr : 
 Thai res been asses and ponies, 
 
 e Court would have started no sort of objection, 
 As Asses were .on." 
 
 And. need I say it, critics : as in King — 
 
 " The twilight owl and serious ass 
 
 . e ds for modem critics pass." 
 
 Individual personages addressed by this title are "too 
 numerous to mention," 5 and, from Swift's Duke of Marl- 
 borough to Byron's Wordsworth, they are most of them 
 not only ass, but partly also ape. 
 
 Summing up, then, the poets' donkeys, I find them a 
 dull pack, for the poets as a rule seem to use the animal 
 merely as the schoolboy does — as affording a ready epithet of 
 abuse that comes within the comprehension of the meanest 
 capacity — and to agree with Bums that the donkeys thick 
 hide l was given it by a compassionate Providence as a pro- 
 
 1 ■ Thou gavest the ass his hide, the snail his die —To R. Graham. 
 
Asses and Apes. 1 3 1 
 
 vision against pre-ordained cudgelling. But if any other 
 view of the Ass be worth taking, I venture to think the 
 poets should have been the first to find it out and to 
 utilise it. 
 
 APES. 
 
 "Freakish monkey" {Oldham) ; "abhorred baboons" {Montgomery) ; 
 "apes with hateful stare" (Ho:d). 
 
 The poets' apes — under which name I include (with due 
 apologies to naturalists) the baboons and monkeys — are a 
 deplorable creation. They are not " hateful " in the natural 
 sense that the octopus or man-eating tigers or rattlesnakes 
 might be, but they are unnaturally deformed into a despi- 
 cable travesty of man at his worst and meanest. "A 
 chattering, idle, airy kind," as Parnell calls them, is just 
 criticism, and so is Shelley's "restless apes;" and so, too, 
 Morris' " quick-chattering apes that yet in mockery of 
 anxious men wrinkle their brows," for these are epithets 
 from Nature ; but it is scarcely generous, I think, first of all 
 to fancy a questionable resemblance between ourselves and 
 monkeys, and then to abuse the monkey for all the vices and 
 meannesses of the worst among us. The ape, they say, is 
 the worst kind of a libel on a man — and an ape besides. 
 Having reduced the human to its lowest, they call the 
 monkey human and add " brute " besides ! The truth is, 
 as the wise of all times have pointed out, man has a grudge 
 against the Simian folk for being so like himself in body. 
 Other animals, less amiable in themselves, are accepted 
 with resignation, condoned with apologies, or treated with 
 deference. But, as Congreve says — 
 
 " Baboons and apes ridiculous we find, 
 For what ? for ill-resembling human kind ; " 
 
132 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 and poets find them worse than ridiculous : they find them 
 every whit as bad as men. Says Goldsmith — 
 
 " Of beasts it is confessed the ape 
 Comes nearest us in human shape ; 
 Like man, he imitates each fashion, 
 And malice is his ruling passion." 
 
 And yet, when the monkey itself suggests that it is a man, 
 parrots and foxes are deputed to laugh down its' pretensions. 
 Says one of the species, in Barry Cornwall — 
 
 " For a monkey is much on a par with man. 
 
 There's a difference 
 
 Parrot. Ho, ho ! I shall crack my sides. 
 Monkey. Though few see't till we sit side by side. 
 On the one hand a man has a longer nose, 
 And struts in clean linen wherever he goes ; 
 
 But what has he like to the monkey's tail ? 
 
 P,irrot. Ho! ho! ho ! ho !" 
 
 And again in Spenser's delightful " Mother Hubberd's 
 Tale," when the fox and ape rob the sleeping lion of his 
 sceptre, crown, and robe, and then fall to disputing as to 
 who should wear the regalia, the ape claims the preference 
 over its companion on the ground of its resemblance to 
 man. 
 
 " Then too I am in person, in stature, 
 
 Most like a man, the lord of every creature." 
 
 But the fox flouts it — 
 
 " Where you claim yourself for outward shape 
 Most like a man, man is not like an ape 
 In his chief parts, that is, in wit and spirit." 
 
 So in JEso\), when the ape, passing through a graveyard, 
 falls to deplorable weeping, its comrade, the donkey, asks 
 the reason for such immoderate melancholy, and at the 
 ape"s reply that it always weeps thus when in the presence 
 
Asses and Apes. 133 
 
 of its "poor dead ancestors," the long-eared one laughs 
 hugely. 
 
 This resemblance, however, being postulated, the poets 
 run easily on to debit the ape and its cousins with every 
 human weakness that is especially contemptible. They are 
 "pert" and "vain" and "dapper" in a score of poets; 
 "coxcombs," "beaux," "lady-killers," in others. Now, 
 every one of these epithets connotes a purely artificial 
 character, and are all of them therefore inapplicable to the 
 animal world. 
 
 It is the "monkey-beau," "the buffoon-ape " — 
 
 " Long did the beau claim kindred with the ape, 
 And shone a monkey of sublimer shape ; 
 Skilful to flirt the hat, the cane, the glove, 
 And wear the pert grimace of monkey-love ; 
 Of words unmeaning poured a ceaseless flood, 
 While ladies looked as if they understood ; 
 So chats one monkey to his brother, 
 Chatters as if he understood the other." — Leyden. 
 
 " The mimic apes " " that love to practise what they 
 see." 
 
 Yet, except in these very restricted phases, the poets have 
 seldom sought for metaphor or moral from these singularly 
 suggestive animals. Young finds an analogy between the 
 monkey grasping at the reflection in the glass and man 
 striving to find happiness in riches — 
 
 " As monkeys at a mirror stand amazed — 
 They fail to find what they so plainly see ; 
 Thus men in shining riches see the face 
 Of happiness, nor know it is a shade, 
 But gaze, and touch, and peep and peep again, 
 And wish, and wonder it is absent still." 
 
 The ape epithet is applied as liberally and promiscuously 
 as the asinine, and falls therefore on many of the same 
 classes and individuals. Mankind generally are apes as 
 
134 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 well as asses, and so are certain nations, notably Frenchmen 
 • — " monkeys in action, parroquets in talk " — and so again 
 also certain classes of men and women, such as courtiers, 
 lovers, and {horresco referens) critics — 
 
 " The critics hence may think themselves decreed 
 To jerk their wits and rail at all they read, 
 Foes to the tribe from which they trace their clan, 
 As monkeys draw their pedigree from man." 
 
 — Fenton's Epistle. 
 
 Nor does the alderman escape this time either, for, 
 though he is freely written down an ass, Somerville says — 
 
 " A genius can't be forced, nor can 
 You make an ape an alderman." 
 
 Asses and apes in fact go together with much of the same 
 arbitrary association as the bat and the owl among the poets' 
 " birds." Anything or anybody that the poet takes a fancy 
 to dislike for the moment is either ape or ass, or both. To 
 such curious extremes is this sometimes carried that Ambi- 
 tion is both monkey and donkey. Says Herbert, " the 
 higher the ape goes the more he shows his tail ; " x and 
 again Young — 
 
 " What Nature has denied fools will pursue, 
 As apes are ever walking upon two." 
 
 1 Herbert forgets apes have no tails at all. This loss of the caudal 
 ornament is accounted for by Spenser as follows : The ape and fox 
 having stolen the sleeping lion's crown and usurped his palace, mis- 
 govern so infamously that high Jove is incensed, wakes up the slum- 
 bering monarch, and tells him what has happened. The lion returns 
 roaring to his palace, bursts in and captures the usurpers : — 
 
 " The ape's long taile (which then he had) he quight 
 Cut off, and both eares pared of their height ; 
 Since which all apes but half their eares have left, 
 And of their tailes are utterly bereft." 
 
Asses and Apes. 135 
 
 While in Shenstone, ambition " pricks up asses' ears ! ' 
 Again Rochester, in his attack upon Sir Car Scrope, makes 
 the knight both ape and ass — 
 
 " When in thy person we more clearly see 
 That satire's of divine authority, 
 For God made one on man when he made thee, 
 To show there were some men, as there are apes, 
 Framed for mere sport, who differ but in shapes : 
 In thee are all these contradictions joined, 
 That make an ass prodigious and refined." 
 
 Yet the monkey is not a fool — certainly not " a fool of 
 the greatest size," as Christiana would say. In fables it is 
 often the butt of other creatures, but it is its inquisitiveness 
 as a rule that gets it into trouble, not its folly. The poets 
 describe it as half an idiot, and with very bad intentions — 
 "just skilled to know the right and choose the wrong" — 
 but I have so often myself taken advantage in their wild 
 forest state of their generous credulity and otherwise laud- 
 able thirst for knowledge, that I speak as an expert when 
 I say that though I have harmlessly astonished them with 
 trains of gunpowder and frightened a whole community 
 out of all gravity by striping one of their number an agree- 
 able vermilion, I never saw anything in their behaviour, 
 sober or drunk, composed or alarmed, that led me to think 
 them particularly foolish, as compared with men. Indeed, 
 when undisturbed in mind the monkey has a philosophical 
 gravity which attracts my admiration, although I confess 
 the alternating fits of monkey frivolity and indecorum 
 exasperate me. 
 
 " Since Father Noah squeezed the grape 
 And took to such behaving 
 As would have shamed our grandsire ape 
 Before the days of shaving." x 
 
 1 Weudell Holmes. 
 
136 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 If they would only sit still a little longer and look me 
 fairly in the eyes, I should like to ask the monkey, baboon, 
 or ape some questions of which the solutions interest me 
 greatly. Why are they always so sad-faced, when evidently 
 the most content? And where is "the missing link? : ' Is 
 it true that they speak among themselves in a lingua franco 
 of their own, and that under the impulse of hidden panic 
 they can articulate ? 
 
 I remember once, in India, hearing at the Allahabad 
 Club of a monkey which in a frenzy of terror had called 
 out to its native attendant by name. It had seen a cobra 
 coming towards it, and distinctly articulated its master's 
 servant's name — so, at any rate, more than one person 
 vouched for. Is then the tradition correct that monkeys 
 refuse to talk lest they should be made to work ? 
 
 " Play at dummy like the monkeys 
 
 For fear mankind should make them flunkeys."' 
 
 I should like, too, to ask them about the ape-faced men 
 of Tartary and the Soko and the Pongo, Susumete and 
 Engeena, and to get at the truth about Du Chaillu's gorillas. 
 But as they are, the monkeys are impossible in conversation. 
 They are too sudden, too unforeseen in their transformations 
 from sense to ribaldry to be rational, too furtive in expression 
 to be straightforward in reply, too fond of scratching neigh- 
 bours to keep to the point. What a curious community of 
 fur this is, by the way ! I know nothing like it, except the 
 unanimous scratching of Hindoo fakirs. 
 
 They seem to me sometimes to be the " fatal children " 
 of the animal world, predestined to go wrong. They do 
 not, it is true, rise to the achievements of King Arthur, Sir 
 Tristram of Bevis, or Olga the Dane, Teiephos, Perseus or 
 CEdipus, or any other of the famous "sons of sorrow,'' but 
 they often arrive innocently like them at great catastrophes, 
 their Kismet apparently leading them by the nose right up 
 
Asses and Apes. 137 
 
 to, and over the precipice. At other times they seem 
 deliberately affecting humanity, just as Bunyan had a craze 
 to be thought a Jew; at others they convene in solemn 
 assembly on purpose, so it seems, to burlesque us, for the 
 whole Sanhedrim when assembled will gravely fall to, and 
 search the fur of the smallest of the congregation ; very 
 much as Domitian would ceremoniously convene the Senate, 
 and then ask them the best stuffing for a mullet. 
 
 As they exist in Nature — the sunny, merry, monkey-world 
 of tree-tops — the four-handed folk meet with hardly a refer- 
 ence. In his " Reign of Summer," Montgomery brings them 
 into the dread presence of the jaguar — 
 
 " The monkeys in grotesque amaze 
 Down from their bending perches gaze ; 
 But when he lifts his eye of fire, 
 Quick to the topmost boughs retire." 
 
 And again in the "Pelican Island" we have a glimpse of 
 wild life — 
 
 " A monkey pilfering a parrot's nest, 
 But ere he bore the precious spoil away 
 Surprised behind by beaks and wings and claws 
 That made him scamper gibbering." 
 
 And once more — 
 
 " The small monkeys capering on the boughs 
 And rioting on nectar and ambrosia, 
 The produce of that paradise run wild ; 
 No — these were merry if they were not wise." 
 
 But even Montgomery, with an unusual deviation from his 
 characteristic sympathy with the animal world, breaks off 
 suddenly into abuse of the monkey cousins, the baboons — 
 
 " Man's untutored hordes were sour and sullen 
 Like those abhorred baboons, whose gluttonous taste 
 They followed safely in their choice of food, 
 And whose brute semblance of humanity 
 
138 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Made them more hideous than their prototypes 
 That bore the genuine image and inscription, 
 Defaced, indeed, but yet indelible." 
 
 This poetical reversion of the more orthodox theory of 
 evolution is curious. 
 
 Rogers gives a passing line to " the marmoset," that 
 
 " Dreams on his bough and plays the mimic still." 
 
 And Gay out of his fancy draws an excellent picture of the 
 " bhunder-logue " on the Ganges — 
 
 " Ah ! sir, you never saw the Ganges — 
 There dwell the nations called Quidnunkies 
 (So Monomotapa calls monkeys) ; 
 On either bank, from bough to bough 
 They meet and chat (as we may nov 
 Whispers go round, they grin, they shrug, 
 They bow, they snarl, they scratch, they hug, 
 And just as chance or whim provokes them, 
 They either bite their friends or stroke them." 
 
 But, as usual, this is only the introduction of spiteful 
 analogy — 
 
 " Thus have I seen some active prig 
 To show his parts, bestride a twig ; 
 L — d ! how the chattering tribe admire ! 
 Not that he's wiser, but he's higher ; 
 All long to try the vent'rous thing 
 (For pow'r is but to have one's swing) ; 
 
 From side to side he springs, he spurns, 
 And bangs his foes and friends by turns." 
 
 The tremendous honours of the tribe in the Egypt of the 
 past, the India of to-day, receive no fuller recognition than 
 in such lines as Oldham's — 
 
 " In Egypt oft has seen the sot bow down 
 And reverence some deified baboon." 
 
Asses and Apes. 139 
 
 Nothing more than this ! — for these decayed divinities of 
 an old-world worship, for the green monkey of Ethiopia that 
 had a shrine in every temple in Memphis ; for Thoth, the 
 god of letters ; the moon, the Bacchus of the Nile ; for 
 Pthah, the all-wise pigmy baboon that Hermopolis revered ; 
 for "the wise ones," the sacred monkeys and baboons of 
 Hindostan ; the ourangs, "the wise old men" of Malaya; 
 for the creatures that the Sanskrit renders as the sun, the 
 insignia of Arjuna, the dread son of Indra ; for Sugrivas, 
 prince of the baboons and Balin the snow-white ape ; for the 
 great "pluvial monkey" — delicious beast — that Gubernatis is 
 so wise about ; for the " Lords " of the Benares temples ; for 
 the lineal posterity of Hanuman himself ! Was ever a more 
 tremendous monkey, ape, or man, than the long-tailed friend 
 of Rama ? How magnificent his flight across Asia ! The 
 rivers in their courses turned, the trees on the hills tore 
 themselves up by their roots, the mountains themselves 
 swayed over, to follow in the fierce rush of the current 
 made by his passage ! And then, was ever tail greased, 
 before or since, to such momentous purpose as when 
 Hanuman let the Philistines of Ceylon grease his, thinking, 
 poor dupes, that the strength would go out of him thereby : 
 and then, rising Samson-like, he sets his own tail ablaze, 
 and, rushing through the royal city of Lanka, fires it in 
 every quarter, and from a neighbouring peak surveys, in 
 the tranquil complacency of accomplished revenge, the pro- 
 digious conflagration ! 
 
VI. 
 
 SOME HARMLESS BEASTS. 
 
 In proportion as beasts are harmless, and less useful there- 
 fore for comparison with the wickednesses and failings of 
 men, the poets appear to find them uninteresting. Amia- 
 bility among wild animals, unaccompanied by utility to man, 
 would seem to be considered a deviation from poetical 
 requirements which ought not to be encouraged. At any 
 rate, to the lover of wild nature, the poets' treatment of the 
 beasts appears to be a perpetual cynicism. But. inasmuch 
 as many of the "harmless" animals — the elephant, beaver, 
 deer, camel, bison, and so forth — contribute to the welfare 
 of human beings, the poets' survey of them, though of a 
 distant, half-hearted kind, is not unfriendly. 
 
 Thus, they compliment the elephant, "the huge earth- 
 shaking beast" that hath "a serpent twixt his eyes," on its 
 unusual sagacity and on employing it in the service of man, 
 remember the beaver's fur in its favour, credit the camel with 
 conveying merchandise across deserts with great patience, 
 and do not overlook the claims of the bison upon the hunter 
 who eats him. Others, again, like the rhinoceros and hippo- 
 potamus, do not, so far as the poets know, contribute directly 
 to the comfort of humanity, nor do they attack man. They 
 are addressed therefore not only without acrimony, but with- 
 out sentiment of any kind. Each is a name for a very large 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 141 
 
 beast which man by his superior intelligence and strength 
 can always overcome when he chooses. 
 
 " His arm can pluck the lion from his prey, 
 And hold the horned rhinoceros at bay." 
 
 A conspicuous exception to all the rest, however, is the 
 poets' treatment of the deer. It is the dove among the 
 beasts. And the hind and the fawn are the turtle-doves. 
 
 But it is evident to me, studying the poets among their 
 animals, that very few indeed cared for any one of the 
 beasts any further than it assisted them to a simile for 
 something human. That this can be justified I easily 
 allow ; but at the same time it is a matter for fair surprise 
 that pods, when the name of a wild beast suggested to them 
 a mental picture of the actual thing in Nature, did not 
 enrich their bald references with one or other of the many 
 beautiful and picturesque images which are at once con- 
 jured up. 
 
 Had I been born a poet, I should never have tired, for 
 instance, so it seems to me, of the elephant symbol — 
 
 " The huge elephant, wisest of brutes ! 
 O truly wise, with gentle might endowed, 
 Though powerful not destructive." 
 
 It is so comprehensive, so intelligent, so versatile. Elephants 
 do most things that men do, and a great many besides that 
 men cannot. Every one of them is a whole Cleopatra's- 
 needle-full of hieroglyphics and significances. They knock 
 down the walls of houses with their foreheads and pick 
 up pins with their trunks. One elephant bumping against 
 another knocks it over, yet elephants have been taught to 
 dance on the tight-rope. It seems to have most of the 
 virtues in ordinary times of an honest man ; at others it 
 develops a depth of cunning malignity that all the Newgate 
 calendar cannot match. However, this is not the poets' 
 elephant. 
 
142 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Behold the castle-bearing elephant 
 That wants no bulk, nor doth his greatness want 
 An equal strength. Behold his massy bones 
 Like bars of iron ; like congealed stones 
 His knotty sinews are ; him have I made, 
 And given him natural weapons for his aid. 
 High mountains bear his food, the shady boughs 
 His cover are, great rivers are his troughs, 
 Whose deep carouses would to standers-by 
 Seem at a watering to drain Jordan dry. 
 What skilful huntsman can with strength outdare him ? 
 Or with what engines can a man ensnare him ? " 
 
 So speaks Job Militant ; and after Quarles many poets 
 refer to the "elephant endorsed with towers," the "castled 
 elephant," the " towered elephant," and so forth, omitting 
 to remember how those same swine which they so much 
 reproach and ridicule once wrought havoc in the " embattled 
 front of elephants proud-turreted." The story is a simple 
 one, and better perhaps in the original English. Alexander, 
 invading India, was told that elephants were terrified at 
 pigs, and finding opposed to him a formidable array of 
 " olyphauntes berynge castelles of trees on theyr bakkes 
 and knyghtes in ye castelles for ye batayle," the great 
 Emathian ordered up a drove of swine to the front of his 
 army, and the " jarrynge of ye pygges " upset the olyphauntes 
 altogether, for we read that they began "to fie eche one 
 and keste down ye castelles and slewe ye knyghtes. By this 
 meane Alysaundre had ye vyctorie." 
 
 It is a creature of colossal bulk, yet it is the most gently 
 docile of man's servants j indeed, almost of creatures. 
 
 " Calm amidst scenes of havoc, in his own 
 Huge strength impregnable, the elephant 
 Offended none : but led his quiet life 
 Among his old contemporary trees." 
 
 Though of vast strength, it is curiously sensitive to small 
 annoyances. It detests the squeaking of mice. Mosquitoes 
 
So7iie Harmless Beasts. 143 
 
 infuriate it. In the fable, the frog and the ant compel it 
 to commit suicide out of sheer misery. Spenser's elephant, 
 assailed by an ant, is one of the poet's types of the 
 "World's Vanity"— 
 
 " Soone after this I saw an elephant, 
 Adorned with bells and bosses gorgeouslie, 
 That on his backe did beare (as batteilant) 
 A gilden tovvre, which shone exceedinglie ; 
 That he himselfe, through foolish vanitie, 
 Both for his rich attire, and goodly forme, 
 Was puffed up with passing surquedrie, 
 And shortly gan all other beasts to scorn e. 
 Till that a little ant, a silly worme, 
 Into his nostrils creeping, so him pained, 
 That, casting down his towres, he did deforme 
 Both borrowed pride, and native beautie stained. 
 Let, therefore, nought that great is therein glory, 
 Sith so small a thing his happines may varie." 
 
 But infinitely more admirable than its mammoth bulk 
 (in itself no credit to it), or its strength, so often perverted 
 to bad ends, is the character of the elephant's intelligence. 
 It is almost human, not because it imitates, but because it 
 draws rational deductions and acts upon them. 
 
 To give one illustration only, an original one. An 
 elephant, when driven every day from the stables at Agra, 
 found his passage inconvenienced by a post standing up in 
 the path. To this post a monkey was chained, and the 
 elephant and the monkey were good friends. But one 
 day, on coming out as usual, Behemoth found Pug gone, 
 and, concluding that the tiresome post was of no further 
 use, wrenched it up and passed on comfortably. Now, so 
 long as the monkey was chained to the post the elephant 
 recognised its utility, and accepted without complaint the 
 inconvenience it caused him. But as soon as the reason 
 for the post ceased to be obvious he removed the obstruc- 
 tion. 
 
144 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 This intelligence makes the giant a very valuable ally of 
 man ; for once it recognises that its driver is a careful and 
 trustworthy person, it abandons its natural timidity and 
 develops an extraordinary sense of discipline. But if the 
 driver is changed, the next man has to satisfy the elephant 
 as to his moral character and personal reliability ab initio. 
 Elephants take nothing on trust — except the pitfalls with 
 which Thomson s Asiatics and Somerville's Africans " mine 
 with cruel avarice his steps." 
 
 " And now the treach'rous turf 
 Trembling gives way, and the unwieldy beast, 
 Self-sinking, drops into the gulf profound." 
 
 This splendid beast is one of the few indisputable relics 
 of the epoch of giants, the last survivor of the mastodons 
 and mammoths that the sons of Noah hunted. In Jean 
 Ingelow's poem, the wife of " the world's great shipwright " 
 has allowed the lads, our progenitors, to go out mammoth- 
 hunting, and is anxious about them — 
 
 " For they are young. Their slaves are few, 
 The giant elephants be cunning folk ; 
 They lie in ambush, and will draw men on 
 To follow — then will turn and tread them down." 
 
 And I think, too, there is something very striking in the 
 fact of the elephant being gregarious in death. They lay 
 their bones in the vaults of their ancestors, and socially 
 defer to the solemnity of the rites of sepulture. 
 
 In eastern warfare it is still to this day as conspicuous 
 as when (in Somerville) — 
 
 '• High upon his throne, 
 Borne on the back of his proud elephant, 
 Sate the great chief of Timur's glorious race ; 
 Sublime he sate amid the radiant blaze 
 Of gems and gold ;" 
 
 for the elephant can carry loads over places impracticable 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 145 
 
 for wheels, but it is no longer the " castelle " whence war- 
 riors fight, though it carries the standards of princes in 
 front of their hosts, and is the rallying-point and centre for 
 the fiercest conflicts. 
 
 " From the dread front of ancient war 
 Less terror frowned ; her scythed car, 
 Her castled elephant and batt'ring beam, 
 Stoop to those engines which deny 
 Superior terrors to the sky, 
 And boast their clouds, their thunder, and their flame." 
 
 But of itself it takes no part in war, no longer 
 
 " rages 'mid the mortal fray, 
 the madness of mankind." 
 
 In man's warfare against wild beasts it still, however, 
 retains all the importance of the olden time when the 
 Moguls went out against the striped terror of the jungles, 
 and 
 
 " high upon his throne, ' 
 ne on the back of his proud elephant, 
 Sate the great chief of Timur's giorious race." 
 
 Of all animals it is the most majestic figure in Oriental 
 mythology. The gods loved the colossal brute, but by- 
 and-by, when Vishnu had warred with Indra, it became 
 an object of fear to the Celestials. Then came forth the 
 vulture-god to fight with the elephant. It is the Atlas of 
 Hindostan, an elephant standing at each corner of the earth 
 — what a noble image ! As the symbol of strength it was 
 among the honorific titles of the greatest emperors, and the 
 supreme significance in their architecture. As the emblem 
 of intelligence the gods of India wear its head. The state- 
 liness of its walk gives the invariable simile of grace with 
 dignity to the poets of the East. In its gloomy bulk 
 mythology sees the steed of the pluvial god, the Rain-cloud. 
 So Keats nobly beheld it — 
 
 K 
 
146 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Up-piled 
 The cloudy rack slow journeying in the west 
 Like herded elephants." 
 
 The white elephant — curiously enough a " demoniacal " 
 form of the animal in Vedic myth — meets with only humo- 
 rous reference as a monstrous monstrosity, though the im- 
 mense dignities of this beast from time immemorial should 
 perhaps have invested it with a somewhat mysterious dignity. 
 Morris, however, has " huge elephants, snow-white, with 
 gilded tusks." " The elephant," or " the lord of elephants," 
 is a distinction proudly assumed by many rajahs ; but " the 
 white elephant," or " the lord of the white elephant," only 
 by the premier prince of Hindostan or a sovereign. Then, 
 too, that white elephant of Vedic myth who malignantly 
 hunts the hermits up and down the hills of India, allowing 
 them no leisure for meditation on their travels, who is the 
 mortal enemy of Jatayus the bird-god, the adversary in 
 eternal conflict of the tortoise and afterwards of Garuda, 
 the eagle-deity, but whose ultimate ruin, as already foretold 
 in legend, will be wrought by a sparrow — what a delightful 
 personage he is ! 
 
 Elephant sagacity is of course notorious — 
 
 " The huge elephant, wisest of brutes ! 
 O truly wise, with gentle might endowed 
 Though powerful." 
 
 "Take from the elephant instruction wise," says Cun- 
 ningham ; " the wise and fearless elephant " (Shelley), and 
 so on with many others. Its great age is hardly less widely 
 accepted — 
 
 " As though lie drank from Indian floods 
 Life in a renovating stream ; 
 Ages o'er him have come and fled, 
 'Midst generations of the dead 
 His bulk survives." 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 147 
 
 Thomson, Montgomery, and Drayton, all, curiously enough, 
 like to think of it as coeval with the trees among which it 
 lives — "its old contemporary trees." Equally familiar is 
 the fiction of the elephant sleeping standing, in consequence 
 of its having no joints in its legs — as thus, in Swift and 
 Herbert — 
 
 " For elephants ne'er bend the knee." 
 " Most things sleep lying ; the elephant leans or stands." 
 
 Montgomery also has — 
 
 " The palm which he was wont to make 
 His prop in siumber." 
 
 Another agreeable fiction is the hereditary feud which 
 the elephant maintains against its neighbour the rhinoceros. 
 Says Adam (in Cowper) — 
 
 " Behold that dusky beast 
 That with white tusks of an enormous size extends its weighty jr.w ; 
 That now forgetting to revere the moon, 
 Intractable, r erocious, beyond its native temper, 
 Rushes in anger with its fibrous trunk that serves it for a nose, 
 Against the horn which the rhinoceros sharpens of hardest stone." 
 
 Was ever greater nonsense given to the world before as 
 poetry? Cowper knew something about hares' rumps, but 
 nothing about rhinoceros' horns or elephants' noses. And 
 imagine Adam, who was a thorough naturalist not only by 
 inspiration but personal observation, talking in such slip- 
 shod manner about a beast he knew so well — presuming it 
 to have existed. And the suspicion of plagiarism is added 
 to the absurdity by reading in Glover how — 
 
 " In the wastes of India, while the earth 
 Beneath him groans, the elephant is seen 
 His huge proboscis writhing, to defy 
 The strong rhinoceros, whose pond'rous horn • 
 Is newly whetted on a rock."' l 
 
 1 Pliny -ay=, on an agate, hence this frequent error. 
 
1 4S TJie Poets Beasts. 
 
 It was evidently a moot point with the poets whether the 
 elephant or the rhinoceros were the better in open lists. As 
 a rule, they are merely seen (as in Glover's poem) at the 
 opening of the duel — 
 
 " Anon each hideous bulk encounters. 
 * * * Earth her groan 
 Redoubles. Trembling from their coverts fly 
 The savage inmates of surrounding woods, 
 In distant terror." 
 
 Dryden, however, decides against the rhinoceros (the 
 female), calling the elephant "her unequal foe;" and so 
 does Lovelace, who makes it die "under his castle-enemy." 
 Cowper, on the other hand, and Darwin, make the rhino- 
 ceros the better of the two. 
 
 '• Go, stately lion, go ! and thou with scales impenetrable armed, 
 Rhinoceros, whose pride can strike to earth the unconquered 
 elephant." 
 
 Their tone is generally very respectful to the rhinoceros — 
 " the horned rhinoceros," "the armed rhinoceros," "the 
 mailed rhinoceros that of nothing recks;" — but what does 
 Johnson mean by saying, " He speaks to men with a rhino- 
 ceros nose " (" which he thinks great ") ; or Moore by 
 " rhinoceros' ivory ? " 
 
 Yet the rhinoceros in its simple, secluded, harmless life 
 might have afforded an occasional illustration of strength 
 not abused, of a dignified retirement, of magnificent soli- 
 tude. The ponderous hermit slowly crashing its way 
 through the cane-brakes is a striking figure, and I like to 
 think of it — the solitary rhinoceros, tranquilly wading along 
 the river's edge, with no companions larger than the otter 
 that watches it from mid-stream, the little reed-birds swing- 
 ing on the flags, and the small white egrets catching the frogs 
 which the giant's progress startles out from the ooze. 
 
 Hippopotamus is not an accommodating word for a verse, 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 149 
 
 and when it is referred to it is as " Behemoth," or " river- 
 horse." It then becomes "Job's beast," "scaled," and 
 " spouting," and, therefore, more or less fabulous or more 
 or less mixed up with crocodiles and whales. Montgomery, 
 however, gallantly takes the whole name into a line, and for 
 his isolated courage, in spite of his absurd misrepresen- 
 tation of the comfortably-browsing pachyderm, deserves 
 quotation — 
 
 " The hippopotamus amidst the flood, 
 
 Fiexile and active as the smallest swimmer, 
 
 But on the bank ill-balanced and infirm ; 
 
 He grazed the herbage with huge head decline ', 
 
 - Or leaned to rest against some ancient tree." 
 
 But I confess that the river-horse has less significance than 
 many animals. There is much, of course, that is pleasant 
 enough in the manner of its life — its lazy lounging existence 
 in warm streams, its circumstances of perpetual plenty, its 
 innocent pastimes when undisturbed, its helpless ferocity 
 when attacked. But, except as living a slothful and appa- 
 rently useless life under conditions of unalloyed hippopota- 
 mus-happiness, as a symbol for pure, feral enjoyment in 
 its utmost expression, this monstrous grotesqueness — as if 
 from some " great chronicle of Pantagruel " — this familiar 
 of old Nile in his cradle, has little significance. 
 
 As Behemoth it is a delightful fiction, but in its actual 
 carnal bulk it is only a hippopotamus. The Rabbins said 
 that there were never more than two Behemoths at a time 
 in the world. They inferred this from the compassionate 
 goodness of the Almighty. For if there were to be more 
 than two at a time, they doubted if the whole earth could 
 provide them sufficient sustenance. It is a pity in one way 
 that the day of beliefs in unique existences is past ; for 
 what zest it would have lent to travel and sport if there had 
 been a possibility of meeting with the pair of hippopotami, 
 the phcenix, or the one and only unicorn ! 
 
150 The Pods Beasts. 
 
 Nor does Montgomery hesitate at the giraffe (though he 
 has to make the second syllable short x ). But the very few 
 others who refer to the animal prefer to call it "the camel- 
 opard." Hood has a sportive ode to the "great anti- 
 climax" as he calls the animal, "so very lofty in its front, 
 but so dwindling at the tail ; " but he does not exhaust, or 
 even tap, the potentialities of fun which the giraffe suggests : 
 <: For this sky-raking animal, that passes all its life, so to 
 speak, looking out of a fourth-storey window, that looks 
 down into the birds' nests as it browses, and seldom sees the 
 ground except when it lies down on it, is about the best 
 instalment of the impossible that has been vouchsafed 
 to us." 2 
 
 With the camel, one of the most provoking, discontented 
 animals in the world, the poets express a very pleasing 
 sympathy; and Byron in his phrase, "the patient swiftness 
 of the desert ship," sums up compendiously three of the 
 reasons for the poets' tenderness; while, if we add Thomson's 
 " patient of thirst and toil, son of the desert," we have them 
 all four. Its extreme patience and extraordinary swiftness 
 are two proverbial, and erroneous, attributes of " the bunch- 
 back camel" — as Quarles (adopting Isaiah's epithet) calls it 
 — while the voyaging of the " helmless dromedary " (Byron) 
 over the sandy oceans of the desert and its supposed inde- 
 pendence of wells naturally commend it to poetical fancy. 
 
 But here is the camel to the life, in Jean Ingelow — 
 
 " The Red Sahara in an angry glow 
 
 With amber fogs, across its hollows trailed 
 Long strings of camels, gloomy eyed and slow, 
 
 And women on their necks, from gazers veiled. 
 And sun-swart guides who toil across the sand 
 To groves of date-trees on the watered land." 
 
 1 " From rude Caffraria where the giraffes browse 
 
 With stately heads among the forest boughs." — U\st Indies. 
 
 - " Noah's Ark."— Phil A 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 151 
 
 Here and there besides are pleasant touches of camel life 
 —and what a poem the beast really is ! — " the tinkling 
 throng of laden camels," " the browsing camels' tinkling 
 bells"— 
 
 " 'Neath palm trees' shade 
 Amid their camels laid 
 The pastoral tribes with all their flocks at rest." 
 
 But, as a rule, the poets' attention is unfortunately turned 
 to those aspects of the camel which are now known to be 
 fictions. Leyden matches it against "the swiftest courser," 
 and Heber and Sir William Jones, both of whom should 
 have known better, compare the camel with the ostrich for 
 speed — " the camels bounded o'er the flowery lawn like the 
 swift ostrich "—and make it even excel it — " not the ostrich 
 speed of fire my camel can excel." As a matter of fact, 
 and in spite of its having carried Mahomet in four jumps - 
 from Jerusalem to Mecca, seven miles an hour is the 
 camel's best pace, nor can it maintain this rate over three 
 hours. Its usual speed is about five miles an hour— a 
 slow, lounging pace beyond which it is dangerous, with 
 nine camels out of ten, to urge them, or else, as Asiatics 
 say, they " break their hearts " and die on the spot. For, 
 once a camel has been pressed beyond this speed and is 
 spent, it kneels down, and not all the wolves of Asia will 
 make it budge again. The camel remains where it kneels, 
 and where it kneels it dies. 
 
 And this stubbornness is really what the poets call 
 "patience." An Oriental proverb says that "the camel « 
 curses its parents when it has to go up hill, and its Maker - 
 when it has to go down," and "camelishness " is a term of 
 abuse for one who is obstinate past all reasoning. As a 
 matter of fact the camel is one of the most impatient brutes 
 in existence ; it will remain motionless as long as you per- 
 mit it to do so, or till hunger arouses it. But remaining 
 
152 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 motionless is just what camels like. Once begin to load 
 them, and the camel grumbles and roars as if its vitals were 
 being wrenched out. " So habitual is this conduct that if 
 a kneeling camel be only approached, and a stone as large 
 as a walnut laid on its back, it begins to remonstrate, groan- 
 ing as if it were being crushed to the earth with its load." 1 
 "We have all been to Egypt or Syria, and many of us have 
 been bitten by his long front teeth, trampled over by his 
 noiseless feet, deafened by his angry roar, and insulted by 
 the affected, not to say sanctimonious, iournure.oihJs head 
 and neck and the protrusion of his contemptuous upper 
 lip. No one who thus knows him at home retains a spark 
 of belief in the beast's patience, amiability, fidelity, or any 
 other virtue. The camel must be reckoned among the 
 lost illusions of youth ! " 2 
 
 Urge it to get up on to its legs, and it remonstrates voci- 
 ferously ; but once get it going, with the string through its 
 nose tied to the tail of the camel in front of it, and it will 
 keep on going just as long as the one in front of it keeps 
 on pulling its nose. But the moment one camel in a line 
 stops, they all stop. There is " patience " of course in this 
 perpetual plodding, but, so far from being admirable, it 
 used to exasperate the British soldier, both in Afghanistan 
 and Egypt, into the most ludicrous paroxysms of indigna- 
 tion. The brutes moved like machines, at a regulated rate 
 of motion, and not one step would they take faster than 
 another. To the bewilderment of Tommy Atkins, they 
 paid no attention whatever to sticks ; but suddenly, as if it 
 had made up its mind that life was not worth more trouble, 
 a camel would come down on its knees with a thump — 
 and there remain. The gap would be made good, the file 
 pass on, and the su.king camel be left where it had knelt, 
 with its head upheld superciliously in the air and gazing 
 
 1 " Bible Animals," Rev. J. G. Wood. 
 • " False Beasts and True.'" 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 153 
 
 vacantly into distant space. And there it would patiently 
 starve to death. It was no use taking off its load ; the camel 
 had refused to " hold the fort " any longer, and, persisting 
 in thinking life impossible, insisted on dying. 
 
 Nor, unfortunately for poetry, does the camel's abstinence 
 from water hold quite good in fact. It is one of the 
 thirstiest of animals, and ought not to be allowed to go 
 without water for any length of time, if it is expected to be 
 of any use. In this respect a horse has more endurance. 
 But Nature has provided the camel with an arrangement of ' 
 cells in the stomach which it can fill with water if it pleases. 
 
 " Unwearied as the camel, day by day, 
 
 Tracks through unwatered wilds his doleful way, 
 Yet in his breast the cherished draught retains, 
 To cool the fervid current in his veins." 
 
 But if Montgomery had often ridden camels, he would 
 
 have wondered why the brute did not drink some of the 
 
 cherished draught sometimes, instead of wanting to re- 
 plenish itself at every possible opportunity. 
 
 " The all-enduring camel, driven 
 
 Far from the diamond fountain by the palms, 
 Who toils across the middle moonlit nights, 
 Or when the white heats of the blinding noons 
 Beat from the concave sand, yet in him keeps 
 A draught of that sweet fountain that he loves, 
 To stay his feet from falling, and his spirit 
 From bitterness of death." 
 
 Keats carries the idea one stage further, and has "slake 
 my greedy thirst with nectarous camel-draughts" — an ad- 
 missible prolongation of the original, inasmuch as it conveys 
 to the mind an immediate consciousness of the extreme 
 aridity of deserts — " long, long deserts scorch the camel's 
 foot " — and the terrible drought from which the camel has 
 so often, poor beast, to suffer. 
 
1 5 4 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 " Even the camel feels, 
 Shot through his withered heart, the fiery I 
 
 But it will hardly be believed that the " ship of the desert " 
 takes an immoral advantage of this kindly arrangement to 
 enjoy the deplorable pleasures of illicit tippling. Yet such 
 is said to be the sad fact, for the date juice (so it is stated) 
 sometimes finds its way into these water cavities, lies there, 
 and ferments ; so that while every one is admiring the camel 
 as such a prodigious teetotaller, the Bedouin quadruped has 
 really got a spirit-cask inside it instead of a water-butt. 
 
 In spite, however, of this grievous falling away from Islam, 
 the camel receives extraordinary honour from the Faithful. 
 Are not the names of Al Kaswa and Al Ad'na, the camels 
 of Mahomet, as sacred to the Arab as those of any of the 
 nine wives of the Prophet ? And has not Mahomet pro- 
 mised the camel all the enjoyments of Paradise — which no 
 other animals share with it except Al Borak, the Prophet's 
 horse, and Ketura, the Dog of the Seven Sleepers, Tobit's 
 dog, Balaam's ass, and the cuckoo ? When it carries the 
 sacred cloth to Mecca in the annual pageant-pilgrimage of 
 Al Sherif, what man in all the caravan has such honour of 
 Islam as the camel that bears the musnud ? Had it not 
 been for a camel would Zem-Zem ever have been found, 
 and without Zem-Zem would man have ever attained to 
 Paradise ? 
 
 One poet speaks of its "ear attentive," though the camel's 
 ear is certainly not a " feature " of the animal. Its hearing 
 is dull — though it is not so deaf but that it stops when it 
 hears no voices — and the ears themselves are so small that 
 the Arabs have a legend to account for it. Once, they say, 
 it had long ears and asked Allah for horns to match them, 
 but Allah in reply cropped its ears. 
 
 Spenser has Avarice riding on a camel, and elsewhere 
 speaks of it as "simple" and the victim of carnivorous 
 ferocity, the tiger and — the boar ! 
 
Sonic Harmless Beasts. 155 
 
 This idea is of course borrowed from fable, in which the 
 camel often falls a victim to the superior astuteness of the 
 boar, wolf, fox, and other animals. 
 
 As a remote kind of beast that does not concern the 
 poets, the bison, or buffalo, finds little recognition. Jean 
 Ingelow is a very notable exception, and uses the headlong 
 herd very finely on two occasions — 
 
 " Raging up like doom 
 The dangerous dust-cloud that was full of eyes — 
 The bisons ; " 
 
 and again — 
 
 " The mad 
 Masterful tramping of the bison herds 
 Tearing down headlong, with their bloodshot eyes 
 In savage rifts of hair." 
 
 Byron pays it the compliment of "stately,'' and describes 
 it tossing about, as it were a mere pastime, the pack of wolves 
 that have attacked it. And here and there we meet with the 
 casual bison careering ; while Leyden has a Scotch bison 
 not known to these degenerate days, " whose bounding 
 course outstripped the red deer's speed," who shook a 
 "yellow lion-mane" and "tossed his moony horns around." 
 This beast appears to have been slain in mad charge by 
 "the chief from whom their line the Turnbulls drew," and 
 it left, unfortunately, no posterity. 
 
 " Bold was the chief from whom their line they drew, 
 Whose nervous arm the furious bison slew. 
 The bison, fiercest race of Scotia's breed, 
 Whose bounding course outstripped the red deer's speed. 
 By hunters chafed, encircled on the plain, 
 He, fuming, shook his yellow iion-mane, 
 Spurned, with black hoof, in bursting rage, the ground, 
 And fiercely tossed his moony horns around. 
 On Scotia's lord he rushed, with lightning speed 
 Bent his strong neck, to toss the startled steed. 
 
155 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 His arms robust the hardy hunter flung, 
 And rolled the panting monster on the ground. 
 Crushed, with enormous strength, his bony skull : 
 And courtiers hailed the man who turned the bull." 
 
 But, as a rule, it is the American bison of which the 
 poets treat — not the reem, 1 the extinct Urus, of which the 
 Bible speaks, and which (according to legend) had to be 
 towed behind the Ark, as its horns would not allow it to 
 get in by the door. Asks Young in his paraphrase — 
 
 " Will the tall reem which knows no lord but me 
 Low at the crib and ask an alms of thee? 
 Submit his unworn shoulder to the yoke, 
 Ereak the stiff clod, and o'er thy furrow smoke ? T ' 
 
 Not the magnificent gaur of Asia, that the natives say 
 takes up stones with its nostrils and discharges them at 
 its assailants with the force of a musket-ball ! — nor the 
 great Arna of the wondrous horns that ramps at large in the 
 swampy jheels of Bhutan, charges the elephant whenever 
 it meets it, and lords it over the dense marshy thickets 
 bristling with canes and wild rose, nor its African congener 
 of equally terrible armament, but the animal that the Red 
 Indian knows so well, and with which his whole life was 
 at one time bound up : the bison that has been called 
 the true pioneer of Western America, and, once " spread 
 o'er the vast savannah, ranged masterless" is now being 
 fast exterminated by the amazing progress of the New 
 World— 
 
 " In these plains 
 The bison feeds no more. Twice twenty leagues 
 Beyond remotest smoke of hunters' camp, 
 Roams the majestic brute in herds that shake 
 The earth." 
 
 But the bison is an animal of extraordinary picturesque- 
 1 Mentioned by Drayton and Young. 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 157 
 
 ness, and round it gather centuries of the history of the 
 nations of the red men. 
 
 Kangaroos are not poetical beasts in the poets' sense, 
 and except, therefore, when they are made fun of, as in 
 Hood's verses, receive no attention — 
 
 ' ' A pair of married kangaroos 
 
 (The case is oft a human one too) 
 Were greatly puzzled once to choose 
 
 A trade to put their eldest son to. 
 It came — no thought was ever brighter — 
 
 In weighing every why and whether 
 They jumped upon it both together, 
 
 Let's make the imp a shorthand writer." 
 
 Lovelace refers to them vaguely as "cubs of India," and, 
 addressing the snail, says that, like them — 
 
 "Thou from thyself a while dost play, s 
 But, frighted by a dog or gun, 
 In thine own belly thou dost run ; " 
 
 which is a delightful confusion of epitaphs. 
 
 Some score of allusions to the beaver are to be found 
 in the pcets, but they present nothing of interest. As a 
 "furry nation" and "fur-bearing," also as supposed to 
 furnish a perfume, they are benignly treated, for conducing 
 to the best of their small abilities to the welfare of lordly 
 humanity, But, so far as the poets are concerned, they are 
 things of prodigious solitude " where earth's unliving silence 
 all would seem, save where on rocks the beaver built his 
 dome " — a passage characteristic of blundering Campbell 
 — and the comrade in Mackay's " Arctic Regions " of 
 " the white wolf that howls to the moon." Dyer, too, has 
 some delightful nonsense about it. 
 
 In Darwin, however, it is the "half-reasoning" beaver, 
 and Drayton preserves the following very interesting fact of 
 British natural history in his quaint rhyme — 
 
1 5S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " More famous long agone, than for the salmons leape, 
 For bevers Tivy was, 1 in her strong banks that bred 
 What else no other brooke of Briiaine nourished ; 
 Where nature, in the shape of this now-perisht beast. 
 His propertie did seeme t' have woundrouslie expro: ; 
 Being bodied like a boat, with such a mightie taile, 
 As serv'u him for a bridge, a helme, or for a saile." 
 
 Several poets give the ermine a place. 
 
 " I will disdain, and from your proffers fly, 
 As from vile dirt the snowy ermine." 
 
 Cowper here refers to a pretty fiction, still current, I find, 
 about this little creature, to the effect that it detests contact 
 with any impurity. 
 
 There are some ants, which Sir John Lubbock knows all 
 about, that hate untidiness and " messes " so much, that if 
 you throw rubbish over their nests they all decamp pre- 
 cipitately. They absolutely refuse to live in a parish where 
 sanitation is not properly attended to. But the ermine 
 carries its aversion even further than this, for it prefers 
 death to dirt. 
 
 " Better to die than be sullied." 
 
 This was the motto on the ermine-device borne by kings 
 of Naples and of Castille. There was also a Breton " Order 
 of the Ermine," with the same legend, and the device was 
 adopted by " La Reine Duchesse," Anne of Brittany, wife 
 of Charles VIII., and afterwards of Louis XII. These 
 words, " Plutot mourir que souiller" or " Malo mori quam 
 fadari? in the original, allude to the fancy that if an ermine 
 be encircled with mud it will fastidiously prefer capture 
 to crossing the dirty barrier. " It is of so pure a nature 
 that it will choose rather to be taken than defile its skin."' 
 Trappers, therefore, were supposed to take advantage of 
 this suicidal cleanliness, and build walls of dirt round the 
 ermines, and so catch them; but, it might well be adtic i. 
 
 1 " Inter fhivios Cambria . . solus hie [Teivi] castores habct." 
 
Some Harmless B:asfs. 159 
 
 11 the wiser and older hunters preferred putting salt on the 
 ermines' tails. 1 ' 
 
 However, the superstition greatly enhanced this dainty 
 little animal's unsullied reputation. Thus Marvel makes 
 the small exquisite one of the creatures of Paradise — 
 
 " In fair Elysium to endure, 
 With milk-white lambs and ermines pure ; " 
 
 while in the present world it has been selected as the most 
 befitting emblem of sovereignty — 
 
 " Whose honour, ermine-like, can never suffer 
 Spot or black soil." 
 
 So the robes of royal and noble personages are lined with 
 this fur, "to signify," says the author of" Historic Devices,"' 
 "the internal purity that should regulate their conduct." 
 
 At one time it was the only fur represented on coats of- 
 arms, and was the natural white, with black tail-points — 
 
 " Tipped with jet, 
 Fair ermines, spotless as the snows they press. ' 
 
 But afterwards, like every other object in Nature, it wan- 
 dered into varieties — " counter-ermine," which was black, 
 with white tail-tips ; " erminois," gold, with black points ; 
 and "erminite," white, with black points edged with red. 
 
 A special interest attaches to the whimsical exaltation 
 of this elegant creature, as the ermine is really — under a 
 climatic variation of fur — only the stoat, which is as guileful, 
 stealthy, and wicked a little assassin as ever ran on four legs. 
 
 Vet, we ask, "What's in a name?" 
 
 Just as the hedgehog is reproached for having " thorns " 
 on its back, so the porcupine for wearing quills. Its mythi- 
 cal power of shooting its quills at assailants is accepted. 
 Thus "like porcupine she sends a piercing dart" (Jen\ 
 and "more dangerous than porcupine his quill" (Somer- 
 ville). 
 
160 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Fretful " is an excellent epithet for the porcupine. Yet 
 I cannot help thinking that in the Ghost's speech " fretted : ' 
 would perhaps have been better. For though it is perfectly 
 true that the former characterises the animal's disposition to 
 take offence quickly, the latter would have assisted out the 
 spectre's meaning. " Each particular hair on your head," 
 he would then have said, " would stand on end with horror, 
 like the quills uj.on the porcupine when he is out of temper." 
 As it is, he seems to imply that the animal's quills are always 
 standing on end — which is not strictly true. Now Milton 
 has the line, " Chafed wild boar or ruffled porcupine : " 
 and "ruffled" is admirable, inasmuch as it conveys two 
 facts in one word — the agitation both of body and mind. 
 
 The occurrence of this beast in another poet, also con- 
 joined with the boar, is perhaps noteworthy, as in myth 
 the porcupine is a vague sort of animal, occupying a place 
 somewhere between the boar and the hedgehog. In the 
 " Dragon of Wantley " we have the other association pre- 
 sented to us — its hedgehog side — 
 
 " Had you but seen him in this dre?s, 
 How fierce he looked and how big, 
 You would have thought him for to be 
 Some Egyptian porcupig. 
 He frighted all, cats, dog>, and all, 
 Each cow, each horse, and each hog ; 
 F r fear they did flee, for they took him to be 
 Some strange outlandish hedgehog." 
 
 Yet the poets — three at any rate — employ the metaphor in 
 regard to woman. Thus Cowley, singing of Beauty, says — 
 
 "They are all weapons, and they dart 
 Like porcupines from every part." 
 
 And Byron has — 
 
 " Those cur = e i p : ns, 
 Which surely were invented for our sin?, 
 Making a woman like a porcupine, 
 Not to be rashly touched." 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 1 6 1 
 
 Qui s'v frctti sy pique was the legend on Charles the • 
 Bold's device of a porcupine. Another heraldic whim about 
 this animal, and one that might have attracted the poets, is 
 the Colonna's motto of Dccus et tutamen in armis, wherein 
 is contained a wholesome moral both for individuals and 
 nations, and a practical fact, of which the porcupine is 
 most thoroughly well aware. 
 
 The reference in Cowley's lines, quoted above, to the 
 "darting," is an allusion, of course, to the fiction — a very 
 ancient one— that the porcupine can shoot its quills like 
 arrows. When the animal charges an enemy — which it 
 does back-cards, by the way — it often, no doubt, leaves a 
 quill or two sticking. A!so, when the skin is contracted for 
 the erection of the quiils, a loose one may. no doubt, some- 
 times fall out ; and seeing how sudden and violent the 
 muscular action is, it is not inconceivable that such a 
 loosened quill might seem to be " shot " off. But there is - 
 no capacity for deliberate archery in the beast. It is not 
 so deficient in sagacity as to fire its weapons away. 
 
 I find in Mrs. Bury Paliisers fascinating volume the 
 following passage : — 
 
 " In 1397, Louis. Duke of Orleans, instituted the Order 
 of the Porcupine, and on the occasion of the baptism of 
 his son Charles he took this animal as his emblem, with 
 the motto ' Near and Afar,' alluding to the vulgar error 
 that the porcupine is able not only to defend itself from 
 close attack, but can throw its quills against more disfc 
 assailants, Duke Louis meaning thereby to convey that he 
 would defend himself with his own weapons, and that he 
 would attack his enemy. John, Duke of Burgundy, as well 
 at a distance as near. Louis XII. abolished the Order 
 after his ascension to the throne, but retained the hereditary 
 badge of his family, and took two porcupines for the sup- 
 porters of his arms. His cannons were marked with the 
 porcupine, and his golden ' ecus au pore-epic ' were much 
 
 L 
 
1 62 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 sought after by the curio'is.'' To this is added a note : 
 " On the submission of Paris, in 1436, the Constable, 
 Richemont, goes to dine at the Duke of Orleans' Hotel 
 du Fore-epic, and in 1438 the Order was conferred on a 
 lady, Mdile. de Murat" 
 
 From the French name, of course, comes our own word, 
 porcupig. 
 
 There are few passages in Nature more beautiful through- 
 out than the deer poem. Whether we see them as the 
 " playmate fawns," the " gentle hinds." or the " noble st. g 
 they are equally poetical and lovable. No wonder, then, 
 that so exquisite a theme attracts poets. 
 
 Every period of life, indeed almost every action, of these 
 dainty creatures affords a beauty to their verse, and the 
 appreciation of the surpassing charm of deer as they really 
 are in nature seems to have so completely contented the 
 poets, that they pay little attention to the legendary animal, 
 do not care to seek for metaphors or similes from them, 
 and do not venture to let improving imagination meddle 
 with a picture already so complete. 
 
 No epithet or phrase that conveys a compliment 
 seems misapplied to creatures that can never be ungraceful 
 or unpicturesque. The light-stepping deer, the rustling 
 deer in the thickets, the tread of the fawn, the hind's soft 
 eyes of love — even the most commonplace phrases, if the 
 word " deer " occur in them — receive a gentle grace from 
 the association. 
 
 The dainty and delicate fawn, confiding and yet so timid, is 
 indeed one of the sweetest touches of Nature, and the poets 
 take a delight in leading it out to play upon lawns begemmed 
 with dewdrops, to drink at babbling brooks, and fall asleep 
 in beds of fern and moss. Nor less the hind with its large 
 soft eyes, the gentle, careful mother of "the dappled fawn." 
 It is perpetually recurring as an image of tranquil innocence. 
 
 Very often, of course, it is hunted, or its fawn killed, and 
 
Some Harm less Beasts. 163 
 
 the grief of the hind then ranks with the poets only second 
 to that of the " turt'.e-dove " when similarly afflicted. But 
 no amount of sympathy seems excessive for the loss of 
 such offspring by such a parent. 
 
 In all circumstances of life, therefore, the deer is pictur- 
 esque, whether "crushing the heath-bells as they tread" 
 the mountain side, or in the hollows, " belling from ferny 
 bed " (Faber). The poet— 
 
 " Sunk deep in fern marks the stealthy roe, 
 Silent as sleep or shadow, cross the glade, 
 Or dart athwart his view as August stars 
 Shoot and are out." 
 
 At rest, when "the summer sun shines on the trees, and 
 the deer lie in the shade '"' (Mary Howitt) ; or when, " in 
 summer's moonlight, the gentle deer lie sleeping;" 
 
 " The gentle deer lie sleeping in the moon, 
 With their own fairy shadows at their side " (Faber) ; 
 
 or (Grahame) "in ruminating peace, the fallow deer, a 
 grove of antlers." 
 
 In the daytime, under the elms, " in herds, the troubled 
 deer shake the still-twinkling tail and glancing ear ! ' (Words- 
 worth), or "couched on the close sward, while ears and 
 antlers in the grass with restless movement twinkle " 
 (Faber). So Bloomfield has " with rattling horns and 
 twinkling ears." 
 
 The solitary stag quenching his thirst at noon ; the hind 
 leading her fawn in the evening to the stream : the whole 
 herd pacing out from the tree-shadows to drink ; the stag, 
 starting to run, " proudly tossing his antlered head." 
 
 Cowper's quiet park, " haunt of deer, and sheep-walks 
 populous with bleating lambs ; " Mackay"s " nooks where 
 the shy deer browse the bent ; " Thomson's forest glade 
 where the wild deer trip and, often turning, gaze ; Camp- 
 bell's birchen glades, with the deer " glancing in the sun- 
 
164 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 shine." Its grace when first aroused, its haughty flight, its 
 courage when it stands "with hornie bayonnettes at bay" — 
 
 "The chase is up — but they shall know 
 The stag at bay's a desperate foe " — 
 
 are all insisted upon again and again, and the wood-nymphs 
 and the fairies are for ever being called in to help the 
 hunted favourite. 
 
 Its horns — " the stag's large front," as Thomson curiously 
 calls it, or as Denham, with more enthusiasm — 
 
 " On whose sublime and shady front is reared 
 Nature's great masterpiece " — 
 
 give the stag that unusual stateliness of gait which is fami- 
 liar to all, and which the poets are never tired of admiring. 
 " Stately as a deer with antlers " is Longfellow's simile for 
 surpassing dignity of bearing. They note its growth and 
 renewal, always introduce the antlers in the foremost pas- 
 sage of the description ; and on this point the deer's sup- 
 posed regret at having so " heavy a head " when hunted, 
 they give fancy play. 
 
 Shedding its horns, or, as Surrey says, "hanging his old 
 head on the pale " — unantlered ; " flying to the wood to 
 hide his armless head" (Marvell) — rehorned, "gracefully 
 pacing, the wild-eyed harts, to their traditional tree, to 
 clear the velvet from their budded horns " (Jean Ingelow) 
 — we meet it in every stage. 
 
 Nor do the poets fail to do full justice to that striking epi- 
 sode of the deer's closing life, its retirement into solitude to 
 die — " as the stricken deer withdraws himself alone " — " so 
 the struck deer in some sequestered part lies down to die " 
 — " I was a stricken deer that left the herd, long since " 
 (Cowper). 
 
 " So wings the wounded deer her flight, 
 Pierced by some ambushed archer of the night, 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 165 
 
 Shoots to the woodlands with her bounding fawn, 
 
 And drops of blood bedew the conscious lawn ; 
 
 There hid in shades she shuns the cheerful day, 
 
 Hangs o'er her young and weeps her life away." 1 — Darwin. 
 
 Nor are the poets unaware of the real reason for this 
 retirement — namely, the instinct of the herd to drive away 
 from their company any individual that is crippled or in- 
 firm, as being a source of common danger. The limping 
 comrade might bring the huntsman on its heels, upon the 
 whole herd at rest, and the forester coming upon a sick 
 deer would know that the rest of the antlers were not 
 far off. 
 
 This selfishness is carried to a cruel extreme when deer, 
 seeing one of their number in distress, refuse him asylum ; 
 and the habit of the herd to repulse a member when in 
 danger is noted by Leyden and by Thomson — " the watch- 
 ful herd alarmed, with selfish care avoid a brother's woe." 
 Scott, too, refers to it in — 
 
 " The Douglas like a stricken deer ' 
 Disowned by every noble peer." 
 
 Somerville also has of the hunted stag — 
 
 " He mingles with the herd where once he reigned 
 Proud monarch of the groves, whose clashing beam 
 His rivals awed, and whose exalted power 
 Was still rewarded with successful love. 
 But the base herd have learned the ways of men — 
 Averse they fly, or with rebellious aim 
 Chase him from thence." 
 
 1 Pope has — 
 
 " So the struck deer, in some sequestered part, 
 Lies down to die (the arrow in his heart) : 
 There, hid in shades and wasting day by dny, 
 Inly he bleeds and pants his soul away." 
 
1 66 T/ie Poets Beasts. 
 
 Another peculiarity of the deer kind, their often fatal 
 curiosity, finds very frequent notice ; as Spenser's " amazed 
 deere ; " Greene's " deer that doat the gaze, mazed dismay- 
 fully ; " Shakespeare's " poor, frightened deer that stand at 
 gaze ; ; ' Broome's " tinvrous deer, swift starting as they graze, 
 bound off in crowds, then turn again to gaze ; " Rogers' 
 " with fearful gaze ; " Quarles' " with strange amaze, and 
 senseless half, through feare they stand at gaze," and a 
 score of others. 
 
 One result of this tenderness for the deer is that deer- 
 hunting seldom meets with admiration from the poets. 
 With the fox it is very different. Having condemned 
 Reynard beforehand, they see no cruelty in the pack of 
 hounds that murder the brave little beast, but applaud the 
 hunters as if they had overtaken and slain some desperate 
 bandit. The crimes of the fox are supposed to have earned 
 its death, so it dies unpitied. 
 
 " Not so ihe stately stag, of harmless force, 
 In motion graceful, rapid in his course ; 
 Nature in vain his lofty head adorns 
 With formidable groves of pointed thorn?. 
 Soon as the hounds' fierce clamour strikes his ear, 
 He throws his arms behind, and owns his fear ; 
 Sweeps o'er the imprinted grass, the wind outflies — 
 Hounds, horses, hunters, horns, still sound along the skies, 
 lie, trembling, safety seeks in every place, 
 Drives through the thicket, scales the lofty steep ; 
 Bounds o'er the hills, or darts through valleys deep ; 
 Plunges amid the river's cooling tides, 
 While strong and quick he heaves his panting sides. 
 He from afar his loved companions sees, 
 Whom the loud whoop that hurtles on the breeze 
 Into a crow x firm had cast, 
 
 Their armed heads all outward round them placed. 
 To these he flies, and begs to be allowed 
 To share the danger with his kindred crowd ; 
 But must, by general voice excluded, know 
 How loathed the sad society of woe. 
 
Some Harm Jess Beasts. 167 
 
 The cruel hounds pour round on every hand ; 
 Desperate, he turns to make a feeble stand, 
 Big tears on tears roll down his harmless fnce ; 
 He falls, and sues in vain, alas ! for grace." 
 
 Thomson's imitation of this poem is well worth noting. 
 It differs from Leyden's admirable lines chiefly by its errors 
 and its lack of force. But he repeats all Leyden's sympathy 
 for the stag. 
 
 Drayton, after a passing word of wonder that no poets 
 before himself should have sung the chase, 1 invokes Diana, 
 and commences to tell in rhyme of the hunting in Arden 
 Forest. 
 
 But Drayton, though fired by the sport of the chase, keeps 
 his sympathy with the stag. The hunters are "bloody 
 hunters," and the hounds are "cruel and ravenous." 
 Quarks tells us how the stag's " weeping eyes beg silent 
 mercy from the following hounds," and from the chase 
 draws this vigorous metaphor — "Before a pack of deep- 
 mouthed lusts I flee." 
 
 Grahame, in his " October," has — 
 
 " The clamorous pack rush rapid down the vale, 
 \\ hilst o'er yon brushwood tops at times are seen 
 The moving branches of the victim stag. 
 Soon far beyond he stretches o'er the plain ; 
 Oh ! may he safe elude the savage rout, 
 And may the woods be left to peace again ! " 
 
 Xor can Scott be charged with want of sympathy for the 
 "bold red deer." How he triumphs with the "antlered 
 monarch of the waste," that, sleeping in lone Glenartney's 
 hazel shade, suddenly awakes to the deep-mouthed blood- 
 hounds' heavy bay — 
 
 " Then, as the headmost foes appeared, 
 
 With one brave bound the copse he cleared, 
 
 1 Drayton's memory was at fault. 
 
i6S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 And, stretching forward free and far, 
 Sought the wild heaths of (Jam-TV ! " 
 
 Leyden, as has been seen, is also full of sympathy, but 
 confesses to a regret that the stag does not make better use 
 of his " formidable grove of pointed thorns ; " as Waller 
 also — 
 
 " So the tall stag upon the brink 
 
 Of some smooth stream about to drink, 
 
 Surveying there his aimed head, 
 
 With shame remembers that he fled 
 
 The scorned dog.*, resolves to try 
 
 The combat next. But if their cry 
 
 Invades again his trembling ear, 
 
 He straight resumes his wonted care, 
 
 Leaves the untasted spring behind, 
 
 And, winged with fear, uutfiies the wind." 
 
 Several poets even go so far as to make the stag regret 
 its armament as cumbering it in its flight. For instance, 
 Davenant — 
 
 '• As deer that mourn their growth of head with tears 
 Where the defenceless weight does hinder flight." 
 
 But this is probably only a reminiscence of the familiar story 
 of the stag proud of its antlers that met with Absalom's 
 fate. 
 
 In other poets besides those who sing specifically of the 
 chase, all the details of the deer-hunt " where we did chase 
 the fearful hart of force," and all redounding to the honour 
 of the quarry — " the frighted roebuck and his flying roe " 
 — will be found abundantly scattered. 
 
 Somerville alone is cruel, after his wont. He has a 
 wretchedly cruel account of a stag-hunt, in which he follows 
 with a detail that seems like gloating over suffering, the 
 wretched stag's agonised flight. He compares its terror to 
 that of " the poor, fury-hunted wretch (his hands in guiltless 
 blood bestained) that still seems to hear the dying shrieks, 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. 169 
 
 and the pale threatening ghost moves as he moves, and, as 
 he flies, pursues." In a burst of sycophant solicitude he 
 implores royalty not to go too near the stag even though a 
 score of hounds are worrying it ; and when at last the stag 
 is at the point of death, and — 
 
 " Beneath the weight of woe he grows distressed, 
 The tears run trickling down his hairy cheeks," 
 
 the King " beholds his wretched plight, and tenderness 
 innate moves his great soul," and he orders off the pack. 
 Upon which the poet — 
 
 " Great Prince ! from thee what may thy subjects hope, 
 So kind and so beneficent to brutes, 
 O mercy, heav'nly born ! " 
 
 &c. &c. But from reading Somerville it might be imagined 
 that he knew nothing of humaneness. 
 
 In legendary allusions both the milk-white doe of fairy- " 
 tale and the black roe of Oriental myth, as also .^Esop's ■ 
 stag, " a creature blameless, yet something vain," are to be 
 found, with here and there an enchanted hind that was 
 " hunted to his hurt " by some mythical knight or prince. 
 But, as I have said above, the poets seem too well satisfied 
 with the deer as it is in Nature to try to assist it to sympathy 
 and honour by the adventitious graces of tradition or the 
 exercise of a fanciful license. 
 
 Yet deer enjoy remarkable prominence in myth and folk- 
 lore. In " elemental " symbolism, they appear as luminous, 
 variegated, or dark, according as the sky is ruddy, dappled, 
 or lowering, and they drag the chariots of the wind-fiends, 
 the spirits of the storm, and are the heralds of the elephant, 
 "the hurricane." And in folk-lore, how many a hero both 
 of East and West has the magic fawn, the milk-white doe, 
 that beautiful but dangerous quarry, or the enchanted hart 
 — "a creature that was current then, the hart with golden \ 
 
170 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 horns " — beguiled into the forest depths to the hunter's 
 woe. In our own ballads, momentous disasters sprang 
 from "the hunting of the deer." And in semi-sacred 
 legends what an important place it holds, the cross-bearing 
 stag, the celestial hind. And how European history would 
 have been altered if kings had never chased the deer. In 
 the East it is even more fateful. Many princes have come 
 by their adventures following the deceptive quarry. The 
 whole "Ramayana" turns upon the hero being beguiled 
 from his leafy hermitage in pursuit of the silver-spotted 
 stag. In fact, the deer of myth, whether "stag." "hind," 
 "gazelle," or "antelope," is a thing universally desired, but 
 almost invariably the cause of perplexity and trouble to its 
 pursuer. 
 
 Superstitions about them are very frequent. They are 
 captivated by music, as several poets tell us, and when 
 wounded — 
 
 " For his secure an herb can find 
 The arrow to withdraw." 
 
 Some say this is the " Lancashire asphodel," but others that 
 " the hart, wounded with an arrow, runs to the herb dittany 
 to bite it, that the shaft may fall out." 1 Every one knows, 
 too, that a hart's horn burnt drives all the snakes away from 
 the neighbourhood, and that the deer is the most dreaded 
 foe of the serpent, for it sucks up the air out of the snake- 
 holes, and the snakes cannot help but follow ; and then, 
 when the snake appears, the deer eats it like a stalk of 
 celery. So if you wear deerskin no snake will ever touch 
 you. But deer folk-lore, if it were collected, would be 
 found to be prodigious in quantity and traversing half our 
 philosophies. Dig deep into the earth under the roots of 
 the dread ash Ygdrasil, and you will find four stags on 
 the guard there. Look up above you into the sky, and 
 
 1 This healing herb has many pretty legends. 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. i 7 1 
 
 you will see the deer's head, Orion, glittering in sleepless 
 vigil 
 
 Several other species of horned animals share in the 
 popularity of the British deer. Thus the "antelope" — a 
 vague creature enough in Campbell, Thomson, Moore, and 
 Shelley, who make it "snow-white with silver feet" and 
 "feeding on lilies" — is used as a type of timid innocence, 
 is called "sweet antelope," and affords similes of feminine 
 elegance and beauty — 
 
 " Sister-autelopes 
 By one fair dam, snow-white, and swift as wind, 
 Nursed among lilies near a brimming stream." — Shelley. 
 
 The grace of its neck makes a goddess envious ; the light- 
 ness of its step is the despair of nymphs \ its eyes — 
 
 " The lady rising up with such an air 
 As Venus rose with from the wave, on them 
 Bent, like an antelope, a Paphian pair 
 Of eyes," 
 
 and carries off Don Juan into delightful captivity. And no 
 wonder that antelopes should attract the poets, for they are 
 even swifter and more graceful than the deer. The peculiar 
 charm of their movements, their elegant impatience, so airy 
 and impulsive, are happily rendered, as in Moore's " fleet 
 and eager down the slope, like antelopes the bright nymphs 
 bound ; " and " down the slope, the silvery-footed antelope, 
 as gracefully and gaily springs," "with light sound;" or 
 Shelley's "antelope in the suspended impulse of its light- 
 ness;" and "the wild antelope, that starts whene'er the dry 
 leaf rustles in the brake, suspends her timid steps to gaze." 
 The antelope is one of the constellations of the Indian 
 zodiac, sacred to Chandra, and the recognised symbol of 
 feminine grace. 
 
 "Gazelle" is nearly synonymous with antelope. "Its 
 airy step and glorious eye " find equal favour with Byron, 
 
172 TJic Pods Beasts. 
 
 and Moore, and Shelley. " Its soft black eye," "large and 
 languishingly dark/' "glorious," "now brightly bold or 
 beautifully shy," is almost a poetical proverb, and " gazelle- 
 eyed " one of their supreme compliments — 
 
 " Her eye's dark charm 'twere vain to tell ; 
 But gnze on that of the gazelle, 
 It will assist thy fancy w. 
 
 But the poets were wrong to speak of them as going in 
 vast herds, or to make them "of many a colour, size, and 
 shape," and still more to place their wild gazelles among 
 lilies and on " flowery champaigns." In Nature it is beauti- 
 fully placed in sandy wastes and amongst the barrenness of 
 the wilderness. 1 
 
 Among the later poets the chamois meets with occasional 
 reference, as the companion of the eagle in mountain heights 
 that "mock the hunters' might," and "baffle the hunters' 
 ken." It is the " flying chamois," leaping across "the dark- 
 blue crevasse," skipping over "the glaciers bright," an 
 emblem of Swiss independence and liberty generally : " shy 
 as the jealous chamois, Freedom flies." 
 
 The elk, "in his speed and might," though a vague entity, 
 is no doubt that favourhe figure of red man's myth and 
 tradition, the mighty animal that in the epoch of the bison 
 was one of the noblest trophies of the northern Indians and 
 the feast-dish of the braves. Thomson happily depicts the 
 elk in one of its picturesque situations — 
 
 " Scarce his head 
 Raised o'er the snowy wreath, the branching elk 
 Lies slumbering sullen in the white abyss ; " 
 
 and Moore refers to a curious tradition — 
 
 1 Says a great naturalist, " It prefers the bare plain, rocky hill, or 
 ua-te, and a barren country to a rich one." 
 
Some Harmless Beasts. i 7$ 
 
 " In the woods of the North there are insects that prey • 
 On the brain of the elk till his very last sigh ; " 
 
 his application thereof being — 
 
 " O genius ! thy patron?, more cruel than they, 
 First feed on thy brains and then leave thee to die." 
 
 But I am unable to find any grounds for the poets' facts, at 
 any rate in special relation to the elk. 
 
 Another northern "deer" that is occasionally met with 
 in verse is the reindeer. Montgomery is specially fond of 
 it. Campbell makes it the steed of Winter — 
 
 " Howling Winter fled afar 
 To hills that prop the polar star ; 
 And loves on deer-borne car to ride 
 With barren darkness by his side." 
 
 The gemsbok gives Jean Ingelow the subject of a power- 
 ful vignette — 
 
 " Or far into the heat among the sands 
 
 The gemsbok nations, snuffing up the wind, 
 Drawn by the scent of water, and the bands 
 Of tawny-bearded lions pacing, blind 
 With the sun-dazzle in their midst, opprest 
 With prey, and spiritless for lack of rest ! " 
 
 And "the brindled gnu" finds also a single reference. 
 
VII. 
 
 BRITISH WILD BEASTS. 
 
 I remember once, when lying dozing under a tree in a very 
 quiet scrap of English woodland, seeing a badger. The 
 very suddenness of such an apparition is in itself a delight- 
 ful touch of wild nature — for Nature is always sudden in 
 these glimpses of her inner life. 
 
 Thus I remember, when in India, waiting for bear or 
 leopard to be driven past my post, the spectral visions of 
 boar and pea-fowl or fox that would rise up as it were from 
 the ground. One instant absolute solitude, and the next, 
 and lo ! a great sambhur stag, with all its pride of antlers, 
 standing out in the open. It takes two steps and is gone 
 again — for ever. Was it ever there at all ? You feel in- 
 clined to rub your eyes. A twig snaps. You look up : there 
 is nothing. You begin to think of phantoms and Shelley's 
 " panther-peopled solitudes." And look ! from opposite 
 you steps out a peacock. For half a second you see it with 
 all its pomp of trailing brilliance. How it lights up the 
 undergrowth ! But on a sudden it turns, and the glittering 
 undulating plumes vanish behind a bush, noiseless and 
 splendid like a coil of some great burnished snake, and 
 once more gloom settles deep on the glade. And so it goes 
 on all the time you wait. Sudden and silent things come 
 and go, and in each flash you catch a glimpse of Nature's 
 self, a peep into her private diary. 
 
British Wild Beasts. 
 
 I o 
 
 So it was with my English badger. And of all animals 
 the "brock" is one of the most suitable for an apparition ; 
 for the colouring and the shape of the beast make its whole 
 body, when it is facing you, look like only the head of some 
 much huger creature. It seemed to me for a second, there- 
 fore, that some subterranean monster had thrust its head up 
 above the ground. But the badger lifted one of its hind- 
 paws and scratched its nose, and then I recognised my 
 visitor. It did not see me, and began to root its way along 
 among the bracken. My botanising tin was lying in its 
 path, and the badger came upon it. " A trap ! " said the 
 beast, as plainly as ever a grunt said anything, and turning 
 round, my visitor pattered back into the hazels whence it 
 had emerged. 
 
 But there was something very picturesque and very 
 engaging in this unexpected verse of poetry. We have very 
 few wild animals, and the sight of one, whether otter or 
 weasel, badger or fox, at its ease and unsuspecting, makes 
 a day's walk memorable to me for ever. " That is where I 
 saw so-and-so," I say to myself whenever I pass near the 
 spot or hear it mentioned. A rare flower — " Sole sitting 
 by the shores of the old romance," makes something of the 
 same impression on me. It carries the place back into the 
 far past. Antiquity comes up with us again. 
 
 But poets are averse to badgers. 1 They notice "the 
 tod" as being hunted with terriers and "vexed" in barrels. 
 And they are quite content that it should be. Popular 
 errors have no doubt given poets their bias, for the brock 
 is a beast of ill-omen in parts of rural Britain, and the 
 poets' phrase, " uneven as a badger," comes from the mis- 
 taken idea that the legs of the animal were shorter on one 
 side than on the other. Another tradition is to the effect 
 
 1 Has the phrase to " badger " a person come from the practice of 
 badgering badgers ? It should properly therefore mean " to make a 
 baiger of a person.'' 
 
i 76 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 that the badger is a very cleanly person, and that the (ox 
 takes advantage of this amiable weakness to drive it out 
 of its burrows, which it then occupies. Thus Phineas 
 Fletcher — 
 
 " So where the neatest badger most abides, 
 
 Deep in the earth she frames her prettie cell, 
 And into halls and closulets divides ; 
 
 But when the stinking fox with loathsome smell 
 Infects her pleasant cave, the cleanly beast 
 So hates her inmate and rank-smelling guest, 
 That far she flies and leaves her loathed nest." 
 
 But there is no foundation for this pleasant fiction of the 
 fastidiousness of the badger. On the contrary, it is rather 
 an ill-savoured animal — to " stink like a badger " is a pro- 
 verb — and is no enemy of the fox, the two being sometimes 
 unearthed together. So in " Reynard the Fox," the badger, 
 Grimbard, husband of the garrulous Lady Slopard, is the 
 nephew of the hero, and the only one of all the beasts that 
 has any influence for good over him. 
 
 Another relative of the fox in the same fable is the strik- 
 ing and picturesque animal, the otter, which is similarly 
 wasted by the poets.. " The otter to his cavern drew," and 
 " forth from his den the otter drew," are the usual refer- 
 ences, and even these are singularly few, to the otter. Rogers 
 has the otter " rustling in the sedgy mere," and two or 
 three others introduce it as an adjunct of the rural scene. 
 
 " This subtle spoiler of the beaver kind, 
 
 Far <.•((, perhaps, where ancient alders shade, 
 In deep still pool, within some hollow trunk 
 Contrives His wicker couch, whence he surveys 
 His long purlieu, lord of the stream, and all 
 The finny shoals his own." 
 
 Thus, one of the most picturesque and poetical of our 
 native wild beasts is as neglected as most of our more 
 picturesque and beautiful birds, the kingfisher, bittern, 
 
British Wild Beasts. i 7 7 
 
 woodpecker, and heron. Its analog}- in poetry to the heron 
 is very close, for like that bird, it is referred to occa- 
 sionally as a fish-destroyer, but chiefly as a quarry for 
 trained hawks; so it fares with the poor "water-dog. 5 ' Scott 
 devotes to it one good passage, but he, the poet of the 
 Scottish stream and loch, ought to have devoted at least 
 a dozen. 
 
 " Grayling and trout their tyrant know, 
 As between reed and sedge he peers, 
 With fierce round snout and sharpened ears ; 
 Or, prowling by the moonbeam cool, 
 Watches the stream or swims the pool." 
 
 Though sometimes mentioned as a fish consumer, it is more 
 frequent as a beast of chase. Tnus Somerville in his cruel 
 '• poem " — 
 
 " Von hollow trunk, 
 That with its hoary head incurved salutes 
 The passing wave, must be the tyrant's fort 
 And dread abode. How these impatient climb, 
 While others at the root incessant bay ! 
 They pull him down. See there he dives along ! 
 Th' ascending bubbles mark his gloomy way. 
 Quick fix the net?, and cut off his retreat 
 Into the shelt'ring depths. 
 
 Ah ! there he vents ! 
 The pack plunge headlong, and protended spears 
 Menace destruction, while the troubled surge 
 Indignant foams, and all the scaly kind, 
 Affrighted hide their heads. Wild tumult reigns, 
 And loud uproar. Ah ! there once more he vents ; 
 See ! that bold hound has seized him, down they sink 
 Together lost ; but soon shall he repent 
 His rash assault. 
 
 Again he vents ; 
 Again the crowd attack. That spear lias pierced 
 ll'\< neck, the crimson waves confess the wound, 
 
 U 
 
i/S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Fixed is the bearded lance, unwelcome guest, 
 Where'er he flies ; with him it sinks beneath, 
 With him it mounts, sure guide to ev'ry foe. 
 Inly he groans, nor can his tender wound 
 Bear the cold stream. 
 
 See ! there escaped he flies 
 Half-drowned, and clambers up the slipp'ry bank 
 With ooze and blood distained. Of all the brutes 
 Whether bj N:.:ure formed or by long use, 
 This artful diver best can bear the want 
 Of crystal air. Unequal is the fight 
 Beneath the whelming element, yet there 
 He lives not long, but respiration needs 
 At proper intervals. 
 
 Lo ! to yon sedgy bank 
 He creeps disconsolate : his num'rous foes 
 Surround him, hounds and men. Pierced thro' and thro' 
 On pointed spears they lift him high in air ; 
 Wriggling he hangs, and grins, and bites in vain. 
 Bid the loud horns, in gaily warbling stra: 
 Proclaim the felon's fate. He dies, he dies !" 
 
 Gay also is an enthusiast in his hatred of the otter, and in 
 other poets "this subtle spoiler of the beaver kind," "the 
 sly goose-footed prowler," is marked out as a proper object 
 of the chase. 
 
 " Would you preserve a num'rous finny race, 
 Let your fierce dogs the rav'nous otter chase, 
 Th' amphibious monster ranges all the shores, 
 Darts thro' the waves and ev'ry haunt explores. 
 Or let the gin his roving steps betray, 
 And save from hostile jaws the scaly prey." 
 
 In myth the otter is a creature of formidable character — 
 "like a swift otter, fell through greedinesse" is Spenser's 
 simile for the invader from over-sea, and there was nearly 
 as much trouble in Asgard over the killing of the great 
 otter, brother of Fafnir, as in the Troad over the rape of 
 
British Wild Beasts. 179 
 
 Helen. The otter, Enudris of the Edda, is a fearsome 
 beast, and so too is the other which, in Muscovite legend, 
 carries off the Czar's son under the winter sea, and with its 
 snoring makes the sea ebb and flow, nine miles at each 
 breath. 
 
 As might have been expected, the hedgehog, being 
 prickly, has no friends among the poets. They do not 
 forgive it its spines. 
 
 " Who whilst in hand it gryping hard behent, 
 Into a hedgehogge all unwares it went, 
 And prickt him so that he away it threw." 
 
 " Ugly urchins, thick and short," is Spenser's description. 
 ' ; The thorn-back hedgehog dull," says Quarles. If poets 
 were fairies and given to tumbling about in hedgerows and 
 copses by moonlight, the prickly animal might be objected 
 to — as indeed Titania does object to the " thorny " thing ; — 
 but that any rational man with boots on should bear a 
 grudge against the hedgehog for having spines on its back 
 seems unaccountable. For the urchin is a very pleasing 
 little animal, exceedingly harmless in a wild state, and both 
 useful and diverting when tame. That it makes garden- 
 paths untidy by rooting up the plantain weeds is a com- 
 plaint brought against it by Gilbert White, but plantains 
 are in themselves untidy on garden paths. Tennyson notes 
 its fondness for the plant in his " Aylmer's Field " — 
 
 " Then the great hall was wholly broken down, 
 And the broad woodland parcelled into farms ; 
 And where the two contrived their daughter's good 
 Lies the hawk's cast, the mole has made his run, 
 The hedgehog underneath the plantain bores, 
 The rabbit fondles his own harmless face, 
 The slow-worm creeps, and the thin weasel there 
 Follows the mouse, and all is open field." 
 
 Instead of ridiculing it and reproaching it, why did not the 
 
i So The Poets Beasts. 
 
 poets take it (as antiquity did) as the symbol of prudence, 
 mother-wit, and self-reliance ? Can modesty, honour, virtue, 
 do more than the hedgehog does when attacked — roll itself 
 up, and present to the assailant a front equally defended at 
 every point ? What a delightful lesson of patient hopeful- 
 ness it teaches the Christian ! It submits to misfortune 
 without a murmur, waiting till malice shall have spent itself 
 and its troubles cease. What problems too it symbolises, 
 this spherical impossibility ! How gingerly you have to 
 handle them. Can you make head or tail out of them ? 
 Vet, like most problems, if you will leave them alone long 
 enough, they will solve themselves. It is surely, too, a 
 type of innocence, being so harmless itself, yet so fully 
 armed. It might stand, too, for law, which runs along on 
 four feet, looking a simple thing enough, but which, the 
 moment any one begins to meddle with it, resolves itself 
 into a hopeless ball of difficulties. 
 
 One of the legends of the hedgehog tells us how a viper 
 had come into its hole, and being very much inconvenienced 
 by the hedgehog's prickles, begged it to go away. " Let 
 him go," replied the master of the house, " who cannot 
 stay." The hedgehog's treatment of the mythic wolf is 
 equally delightful. 
 
 In folk-lore the urchin possesses occult properties which 
 make it more or less eerie in reputation, but do not prevent 
 it being eaten or kept in houses for clearing them of cock- 
 roaches. In Drayton's " Polyolbion " the rustic, enumerat- 
 ing his worldly possessions, says — 
 
 " Sweeting mine, if thou mine own wilt be, 
 
 I've many a pretty gaud I keepe in store for thee, 
 A nest of broad-faced owls and goodly urchins too ; 
 And better yet than these, a bulkin two years old, 
 A curled-pate calf it is, and oft could have been sold ; 
 And yet besides all this, I've goodly bear-whelps two." 
 
 Its voice is a curious, unnatural-sounding snoring, and 
 
BritisJi Wild Beasts, 1S1 
 
 sometimes a squeak — "the hedge-pig's whining" of the 
 witches on the heath. It is supposed also to foretell the 
 changes of weather (as indeed nearly all animals do to the 
 careful observer), and so we meet with lines, " as hedgehogs 
 doe foreshew ensuing storms/' " observe what way the 
 hedgehog builds her nest." That it had the power of 
 shooting its quills off at pleasure is a popular tradition of 
 wide prevalence. Thus in " Hiawatha " — 
 
 i; From a hollow tree the hedgehog 
 With his sleepy eyes looked at him, 
 Shot his shining quills like arrows ; 
 Saying, \vi:h a drowsy murmur, 
 Through the tangle of his whiskers, 
 Take my quill;, O Hiawatha ! " 
 
 Though Drayton speaks of "conies" being " banisht 
 quite from every fertile place," they have since then become 
 a tolerably " common object of the country." Few poets, 
 therefore, describing a rural scene, omit this pretty and 
 familiar incident of 
 
 " Bobbing rabbits, 
 Their white tails glancing." 
 
 " The upright rabbit, where he sits and mocks you, 
 Ere he deigns to hide." 
 
 li The little noises flung, 
 Out of clefts where rabbits play." 
 
 Clare is especially full of "coy "and "scouting" 1 and 
 "quirking" rabbits ; his poems are a regular warren. 
 
 " I love to peep out on a summer's morn, 
 
 Just as tiie scouting rabbit seeks her shed, 
 And the coy hare squats nestling in the corn, 
 Frit at the bowed ear tott'riyg o'er her head." 
 
 Somerville and his contemporaries call them "dodging" 
 1 An epithet used by Bloomtieki and Grahame also. 
 
t82 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 conies, and, by their suggestions of their feebleness, imply 
 the error of identifying them with the conies of Holy Writ, 
 though the latter are really, in spite of their rabbit size, 
 the connecting links between the enormous hippopotamus 
 and rhinoceros, and not much more nearly related to 
 Bunny than they are to " Welsh rabbits." 
 
 It is unfortunate for the rabbit, poor " Wabasso," in one 
 way, that it should be such excellent eating, for if they 
 shared the hedgehog's immunity from the pie-dish, their 
 pleasant republics might never know the recurring massacre. 
 I confess that much as I delight in watching warren-life, 
 and, indebted as I am to the grotesqueness of rabbits at play 
 or at work for many a hearty laugh, I remember them 
 very tenderly in a pie — a cold pie. 
 
 I never feel guilty when I shoot rabbits. There is an 
 idea somewhere about me that they multiply under destruc- 
 tion. They are like peppermint plants. If you go and root 
 out the bed in the corner of the garden, the plant breaks out 
 all over the path. It is like fighting with original sin, as 
 Dudley Warner says. So I pepper away in a warren with a 
 light heart. After all, if you smash up a comet it splinters 
 into stars. 
 
 Rabbits, they say, taught men sapping and mining, — in 
 '• Rasselas," at any rate, the Prince and his companion take 
 the hint of tunnelling a way of escape out of the Happy 
 Valley from these small rodents — and their burrows are cer- 
 tainly sometimes models of ingenious complication, strong- 
 holds though without strength, impregnable though without 
 armament. If the poets had wanted an analogous instance 
 of maternal sacrifice to take the place of the wretched old 
 pelican, they might have remembered the rabbit, which 
 lines her nursery with fur pulled off her own body. 
 
 Hares go with rabbits by a process of unconscious cere- 
 bration. Laprel and Kayward are sympathetic. Each in 
 turn plays the other's shadow. Rabbits, however, are much 
 
British Wild Beasts. 1S3 
 
 more familiar to most of us than hares. In a country walk 
 you pass a second rabbit without remark ; but you draw 
 attention to a hare every time you see it, and watch it as 
 long as you can. 
 
 But in the poets there are fifty hares for every rabbit, — 
 " as numerous as hares on Athos " — and the reasons for this 
 are obvious. The poets go by preference to antiquity, 
 legends, fictions, for their Nature. They do not go to Nature 
 for it 
 
 Now, the " light-foot " hare possesses as voluminous a 
 folk-lore as almost any animal, and ever since there were 
 men and women in the world to be frightened by supersti- 
 tion, this little creature, itself one of the most timid of 
 things, has inspired human beings with dread. 
 
 " Nor did we meet with nimble feet 
 A single fearful lepus, 
 That certain sign, as some divine, 
 Of fortune bad to keep us." 
 
 Sir Thomas Browne says, " There are few above the age 
 of threescore and ten who are not perplexed at a hare 
 crossing their path," and a number of poets allude to the 
 superstition of the ill-luck foreboding, when inauspicatum 
 dat iter oblatus lepus. 
 
 " If a poor timorous hare but crosse the way, 
 Moras will keep the chamber all the day." — Quarks. 
 
 " The mythical hare," says delightful Gubernatis, " is 
 undoubtedly the moon, 7 ' and the wide-spread connection of 
 the animal with that luminary gives the myth something of 
 a popular acceptation. Thus the Chinese represent the 
 moon-figure, Jut-ho, with a hare at her feet, and symbolise 
 Luna by a rabbit pounding in a mortar. In Vedic myth, 
 "the leaping one" is the moon, and the spots on the face 
 of it are hares by the shore of the moon-lake. These hares 
 
i S4 The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 have a king, and it is Death. Buddhists, again, aver that 
 the hare is in the moon as a reward for its self-sacrifice — 
 meeting Bu idha hungry the hare cooked herself for his 
 meal, and the Great Master threw her up there to be an 
 object of the world's homage. The Red Indians also have 
 a hare in their moon. 
 
 But its peculiarly sinister reputation has arisen from its 
 own timidity — " the hartlesse hare," the most timorous 
 of animals, suggesting fear and so portending something 
 to be feared. And in this significance the whole world at 
 one time or another has taken divination from "the 
 fearful hare." From no:th to south, from Lapland to 
 Arabia, from east to west, from the Chinese to the Red 
 Indians, all nations in the past, and many in the present, 
 have seen the hand of fate in the movements of this little 
 creature. 
 
 Its appearance of perpetual alarm specially attracts the 
 poets. It sits "all trembling in its form" and "springs 
 astonished." It is the "list'ning" hare (Bloomfield) ; "in 
 act to spring away" (Thomson); "beneath her bramble 
 screen, quaking as astound" (Heber) ; "afraid to keep or 
 leave her form " (Prior). "To lie and dare, as in a fourme 
 sitteth a weary hare " (Chaucer), is a poetical proverb, and 
 in Herbert's poem, Humility gives "the fearful hare her 
 ears " to Fortitude. The story of the terrified hares being 
 checked in their purpose of suicide by seeing how they had 
 frightened a linnet is versified by Beattie — 
 
 " Is there on earth a wretch, they sail, 
 Whom our approach can strike with drea i ? " 
 
 From this notion of perpetual apprehension, due in part 
 to the nervous restlessness of the hare's ears, arose the fancy 
 that the hare slept with one eye open — the somnus leporinus. 
 Thus Keats speaks of the hare's "half-sleeping fit," and 
 another poet has the admirable phrase "hare-eyed unrest.'' 
 
British Wild Beasts. 185 
 
 This sleepless vigilance, however, gives the hare an important 
 place in mythology, where it often figures as the sentinel. 
 
 Being thus of ill-omen, the hare's flesh was condemned. 
 Thus Burton advises against it, quoting profusely in sup- 
 port of his advice. "'Tis melancholy meat," says Lady 
 Answerall. 
 
 Yet, in spite of their being nominally in such disfavour, 
 we find the Romans maintaining extensive "leporaria," not 
 for coursing but for the table, the shoulder being considered 
 the tit-bit, while the phrase " to live on hares' flesh " became 
 a synonym for " the lap of luxury " or " the fat of the land." 
 
 Its flesh being thus reputed, the animal itself becomes 
 "melancholy," and "as melancholy as a hare" is a poetical 
 simile. " The sad hare," says Davenant. 
 
 Clare notes its dulness in winter as a striking contrast to 
 its summer gaiety of manners — 
 
 " The woods how gloomy in a winter's morn, 
 The crows and ravens even cease to croak ; 
 The little birds sit cluttering on the thorn, 
 The pies scarce chatter when they leave the oak, 
 Startled from slumber by the woodman's stroke. 
 
 The quirking rabbit scarcely leaves her hole, 
 
 But rolls in torpid slumbers all the day ; 
 
 The fox is loth to 'gin a long patrol, 
 
 So scouts the woods content with meaner prey ; 
 
 The hare so frisking, timid once, and gay, 
 
 Now scarce is scared though in the traveller's way, 
 
 Though waffling curs and shepherd dogs pursue." 
 
 Finally, as melancholy conduces to madness, the hares — 
 especially March hares — are popularly considered a trifle 
 insane. 
 
 Yet it is far from being of a triste or solemn kind ; for 
 who has ever watched a hare, when it thought itself in safety, 
 and not been amused by its absurd light-heartedness. In- 
 stead of behaving like the witches' familiar, which folk-lore 
 
1 86 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 has made it, it is the veriest elf of frolic Faber talks of the 
 " almost silent gambols of the hares in the tall grass " — 
 Burns has them on a happy summer's day " hirplin down 
 the furze," and again "jinking hares in amorous whids " — 
 and Wordsworth sees her "running races in her mirth." 
 Cowper has pet ones — 
 
 " I kept him for his humour's sake, 
 For he would oft beguile 
 My heart of thoughts that made it ache 
 And force me to a smile " — 
 
 that are " still wild Jack-hares," and — 
 
 " A turkey carpet was his lawn, 
 Whereon he loved to bound, 
 To skip and gambol like a fawn, 
 And swing his rump around." 
 
 Nor is the "panting timorous" hare always "fearful." 
 Like all wild things in England, where dogs, and guns, and 
 traps cover the land with such a labyrinth of danger, they 
 suspect man and all his works. But a very little will suffice 
 to gain the confidence of hares, and make them " lose 
 much of the vigilant instinctive dread," as Cowper, being 
 himself inoffensive, found — " the timorous hare scarce shuns 
 me." Sometimes, indeed, they require only too little en- 
 couragement for boldness, and having been invited into the 
 paddock with cabbage-leaves and parsley, invite themselves 
 later on into the kitchen garden. In winter too, when — 
 
 " The foodless wilds 
 Pour forth their brown inhabitant?, the hare, 
 Though timorous of heart and hard beset 
 By death in various forms, dark snares and dogs, 
 And more unpitying men, the garden seeks, 
 Urged on by fearless want." — 7 homson. 
 
 In " Reynard the Fox," the hare, Kay ward, though a 
 simpleton, is certainly not a coward. 
 
British Wild Beasts. 1S7 
 
 But the great majority accept only the sinister, dismal, 
 and unhappy aspects of the hare. It goes "limping" in 
 Grahame, Keats, Thomson, Burns, and others, as if limp- 
 ing were a feature of a woe-begone, mendicant sort of 
 existence, and not its natural gait, when at ease in its mind 
 and quite happy. " The hare limped trembling," " the 
 fearful hare limped awkward," " the limping hare stops, and 
 looks back, and stops and looks on man, his deadliest foe." 
 As a matter of fact, of course, the hare's " limp " is merely 
 its loitering pace, and expressive of poor Watts' only too 
 infrequent tranquillity. 
 
 Associated with the hare and rabbit, but in a very 
 disagreeable manner for those animals, are the " thin " 
 weasels, and their relatives the ferrets — 
 
 " In Shetland's grassy holms, the mining tribe 
 Skulking, is there well pleased to dwell obscure, 
 Regardless they of what loud bustiing men 
 Concert in clamorous camp or palace high ; 
 But what avails their unambitious care, 
 If the fierce ferret spies the vaulted cell 
 And rushes headlong in to seize his prey? 
 At once the subterraneous state alarmed, 
 Shrieks out all over — whither shall they By ? 
 Caught in their inmost chambers, where they slept 
 Vainly secure. The assassin fiery -eyed 
 Winding up all their mazes, through and through 
 Spreads desolation o'er the feeble race." — Lcyacn. 
 
 Not only in the land of Shakspeare's " weasel-Scot," but 
 in England, the ferret may still be found wild ; but Scot- 
 land alone can now boast of the larger marten. 
 
 The "sucke-egg 1 weasele" (Quarles), " night- wandering 
 weasel " (Shakespeare), " wicked " weasel, finds barely a 
 dozen references in all the range of poetry, though to the 
 
 1 " I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs." — 
 As You Like It. 
 
iSS The Pods Beasts. 
 
 prosaic mind this elegant little monster is full of signifi- 
 cances. At any rate it is quite as pretty as the panther — 
 such a favourite for its beauty with the poets — 
 
 " Fayre was this yonge wif, and therewithal 
 As any weasel hire body gent and sinal," — 
 
 and quite as fierce as the tiger, while its voracity, agility, 
 and various natural endowments, make it one of the most 
 dreadful little creatures in Nature. A thousand times better 
 to be a deer in a tiger's jungle than a rabbit in the same 
 copse as a weasel. 
 
 " My lord and I are kindred spirit", 
 Like in our ways as two young ferrets, 
 Both fashioned as that supple race is, 
 To twist into all sorts of places, 
 Creatures lengthy, lean, and hungering, 
 Fond of blood and buirow-mongering." — Moore. 
 
 Yet the weasel has a benign significance in ancient 
 Hindu myth, as also in Red Indian legends, for one 
 reason, perhaps, that it is erroneously supposed to be the 
 dire foe of snakes and scorpions. Its leanness of person 
 is due to the fact that, when the beasts were invited to 
 help themselves from Manobozho's fat-pool, the super- 
 cilious weasel came last and got none. Pope has a weasel 
 that grows fat in a corn-loft. But the poet may mean upon 
 a diet of mice and not corn. 
 
 A great many poets, it may be, never saw a wild squirrel, 
 so they refer only to those in cages, and draw the moral of 
 foolish ambition from the sight. For myself, I think it 
 very pathetic, the hopeless scrambling of the squirrel on its 
 wheel ; and such lines as these exasperate me — 
 
 " Contented like the playful squirrel 
 To wanton up and down my cage." 
 
British Wild Beasts. 1S9 
 
 Besides, what privilege have the poets to take it for granted 
 that this creature of liberty, this "merry forester," is deluded 
 by the clattering revolution of its prison into supposing that 
 it is "skimming up the silent beech,'' or " dancing oak-trees 
 round and round ? " It is, I think, a little high-handed to 
 teach a squirrel to spin its wire treadmill, and then to 
 pretend that "the foolish creature thinks he climbs," that 
 it has mistaken your wretched whirligig for its old " mazy 
 forest-house," the tops of the wind-blown pines, or the 
 fragrant bowers of " nut-grown " hazels. I resent the similes 
 of Prior, Mallet, and others, who see in the poor captives 
 illustrations of human weakness and the vanities of foolish 
 ambition. Nor, Mr. Moore, " does the name of the little 
 animal rhyme with 'girl."' 
 
 Of course many poets have really seen it wild, and 
 they delight in it — the "bright-eyed," "busy," "gay," and 
 "wanton creature." "flippant, pert, and full of play." 
 
 " The squirrel, with aspiring mind, 
 Disdains to be to earth confined, 
 
 But mounts aloft in air ; 
 The pine-tree's giddiest height he c'imbs, 
 Or scales the beech-tree's loftiest limbs, 
 And builds his castle there. 
 
 As Nature's wildest tenants free, 
 A merry forester is he, 
 
 In oak o'ers'naciowed dells; 
 In glen remote, or woodland lawn. 
 Where the doe hides her infant fawn, 
 
 Among the hills he dwells. " 
 
 They stop to watch it crack its nuts and drop the shells, 
 hear it "rattling in its hoard of acorns," peep into "the 
 brown hermit's " larder, its winter-store of acorn, pine-cone, 
 and filbert, and note "its prettiness of feigned alarm, and 
 anger insignificantly fierce." 
 
190 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 " And he could tell how the shy squirrel fared, 
 Who often stood its busy toils to see ; 
 How ngains: winter she was well prepared 
 With many a store in hollow root or tree, 
 As if being told what winter's wants would be ; 
 Its nuts and acorns he would often find, 
 And hips and haws too, heaped plenteously 
 In snug warm corner that broke off the wind, 
 With leafy nest made nigh, that warm green mosses lined. 
 
 "Wingless squirrel," says Montgomery : so Cowper, 
 "swift as bird;" and Charlotte Smith, at greater length — 
 
 " Though plumeless, he can dart away, 
 Swift as the woodpecker or the jay, 
 
 His sportive mates to woo ; 
 His summer's food is berries wild, 
 And last year's acorn cups are filled 
 
 For him with sparking dew. 
 
 Soft is his shining auburn coat, 
 As ermine white his downy throat, 
 
 Intelligent his mien ; 
 With feathery tail and ears alert, 
 And little paws as hands expert, 
 
 And eyes so black and keen. 
 
 Soaring above the earth-born herd 
 Of beasts, he emulates the bird, 
 
 Yet feels no want of wing ; 
 Exactly poised, he dares to launch 
 In air, and bounds from branch to branch, 
 
 With swift elastic spring." 
 
 Naturally enough, the poets admire the forethought of 
 the squirrel in furnishing its larder against the winter — 
 
 " Within some old fantastic tree, 
 Where time has worn a cavity, 
 His winter food is stored ; 
 
British Wild Beasts. 191 
 
 The cone beset with many a scale, 
 The chestnut in its coat of mail, 
 Or nuts complete his hoard." 
 
 Or, in Clare — 
 
 " The squirrel bobbing from the eye 
 Is busy now about his hoard ; 
 And in old nest of crow or pye, 
 His winter-store is oft explored/' 
 
 But this engaging prevision has a charm within a charm. 
 For the squirrel goes to sleep during the winter, and its 
 diligence in collecting food for a time when it does not 
 need it might therefore seem somewhat misdirected. But 
 the squirrel knows that there are often breaks of fine 
 weather in the middle of winter, and it is really for these 
 occasional picnics that the brown hermit provisions him- 
 self— 
 
 ,; When drawn from refuge in some lonely elm, 
 That age or injury has hollowed deep, 
 Where on his bed of wool and matted leaves 
 He has outslept the winter, ventures forth 
 To frisk awhile, and bask in the warm sun." 
 
 So that as a matter of fact the squirrel does not lay up 
 food against bad weather, but against fine. Moreover, it 
 very often happens that the little creature forgets where 
 it has concealed its hoards ; and every one who lives in 
 the country knows how common it is in tumble-down walls 
 or about old trees to find stocks of nuts and acorns that 
 have been laid up but never consumed. The instinct to 
 lay by against heavy snowfalls has been inherited, no doubt, 
 from progenitors who lived in the years of harder winters, 
 and though the necessity for its exercise now hardly exists, 
 the squirrel is still as industrious as ever, and, therefore, 
 twice as industrious as it need be. 
 
 Its merry heart is certainly one of the squirrel's many 
 
192 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 claims to favour, and its nimble industry, so often noted by 
 the poets, suggests one of the most curious legends of which 
 this delightful little animal is the subject. On the top of 
 the dreadful ash-tree Ygdrasil sits the Death-Eagle, and 
 down among its roots lies coiled Fate, the dragon Nidhoge, 
 and the squirrel is for ever running up and down from one 
 to the other, trying to make them quarreL 
 
 Red men have many superstitions about their squirrels, 
 one species of which closely resembles our own ruddy 
 favourite. As every one knows, it was Hiawatha's bene- 
 factor and honoured companion in that perilous voyage on 
 the black pitch-water — 
 
 " On the bows with tail erected 
 Sate the squirrel Ajidauno ; 
 In his fur the breeze of morning 
 Fiayed as in the prairie grasses." 
 
 They cough to this day because once they were men, and 
 Manobozho, the mischief-maker, gave them meat which 
 turned to ashes in their mouths, and then, for coughing out 
 his victuals, he turned them all into squirrels. They are one 
 of the Indians' most familiar forms of enchantment, and in 
 many of their tales the hero is turned by beneficent fairies 
 into this animal's form in order to enable him to accomplish 
 his labours. Thus " the wearer of the Ball " becomes a 
 squirrel when he has to chase the flying hut which is built 
 in the top of a pine-tree that keeps on growing up higher 
 the higher the hero climbs. 
 
 Moles have in some countries a diabolical, in others only 
 a mysterious reputation. Now and again it has a medicinal 
 ct, as among the Russians, who say that if you kill a mole 
 by squeezing it in your hand, you can touch for the king's 
 evil, while in England, not so very long ago, a mole was a 
 sure cure for ague — if eaten crisp. But these are excep- 
 tional views to take of the "little gentleman in the velvet 
 
British Wild Beasts. 193 
 
 coat," and to be accepted with as much reserve as the moles 
 of Holy Writ, which, owing to errors of translation, should 
 sometimes be read " Swan ! " The intelligent, however, 
 will do well to regard the mole as a curious little beast, 
 created apparently for the purpose of providing the earth 
 with an invaluable system of sub-soil drainage, and, sub- 
 ordinately, as a moral discipline for landscape gardeners — 
 and (in Hurdis) for shepherds — 
 
 " Scarce disappears the deluge, when the mole, 
 Close prisoner long in subterranean cell 
 Frost-bound, again the miner plays, and heaves, 
 With treble industry, the mellow mound 
 Along the swarded vale. The shepherd's eye 
 With unforgiving enmity surveys 
 The long concatenated sweep of hills, 
 Whose soft and crumbling soil abridges more 
 The scanty pittance of his hungry fold." 
 
 Cowper, with a wail of sympathy that is almost charac- 
 teristic of him, finds in the little harmless beast a sinister 
 analogy — 
 
 " We mount again, and feel at every step 
 One foot half sunk in hillocks green and soft, 
 Raised by the mole, the miner of the soil. 
 He, not unlike the great ones of mankind, 
 Disfigures earth, and plotting in the dark, 
 Toils much to earn a monumental pile 
 That may record the mischief he has done." 
 
 Nor is it without interest as being the chief possessor of all 
 the world below the surface. 
 
 " What need of all this marble crust 
 To impack the wanton mole of dust, 
 That thinks by breadth the world t' unite 
 Though the first builders failed in height." — Marvell. 
 
 In some places the rat usurps its patrimony, but the 
 
 N 
 
194 The Pods Beasts. 
 
 "handed" mole has plenty of room to spare, and though 
 the worms drive their narrow tunnels in subterranean 
 labyrinth, the mole does not complain, for it eats the 
 worms. 
 
 With the poets "the mole that scoops with curious toil 
 his subterranean bed" (Montgomery) ; that "the crumbled 
 earth in hillocks raises" (Gay); "unwearied still roots up 
 many a crumbling hill" (Clare) ; is a "dark grubbing" and 
 " blinking " creature. Cowper typifies Error as a mole, and 
 Dryden has "like a mole busy and blind, works all his 
 folly up and casts it outward to the world's open air." 
 Eliza Cook is good enough to say that " there's a mission, 
 no doubt, for the mole in the dust," and Spenser speaks 
 of the " moldwarp " as a slothful sensualist. Mackay calls 
 all sorts and conditions of men — grasping tyrants, angry 
 bigots, selfish rulers, palace knaves, canting hypocrites, 
 greedy authors, smug philosophers, Malthusians — every- 
 body in fact who tries "to keep the nations down" by 
 plotting against liberty of mind or freedom of conscience, 
 "moles" — 
 
 " Grub, little moles, grub underground, 
 There's sunshine in the sky." 
 
 Keats uses the image finely in the following passage from 
 " Isabella "— 
 
 " Who hath not loitered in a green churchyard, 
 And let his spirit, like a demon mole, 
 Work through the clayey soil and gravel hard, 
 
 To see skull, coffined bones, and funeral stole ; 
 Pitying each form that hungry Death had marred, 
 And filling it once more with human soul." 
 
 On the other hand, the poets applaud its acute sense of 
 hearing, and deplore its feeble eyesight — 
 
 " What modes of sight betwixt the wide extreme ! 
 The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam." — Pope. 
 
British Wild Beasts. 195 
 
 The chief point about the natural mole — Tennyson's ''four- 
 handed mole " — is its industry in digging ; and the poets, 
 observing the superficial evidences of its diligence, address 
 the "moudiewort " as "patient," draw numerous reflections 
 from its "delving," "earth-piercing," and "mining," which, 
 by the way, the fairies are supposed to have taught them. 
 Thus Pope advises man to imitate the mole in deep- 
 ploughing. 
 
 Mice are not suitable subjects for poetry. There is very 
 little of the hieroglyph, few subtle significances, in the 
 pantry-invading, cat-eaten mouse. It is difficult to dignify 
 it. Mouse-character is very one-sided : there are no 
 enormities about it, no picturesque ferocity, or blood- 
 curdling wolfishness ; nor does it conceal itself sufficiently 
 to be worth calling " obscene." Besides, it is so absurdly 
 small. Once in a way it was well enough to make "the 
 crumb ravisher," "cheese-rind nibbler," " bacon-licker," and 
 their comrades-in-arms, heroic ; but the joke does not bear 
 repetition. It is sad that cats should think so well of them 
 as food, and that mouse-traps should be so efficacious, but 
 what is to be done? They insist on being where they 
 should not go, and affront man himself by tampering with 
 his victuals. 
 
 Such is the poetical acceptation of the mouse. As 
 " Tom's food " they are benignly congratulated upon their 
 utility, and, though expected to rejoice when cats decease, 
 are sternly reminded that pussy alive was a wholesome 
 corrective to mouse excesses. Thus Clare — 
 
 " Ah mice, rejoice ! ye've lost your foe, 
 Who watched your scheming robb'ries so 
 That, while she lived, twa'nt yours to know 
 
 A crumb of bread : 
 'Tis yours to triumph, mine's the woe, 
 
 Now pussy's dead ; 
 While pus?y lived ye'd empty maws, 
 No sooner peeped ye out your nose, 
 
196 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 But ye were instant in her claws, 
 
 With squeakings dread ; 
 Ye're now set free from tyrant's laws, 
 
 Poor pussy's dead." 
 
 They may eat crumbs if they can, but if the cat comes, 
 it will serve them right if they get eaten themselves ; as in 
 Herrick — 
 
 " So the brisk mouse may feast herself with crumbs, 
 Till the green-eyed killing comes, 
 Then to her cabin, blest she can escape 
 The sudden danger of a rape." 
 
 So also when the mouse is caught in a trap, the poets 
 hold it inevitable justice that it should die. Thus Somer- 
 ville speaks of "the rigorous decree of fate '' that condemns 
 cheese-hunting mice to execution, and Clare of the "rigid 
 fate " that awaits the tiny pilferer. 
 
 But outside the poets, the mouse has considerable dignity. 
 It is " the ravisher " of Vedic legends, and in the solar 
 myth the mice are the shadows which creep out from under 
 the hills, and which the cat-moon and her kitten the twi- 
 light hunt. It was turned into a tiger as a reward for 
 assisting a Brahmin, and might have been a tiger still, had 
 it not in its new shape proceeded to eat the Brahmin, and 
 for this been promptly turned back into a mouse again. 
 Nor can an animal be called merely a pantry-thief that 
 sometimes eats kings and archbishops, to say nothing of 
 the sons of Polish dukes. 1 Is the mouse, portentous to 
 Rome, to be perpetually cowering before "green-eyed kit- 
 lings?" If poets have no respect for mice, have they none 
 for St. Gertrude, their patron ? Take again their position 
 in fairy tales. The mice are always beneficent. Their feud 
 with the sparrows is doubtless deplorable, but did it arise 
 
 1 According to legend King Popelus was eaten by mice, also Duke 
 Conrad's son (of Poland), also Otho, Archbishop of Mentz. 
 
British Wild Beasts. 197 
 
 from the fault of the mice ? Were not they and the spar- 
 rows firm friends till the former behaved so meanly in that 
 matter of the odd poppy seed, eating the whole of it them- 
 selves instead of fairly dividing it with the mice ? Xor 
 should it be remembered as discreditable to the mouse 
 that it is not on good terms with the cat, for the cat be- 
 haved very shabbily towards its little partner about that pot 
 of fat which they had stored away in the church, for joint 
 winter consumption : for, not content with faithlessly eating 
 all the fat by herself, Grimalkin also ate the mouse for 
 reproaching her. The majority of fables are to the credit 
 of the mouse : its gratitude is conspicuous, its services to 
 princes in trouble momentous ; and did it not, at the risk 
 of its own life, release a lion ? Lions are great mouse- 
 eaters. 
 
 But the mouse, apart from man's household and yet more 
 sacred person, that is to say, the field-mouse — for poets con- 
 sider corn-stealing in the country merely an amiable weak- 
 ness as compared with the iniquity of crumb-stealing in the 
 town — receives more sympathetic treatment. They rejoice 
 over "the pilfering mouse entrapped and caged" in a 
 kitchen, and moralise loftily — 
 
 " When the watchful hungry mouse 
 At midnight prowling round the house, 
 Winds in a corner toasted cheese, 
 Glad the luxurious prey to seize, 
 With whiskers curled, and round black ey 
 He meditates his luscious prize, 
 Till caught, trepanned, laments too late 
 The rigorous decrees of fate." — Sorrier: 
 
 For the " city mouse, well coated, sleek, and gay, a mouse 
 of high degree" (Cowley \ is looked upon as an animal that 
 arrives at great personal comfort, and lives luxuriously, by 
 dishonest practices. But the " fieldish " mouse has some- 
 how acquired a character for industrious honesty and 
 
198 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 thrifty struggling against poverty. Thus Wyatt, in his 
 delightful poem "On the Mean and Sure Estate" — 
 
 " The fieldish mouse, 
 That for because her livelihood was but thin, 
 Would needs go see her townish sister's house, 
 She thought herself endured to grievous pain, 
 The stormy blasts her cave so sore did souse ; 
 That when the furrows swimmed with the rain, 
 She must be cold and wet, in sorry plight, 
 And worse than that, bare meat there did remain. 
 To comfort her, when she her house had dight, 
 Sometime a barley corn, sometime a bean, 
 For which she laboured hard both day and night 
 In harvest time, while she might go and glean. 
 And when her store was stroyed with the flood, 
 Then welladay ! for she undone was clean." 
 
 Thus Clare delights in the pretty little animal with its 
 nest swinging from a wheat-stalk — 
 
 "The little chumbling mouse 
 Gnarls the dead weed for her house. 
 
 The fields are cleared, the labouring mice 
 
 To sheltering hedge or wood patrole, 
 When hips and haws for food suffice 
 
 That chumbled lie about their hole." 
 
 Hurdis sits out to watch 
 
 " Tiie wanton mouse, 
 And see him gambol round the primrose hear!, 
 Till the still owl comes smoothly sailing forth, 
 And with a shrill ' to-whit' breaks off his dance 
 And sends him scouring home." 
 
 Indeed, the owl, "whose meteor eyes shoot horror through 
 the dark," often gets well rated for "numbing the tiny 
 revellers with dread." Its habit of "prowling along the 
 fields " is thrown in its beak, and it is reproached for sub- 
 terfuge, when 
 
British Wild Beasts. 199 
 
 " In a barn 
 He sees a mouse creeping in the corn, 
 Sits still and shuts his round blue eyes, 
 As if he slept, until he spies 
 The little beast within his reach, 
 Then starts and seizes on the wretch." — Butler. 
 
 Burns laments over the 
 
 " Wee sleekit, cow'rin', tim'rous beastie," 
 
 and its little home in the stubble ruined by the plough, — 
 
 " That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble 
 Has cost thee moiiy a weary nibble." 
 
 Two full-grown " harvest-mice " weigh exactly one half- 
 penny, and it was no doubt the marrow of this diminutive 
 species that Titania used to have on her toast. It is not, 
 however, out of place here to remind poets that the 
 " delightful " field-mouse, as they think it, and as it un- 
 doubtedly is to all lovers of Nature, is " the corn-destroyer " 
 of Holy Writ, and that they are "the mice that marred the 
 land " of Philistia, the scourge of an angry Jehovah. Nor 
 — to descend to lesser catastrophes — are the field-mice that 
 ate up the Bishop of Bingen altogether trivial creatures. In 
 England and Europe generally, the "pilfering" field-mice 
 that "with far-fetched ear its hole supplies" (Clare), some- 
 times commit very serious depredations in the barns and 
 rick-yards into which it has been carried at harvest time. 
 Those that have been left behind in the fields become 
 partially torpid, and take refuge in little grass-lined burrows ; 
 but their more fortunate friends in the barns keep awake in 
 winter "as if on purpose to show their gratitude for their 
 liberal provender." 
 
 References are made to many of the mice of story — 
 Wyatt's fieldish mouse; the town mouse and its country 
 cousin ; the golden mice of the covenantal ark ; those that 
 fought the frogs \ the mouse (in Crabbe) 
 
200 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 " That trespassed and the treasure stole, 
 Found his lean body fitted to the hole ; 
 Till, having fatted, he was forced to stay, 
 And, fasting, starve his stolen bulk away," 
 
 and those of the Mouse Tower on the Rhine, while the 
 morals and wise saws derived from the same animal are 
 unexpectedly numerous. 
 
 " I hold a mouse's wit not worth a leke, 
 That hath but one hole for to stenten to." — Chancer. 
 
 " 'Tis a bold mouse that nestles in a cat's ear, 
 I gave the mouse a hole and she is become my heir." — Herbert. 
 
 " Dronke as a mous." — Chancer. 
 
 " The mouse 
 Finds no pleasure in a poor man's house. — Quarles. 
 
 " State vermin, gnawing into labour's bread." — E. Cook. 
 
 " Show him a mouse's tail and he will guess, 
 
 With metaphysic swiftness, at the mouse." —Keats. 
 
 Women, it is proverbial, dread mice. Says Crabbe — 
 
 " She who will tremble if her eye explore 
 The smallest monstrous mouse that creeps on floor." 
 
 But they do not, as a rule, altogether dislike them, or 
 Suckling might regret his pretty simile, who writes — 
 
 " Her feet beneath her petticoat 
 Like little mice crept in and out, 
 As if they feared the light." 
 
 1 Pope has it weakly — 
 
 " The mouse that always trusts to one poor hole, 
 Can never be a mouse of any soul." 
 
 So Herbert — 
 
 " The mouse that hath but one hole is quickly taken." 
 
British Wild Beasts. 201 
 
 In Jean Ingelow there is a pleasant reference to the 
 "water-mouse " among the reeds — 
 
 " His bright eyes glancing black as beads, 
 So happy with a bunch of seeds," 
 
 and several poets refer kindly to the "drowsy," " wondering," 
 "sleepy" dormouse. In Red Indian fairy tales the dor- 
 mouse, the '• blind woman," is a thing of some consequence. 
 Once upon a time, a dwarf, annoyed by the sun, persuaded 
 his sister to make a net out of her hair, and going out to 
 the edge of the prairie next morning, he caught the sun 
 just as it was rising, and pinned it down inside the net to the 
 ground. Prodigious was the consternation in Nature when 
 the sun did not rise, and long and serious the pow-wow of 
 the beasts. But at last the venerable dormouse (at that 
 time the largest of all animals and the Ulysses among them) 
 guessed what was the matter, and going to the edge of the 
 prairie released the luminary. But in doing so it was 
 shrivelled up to its present size. 
 
 As regards its forethought for the winter, the dormouse 
 is even more interesting than the squirrel. For not only 
 does it, like the squirrel, lay up its little hampers for 
 occasional picnics in the snatches of fine weather, but it 
 takes care, before turning into its cosy little moss-ball for 
 the winter, to fatten itself up to an extraordinary obesity. 
 So fat, indeed, does it become, that without any food at 
 all laid by, it could sleep out a whole winter comfortably. 
 But the delightful little Sybarite is not going to run any 
 risks, so, like the juryman in Punch, it first of al eats 
 itself into invincible fatness, and fills its pockets besides 
 with condensed foods. 
 
 It was this capacity for fattening that endeared the 
 dormice to Roman epicures. Their "gliralia" or "dor- 
 mouse parks " were most extensive and costly erections, 
 planted with oaks and nut-trees for the sustenance of these 
 
202 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 small deer, who, as required for the table, were caught 
 and put into jars provided with every sort of mouse 
 luxury. 
 
 Rat is a frequent epithet of reproach. Sycophants 
 deserting a declining patron " as rats do a falling house," 
 are vermin. So are beggars "as poor as church rats" 
 (Marvell), and so are thieves. " There be land-rats and 
 water-rats, land-thieves and water-thieves," and so are the 
 Jesuits in Oldham. 
 
 " Prophet, curse me the babbling lip, 
 And curse me the British vermin, the rat ; 
 I know not whether he came in the Hanover ship 
 But I know that he lies and listens mute 
 In an ancient mansion's crannies and holes. 
 Arsenic, arsenic, sure would do it, 
 Except that now we poison our babes, poor souls ! 
 It is all used up for that." 
 
 Its two great historical iniquities, eating Mrs. Throck- 
 morton's bullfinch — 
 
 " For aided both by ear and scent, 
 Right to his mark the monster went. 
 
 Ah, muse ! forbear to speak. 
 Minute the horrors that ensued ; 
 His teeth were strong, his cage was wood, 
 He left poor Bully's beak" {Cowper) — 
 
 And Bishop Hatto — 
 
 " In at the windows, and in at the door, 
 And through the walls by thousands they pour, 
 And down from the ceiling and up from the floor, 
 From the right and the left, from behind and before, 
 From within and without, from above and below, 
 And all at once to the bishop they go. 
 They have whetted their teeth against the stones, 
 And now they pick the bishop's bones. 
 
British Wild Beasts. 203 
 
 They gnawed the flesh from every limb, 
 
 For they were sent to do judgment on him " (Southey) — 
 
 are each the subject of a poem. Nor is the death of the 
 bishop at all beyond rat capabilities ; for it is beyond doubt 
 that men have been killed and eaten by rats in the sewers, 
 both of London and Paris, while Professor Bell, on the 
 authority of Robert Stephenson, relates the following 
 instance of the extreme ferocity of the rat when driven to 
 hunger. 1 " In a coal-pit," he says, " in which many horses 
 were employed, the rats (which fed upon the fodder pro- 
 vided for the horses) had accumulated in great multitudes. 
 It was customary in holiday times to bring to the surface 
 the horses and the fodder, and to close the pit for the time. 
 On one occasion, when the holiday had extended to ten 
 days or a fortnight, during which the rats had been deprived 
 of food, on reopening the pit, the first man who descended 
 was attacked by the starving multitude, and speedily killed 
 and devoured ! " Of their audacity Butler gives delightful 
 illustration — rats getting into his worthy's breeches-pockets 
 to eat his rations — 
 
 '• For, as we said, he always chose 
 To carry little in his hose. 
 That often tempted rats and mice 
 The ammunition to surprise ; 
 And when he put a hand but in 
 The one or t'other magazine, 
 They stoutly on defence on't stood, 
 And from the wounded foe drew blood. 
 And till th' were stormed and beaten out, 
 Ne'er left the fortified redoubt " — 
 
 while Shenstone records in verse the all-too-frequent 
 vanity of the rat-trap. 
 
 1 Cassell's " Natural History," edited by Professor P. Martin Duncan, 
 F.R.S., F.G.S. 
 
204. The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " But more of trap and bait, sir, 
 Why should I sing of either? ' 
 Since the rat who knew the sle 
 Came in the dead of night, 
 
 -ragged 'em away together. 
 
 Then answer this, ye sages ! 
 Nor deem I mean to wrong ye, 
 Had the rat, which thus did seize on 
 The trap, less claim to reason 
 Than many a skull among ye ? " 
 
 Tennyson makes " the little rat : ' a terrific agent in 
 catastrophe — 
 
 " Ah, little rat, that borest in the dyke 
 
 Thy hole by night, to let the boundless deep 
 Down upon far-off cities while they dance 
 Or dream. 
 
 Among British " wild animals " may also be enumerated 
 the polecat, pine-marten, and wild-cat. and each is referred 
 to by our poets. 
 
 rljS^S^fe- 
 
VIII. 
 BEASTS OF CHASE. 
 
 " The chase, the sport of kings, image of war without its 
 guilt," is Somerville's definition; and he tells us that "devo- 
 tion, pure and strong necessity, first began the chase of 
 beasts." Thus pious in conception, and innocent in pro- 
 cess, " sport " should have no need of apology. 
 
 But let us hear the other side, and by preference — as 
 more nearly corresponding to Somerville in extremity of 
 prejudice — Thomson : 
 
 '' In the gleaming morn 
 The beasts of prey retire, that all night long, 
 Urged by necessity had ranged the dark, 
 As if their conscious ravages shunned the light, 
 Ashamed. Not so the steady tyrant man, 
 Who, with the thoughtless insolence of power 
 Inflamed beyond the most infuriate wrath 
 Of the worst monster that e'er roamed the waste, 
 For sport alone pursues the cruel chase 
 Amid the beamings of the gentle day. 
 Upbraid, ye ravening tribes, our wanton rage, 
 For hunger kindles you, and lawless want ; 
 But lavish fed, in Nature's bounty rolled, 
 To joy at anguish, and delight in blood, 
 Is what your horrid bosoms never knew." 
 
 Nor is Cowper less pronounced in his aversion to the 
 hard exercise of hunting. 
 
206 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Between these two superlatives stand ranged every con- 
 ceivable degree of comparison, and it is very difficult indeed 
 to decide whether the poetic instinct is hostile to sport, as 
 sport, or is favourable. A few writers devote whole poems 
 to the glorification of the chase in general and certain forms 
 of hunting in particular. On the other hand, a score and 
 more of poets condemn it root and branch. 
 
 Even on special points the diversity of opinion is note- 
 worthy ; for, while some go into raptures over the death of 
 the stag, others mingle their tears with those of " the sobbing 
 victim ; " one party exults over the fox-hunt, styling the 
 field " bold heroes ; " the other calls them " cravens," and 
 says the whole thing is a crying shame. Gay magnifies 
 coursing the hare as a delirious delight ; Somerville calls 
 down the vengeance of Heaven upon " the vile crew " who 
 go after Puss with greyhounds. 
 
 They are not even agreed on facts. The quarrel com- 
 mences at the very beginning. For instance, Somerville 
 says — 
 
 " When Nimrod bold, 
 A mighty hunter ! first made war on beasts ;" 
 
 while Pope has — 
 
 " Proud Nimrod first the bloody chase began ; 
 A mighty hunter, and his prey was man." 
 
 And they carry on their differences up to their own days. 
 Thus one poet eulogises the modern lady in the hunting- 
 field, as if she were a Florence Nightingale ; another cries, 
 Fie on her ! and tells the hussy to get home. So that it is 
 not easy to arrive at the just middle of poetical opinion 
 upon the subject of sport. 
 
 But a very unmistakable point upon which our poets are 
 agreed, and, in my opinion, are every one of them open to 
 unfavourable criticism, is their deficiency of sympathy. Of 
 " sentiment " they have a constant abundance. I regret 
 
Bias/s of Chase. 207 
 
 its excess in Wordsworth, for instance, and resent it in 
 Cowper ; Thomson provokes me almost to apoplexy ; and 
 as for Eliza Cook, I weep such tears over her as, I am 
 informed, I wept in childhood over that unfortunate ram 
 which Abraham chanced to sacrifice in the place of his son. 
 There is much pathos in the fate of the ram which had 
 come as a looker-on, and had to take the leading part 
 straight off without even a rehearsal. There is much 
 pathos, too, about Eliza Cook's poetry. 
 
 By " sympathy " I mean literally what the word implies ; 
 that is, fellow-feeling ; and nowhere in poetry do I find this 
 beautiful quality so wanting — as compared with prose — as 
 in the poets' treatment of the chase. When they hold with 
 the hare they seem to have no appreciation of the courage 
 and endurance of the riders, horses, or pack ; when they 
 hunt with the hounds they are as pitiless as the dogs them- 
 selves, rush frenzied into the death-worry, and roll in the 
 spilt blood. This loss of balance puzzles me. If a " poet " 
 was of necessity a genius I could understand it. But their 
 madness has not always this justification of alliance. 
 
 Shelley may say anything he likes — he does, as a rule — 
 but I do not object to his spotted tigers or his kingfishers 
 that feed on raspberries. He may make his tigers feed on 
 kingfishers, or his kingfishers on tigers — it would not matter. 
 Nor is there anything that might not be forgiven to a Milton, 
 a Crashawe, or a Keats. I would follow a man all round 
 the parish with my bowie-knife who objected (seriously) to 
 Spenser's statements that boars feed upon camels or that 
 bats are birds. 
 
 For though these great poets are often wrong in facts — 
 and what decently-thinking man does not hate them ? the 
 accomplished fact is a simple brute — they are never deficient 
 in sympathy. Yet they never "gush." Without calling 
 man a monster they can admire and feel with the creatures 
 which for his pleasure or his profit he puts to death. But 
 
208 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 the majority seem unable to do this ; they have not the 
 strength for impartiality; they keep themselves perpen- 
 dicular with sprawling buttresses of prejudice. 
 
 To illustrate this. The wild boar is a noble beast ; he is 
 the counterpart of the noblest men of an earlier age ; a 
 Charles Martel, Charles the Bold, Charles XII. — a grand 
 creature, who treats the odds against him as children treat 
 chronology, as something that he neither understands nor 
 cares to. He takes victory by the ears and drags her along 
 with him into battle. But in poetry none of the courage, 
 this perfection of heroism, is carried to the boar's credit ; 
 it all goes to that of the hunters or the boar-hounds. The 
 latter beset it, and do it to death with weapons, nets, and 
 stress of numbers. They are " heroic," but the boar is only 
 " savage." 
 
 The stag, again. He is stately and fleet of foot. But if 
 this is true of the quarry, what shall we say, the poets ask, 
 of the men and the stag-hounds that hunt it down ? The 
 hare and the otter are wonderfully cunning, but what fools 
 they are compared to the craft of human kind ! The fox, 
 too, what do its wiles avail when outraged man is on its 
 racks, thirsting to avenge the duckling and the chicken? 
 
 In the poem on "The Chase" Somerville ranges over 
 half the animal kingdom; but, as far as British poets are con- 
 cerned, the beasts of sport are virtually only five — the wild 
 boar, deer, fox, hare, and otter. The wild-cat, as is proved 
 by old manorial charters, was once included in the list, but 
 it is not a poet's beast 
 
 Incidentally, of course, every quadruped that finds notice 
 in verse is referred to in its relation to man — that of the 
 hunted to the hunter — but, as objects of the chase, the 
 animals finally resolve themselves into the mystic five. The 
 chief of these is the boar. 
 
 Homer, describing the outrush of the brothers Ajax, 
 employs it as a simile — 
 
Beasts of Chase. 209 
 
 " Forth from their portals rushed th' intrepid pair, 
 Opposed their breasts and stood themselves the war. 
 So two wild boars spring furious from their den, 
 Roused with the cries of dogs and voice of men. 
 On every side the crackling trees they tear, 
 And root the shrubs, and lay the forest bare ; 
 They gnash their tusks, with fire their eyeballs roll, 
 Till some wide wound lets out their mighty soul." 
 
 Ovid, in his description of the beast, has the following 
 lines — 
 
 "Sanguine et igne micant oculi, riget horrida cervix, 
 Et setae, densis similes hastilibus horrent, 
 Stantque velut vallum, velut alta hastilia sctas. 
 Fervida cum rauco latos stridore per armos 
 Spuma fluit." 
 
 In these two passages are contained the sum total of the 
 English poets' wild boar : Homer's simile and Ovid's 
 description have sufficed. 
 
 This animal, by the way, affords us a standard by which 
 to measure our own manhood with that of the " heroic," 
 chivalrous, and historical days. " The destruction of a 
 wild boar," we read, "ranked in the middle ages among 
 the deeds of chivalry, and won for a warrior almost as much 
 renown as the slaying of an enemy in open lists." Think 
 of this, you jolly hog-hunters of India ! Regret, when you 
 next ride to pig, with a single spear in your hand, that you 
 did not live in the past, when, if you had gone after the 
 same beast in armour, javelined, and sworded, you might 
 have been a hero. Look at your trophies of tushes and 
 lament. Each pair of those in the days of the Earl Guy 
 might have made you a national hero for life and perhaps 
 even a Saint of Christendom thereafter ! 
 
 In Windsor Forest the redoubtable Earl "did all to — 
 kill" a "grisly bore," and he lives for ever a mirror of 
 heroism. 
 
 o 
 
The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " As also how hee slue 
 
 turned up v ; of graine 
 
 •. 
 I 
 A ; 
 
 [ his head, a troj ire. " — D.ayton. 
 
 Are the Gore to forget their illustrious clans- 
 
 man wfac 'A Huntley?" or the Boswells 
 
 how their ancestor avenged the death of Farquhar IL, King 
 
 "- — 
 
 ,; ^Tien beyond he lyeth languV 
 
 In Chetwode once abode a boar, and the terror of it was 
 
 it the country people could not pass that way to 
 
 Rookwood; and even travellers of quality "passed by on 
 
 other side." Then Sir Ryalas, Lord of Chetwode, 
 
 -name that he should be thus isolated 
 
 from society by an " urchin-snouted boar," goes forth to 
 
 it, as if the beast were a Guiilaume le Sanglier with a 
 
 •-.ade of castle trumpets. 
 
 I . ng — 
 
 Wind well thy horn, good hunter ; 
 I the trees as he ramped him along. 
 
 7 Sir Ryalas, the jc 
 
 7 : hours in a long summer day — 
 
 hoip, good hunter ; 
 
 I have got him away 
 ial hunter. 
 
 he drew his broadsword with m:_ 
 . hunter ; 
 And he fc. . I off quite, 
 
 .here existed a lar^e 
 z the name of ' the ] 
 Pond.' I ivergrown ^nd brushwood. • 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 1 1 
 
 Another illustration of the prodigious importance attached 
 to such a feat is afforded by the legend of Boarstall, the 
 seat of the Aubreys. " It is situated within the limits of 
 the ancient forest of Bernwood, which was very extensive 
 and thickly wooded. This forest, in the neighbourhood 
 of Brill, where Edward the Confessor had a palace, was 
 infested with a ferocious wild boar, which had not only 
 become a terror to the rustics, but a great annoyance 
 to the royal hunting expeditions. At length one Nigel, 
 a huntsman, dug a pit in a certain spot which he had 
 observed the boar to frequent, and, placing a sow in the pit, 
 covered it with brushwood. The boar came after the sow, 
 and, falling into the pit, was easily killed by Nigel, who 
 carried its head on his sword to the king, who was then 
 residing at Brill." For this the king knighted him "and 
 amply rewarded him ! " 
 
 All this goes to prove the manly courage of the men 
 who killed boars ; yet the boar's courage is all bloodthirsty 
 ferocity. Adonis will not stay with his celestial charmer j 
 his thoughts are all given to the boar-hunt he has on hand — 
 
 " But for she saw him bent to cruell play, 
 To hunt the salvage beast in forest wyde. 
 Dreadfull of danger that mote him betyde, 
 She oft and oft advized to refraine 
 From chase of greater beastes, whose brutish pry :e 
 Mote breede him scath unwares." 
 
 So, too, the lovely Thyamis wedded to a "loose, unruly 
 swain," 
 
 bring it into cultivation, began to fill up the ditch by leveiling the 
 mound. Having lowered the latter about four feet he came on the 
 skeleton of an enormous boar lying flat on its side and at full length. 
 Probably this was the very spot where it had been killed, the earth 
 around having been heaped over it so as to form the ditch and moumi. 
 The space formerly thus occupied can still be traced. It extends about 
 thirty feet in length and eighteen in width, and the field containing it 
 is yet called 'the Boar's Head Field.' "—Book of Days. 
 
2 1 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Who had more joy to range the forest wyde, 
 And chase the salvage boar with busie payne, 
 Than serve his lady's love ; " 
 
 goes out loveless into the wilderness. 
 
 Boar-hunting had therefore — at least so it would appear — 
 momentous consequences in the days of chivalry; now-a-days 
 it is a mere pastime with Englishmen; they call it "stick- 
 ing pigs." None of them expects knighthood for the per- 
 formance, nor does the pig-sticker expect his wife to go 
 forth mad during his absence. Of course it may be said 
 that boars are not what they were "in the good old days," 
 and there the poets have the best of it — for their boars are 
 perfect hurricanes. But I protest against their handling of 
 them. The valour of the gallant brute was worth a passing 
 compliment. 
 
 " Hero-like, who on their crest still wore 
 A lion, panther, leopard, or a boar." 
 
 Now the three first animals mentioned in Lovelace's lines 
 are, according to the traditions of the College of Arms, one 
 and the same beast. Virtually, therefore, the boar is the 
 only animal except the lion that was considered worthy by 
 ancient chivalry to be worn as a badge. 
 
 " Tusky boars l 
 Razed out of all thy woods, as trophies hung, 
 Grin high-emblazoned on thy children's shields." 
 
 So Planche, in his " Pursuivant of Arms," notes how in 
 Glover's Roll (temp. Henry III.) only three beasts were 
 then borne upon English coats-of-arms, and that one of 
 them was the boar. It shared with the lion and the leopard 
 the honourable distinction of emblazonment upon shields. 
 Mrs. Bury Palliser also, in her most fascinating work on 
 
 1 Leyden's "Albania." 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 1 3 
 
 <: Historic Devices," bears ample testimony to the heraldic 
 dignity of the beast. 
 
 The device of a boar was used by Richard III. before he 
 was a king, and when Duke of Gloucester he had a pur- 
 suivant named Blanc Sanglier. His cognisance was a rose 
 supported on the dexter side by a bull, a badge of the house 
 of Clare, and on the sinister by a boar, which boar he had 
 found among the badges of the house of York. " The 
 latter he selected for his own personal device, and it was 
 that by which he was generally designated, as we know by 
 the doggrel which is said to have caused its composer to be 
 shortened by the head and four quarters " — 
 
 " The Ratte, the Cat, and Lovell our dogge, 
 Rule all England under the Hogge," 
 
 meaning by the hog, " the dreadful wild boar " which was 
 the king's crest. But Collingbourne was one of the most 
 seditious of the disaffected, and held correspondence with 
 Richard and deserved his fate. 
 
 ,; When I meant the king by name of hog, 
 I only alluded to his badge the boar." 
 
 Queen Margaret calls Richard a " rooting hog," and 
 Hastings says — 
 
 " To fly the boar before the boar pursues 
 Were to incense the boar to follow us, 
 And make pursuit when he did mean no chase. 
 Go, bid thy master rise and come to me, 
 And we will both together to the tower, 
 Where, he shall see, the boar will use us kindly." 
 
 Again, Hastings to Stanley — 
 
 " Come on, come on, where is your boarspear man? 
 Fear you the boar and go so unprovided?" 
 
 Nor was the bristled boar wanting at the battle of Bos- 
 
2 1 4 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 worth ; for, gorgeously attired in splendid armour, and 
 rendered still more conspicuous by the royal diadem which 
 surmounted his helmet, Richard rode upon a milk-white 
 charger superbly caparisoned and attended by his body- 
 guards, displaying the banner of England and innumerable 
 pennons glittering with the silver boar. After his death, 
 Richard's body was placed across his war steed " like a 
 hogue calf," the head and arms hanging on one side of 
 the horse and the legs on the other side, and was thus 
 disposed behind his pursuivant-at-arms, Blanc Sanglier, he 
 wearing the silver boar upon his coat, and carried back 
 to Leicester in trophy of the morning's victory. 
 
 The poetical boar is a very fine presentment of the 
 noble brute in Nature. It is " the mighty boar," " bristled," 
 " tusked," and foaming. " Fierce as forest boar " is a con- 
 s:antly recurring simile in verse, and its " headlong rush " 
 through the brake a famiiiar figure. But Spenser makes 
 the quaint error of supposing that boars eat camels — 
 
 " He shortly met the tiger and the boar, 
 Which with the simple camel raged sore 
 In bitter words, seeking to take occasi"n 
 Upon his fleshy corpse to make invasion." 
 
 And so err all those poets who make it carnivorous. 
 "Throw me to the wild boar " to be devoured is as absurd 
 in Heber as " the boars that roar through the woods " of 
 Ossian. 
 
 Perhaps the good bishop had in his mind that episode 
 in the Seven Champions of Christendom, where St James 
 of Spain goes a-hunting with Neburazadan, the King of 
 Jerusalem, and by the slaying of a great man-eating boar 
 wins the Hebrew's daughter. He found it, we are told, 
 lying in its mossy den, gnawing the mangled joints of 
 some passenger whom it had murdered as he travelled 
 through the forest. It was of wonderful length and size, 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 1 5 
 
 and so terrible to behold, that at first sight it almost 
 daunted the courage of the Spanish knight ; for its mon- 
 strous head seemed ugly and deformed, its eyes sparkled 
 like a fiery furnace, its tusks, more sharp than spikes of steel, 
 and from its nostrils fumed such a violent breath, that it 
 seemed like a tempestuous whirlwind ; his bristles were 
 harder than seven times solid brass, and his tail more 
 loathsome than a wreath of snakes. A gruesome beast, 
 indeed ! — and standing in no need of the wings which 
 ^lian gives to the Flying Hog of Clazomenae to make it 
 worthy the steel of a knight of Christendom. 
 
 But Pope need not have described the wild boar " in 
 silence creeping " upon a sleeping youth, and goring him 
 "with unrelenting tooth." It is far too "generous," in the 
 poets' sense, to attack a sleeping adversary. Why, too, 
 should Scott go out of his way to call it " the felon boar ? " 
 The abuse is not more just than that poet's frequent 
 plagiarisms are creditable. 
 
 " No man who has not been an eyewitness of the 
 desperate courage of the wild hog would believe in his utter 
 recklessness of life, or in the fierceness that will make him 
 run up the hunter's spear, which has passed through his 
 vitals, until he buries his tusk in the body of the horse or his 
 rider." " No animal exceeds him in ferocity ; he will boldly 
 charge the largest elephant who may have disturbed him 
 without further provocation." "There is hardly a more 
 dangerous brute to cope with. He will fight to the last, 
 and then die game." 
 
 These are quotations from the foremost of Indian sports- 
 men and naturalists — Elliot, Shakespeare, Kinloch, Jerdon, 
 and others of equally established reputation. 
 
 They are of the fighting caste — Gadites — men of war from 
 their youth up. If they meet each other there is a duel at 
 once ; any other beast, and a fight immediately commences. 
 They have absolutely no idea of giving way, or yielding the 
 
216 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 path. It is ro be res with them, always the cestus. 
 
 They with the bare lance-point. 
 
 Their challenge is "to the de. • the poets always 
 
 have them in conflict. 
 
 " As wilde bores gan they togeder smite, 
 
 bite as fome for anger wood." 
 
 " As when two bores with rankling malice met, 
 
 Their gory sides fresh-bleeding fiercely fret, 
 
 Where foaming wrath their cruel tusks they whet, 
 And trample :'.. ire, 
 
 Then back to fight again." 
 
 Chaucer and Spenser are especially fond of the wild boar 
 
 simile, and emp". . great effect for their furious 
 
 knights. " Hurtling round, advantage for to take,'' 
 
 ifering and foaming," and "grime with his teeth so 
 
 was he wroth." L-:l: poets take their cues of course from 
 
 . elder. Thomson has "the brindled boar grins fell 
 destruction : ' ; Gray, " the tusky boar on surrounding foes 
 advanced." 1 _h from Nature — 
 
 " Contending 1 tusk enamelled, strike 
 
 And guard wuh shoulder shield the blow oblique, 
 While female bands attend in mute su: 
 And view the victor with admiring eyes." 
 
 But the wild hog, if I am not mistaken, is monogamous. 
 Gay, too, has a sketch of combatant boars which reads — from 
 the introduction of "Westphalia" and the "mire" — as a 
 mock-heroic. 
 
 when two boars in wild Vtene bred, 
 Or on Westphalia's fat'ning chestnuts fed, 
 Gnash their sharp tusks, and, roused with equal fire, 
 
 _:te the reign of some luxurious mire ; 
 In the black flood they wallow o'er and oer, 
 
 gore." 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 1 7 
 
 Byron has an admirable line, " the lion and his tusky 
 V." for though the two animals are not found together 
 — except so infrequently that the error is not justified — the 
 "rebel" is one of the wild boar's most notable characters. 
 The tiger is his natural Raja, but he revolts at the first 
 menace of oppression. The jungle path is his as much as 
 the tiger's, he says, and if they meet, the pig as often as not 
 joins issue as to the right of way. " The native Shikarries 
 affirm that the wild boar will quench his thirst at the river 
 between two tigers, and I (Shakespeare) believe this to be 
 strictly the truth. The tiger and the boar have been heard 
 fighting in the jungle at night, and both have been found 
 dead alongside of one another in the morning/' "Though 
 the wild hog often becomes the tiger's prey, it sometimes 
 falls a victim to the successful resistance of its intended 
 victim. I (Elliot) once found a full-grown tiger nearly 
 killed by the rip of a boar's tusk, and two similar instances 
 were related to me by a gentleman who had witnessed them, 
 one of a tiger, the other of a panther."' 
 
 Once upon a time the boar was lord of British woodlands, 
 and, as Thomson says — 
 
 " The sad barbarian, roving, mixed 
 With beasts of prey, or for his acorn meal 
 Fought the fierce tusky boar." 
 
 As a beast of chase it was extant in England up to the 
 Stuarts' time. 
 
 According to Bell, "about the year 940 the laws of Hoel 
 Dha direct that it shall be lawful for the chief of his hunts- 
 men to chase the boar of the woods from the 5th of the 
 Ides of November (9th) until the Calends of December 
 (1st)." In the next century. Bell states that "the numbers 
 had perhaps begun to diminish, since a forest law of 
 William I., established in 10S7, ordained that any who were 
 found guilty of killing the stag, the roebuck, or the wild 
 
2i8 The Pods Beasts. 
 
 boar, should have the eyes put out, and sometimes the 
 penalty appears to have been a painful death. It appears," 
 continues Bell, " that Charles I. turned out some wild swine 
 in the New Forest for the purpose of restoring the breed to 
 that royal hunting-ground, but they were all of them de- 
 stroyed during the civil war. A similar attempt was made 
 in Bere Wood in Dorsetshire, but one of the boars having 
 injured a valuable horse belonging to the wealthy Nimrod 
 who exhibited this specimen of sporting epicurism, he 
 caused them to be destroyed." 
 
 The wild boar probably became extinct in Britain before 
 the reign of Charles I. ; while in Ireland it was abundant as 
 late as the seventeenth century. 
 
 Spenser's touches and descriptions are from the life, no 
 doubt. He must have seen Leicester, Essex, Sidney, 
 Raleigh, and others go out hunting, perhaps went with 
 them, and on his estate (some 3000 acres, with a rental of 
 ^17) in Ireland must have been familiar enough with the 
 wild boar as a tenant. 
 
 Somerville, therefore, wrote too late to speak of the animal 
 — "churning his foam, and on his back erect his pointed 
 bristles rising" — except from hearsay, and "young Red- 
 mond" of Rokeby, that "gallant boy in hunter's green" 
 who 
 
 " Loved to wake the felon boar 
 In his dark lair on Greta's shore," 
 
 lived barely in time to save Sir Walter from an anachronism. 
 The genius of Shakespeare presents the fierce beast to the 
 life, " with frothy mouth bepainted all with red, like milk 
 and blood being mingled both together." The " blunt " 
 boar he calls it, " the foul, grim, urchin-snouted boar, whose 
 downward eyes still looketh for a grave." But Venus' 
 description is matchless. It has all the majesty of Job's 
 poem on Leviathan. 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 1 9 
 
 " I lis tushes, never sheathed, he whetteth still, 
 Like to a mortal butcher, bent to kill. 
 On his bow-back he hath a battle set 
 Of bristly pikes, that ever threat his foes ; 
 His eyes, like glow-worms, shine when he doth fret ; 
 His snout digs sepulchres where'er he goes ; 
 Being moved, he strikes whate'er is in his way, 
 And whom he strikes his cruel tushes slay. 
 His brawny sides, with hairy bristles armed, 
 Are better proof than thy spear's point can enter ; 
 His short thick neck cannot be easily harmed ; 
 Being ireful, on the lion he will venture ; 
 The thorny brambles and embracing bushes, 
 As fearful of him, part, through whom he rushes." 
 
 Keats, too, well imagines the scene " when snouted wild 
 boars rooting the tender corn " anger the huntsmen ; for it is 
 a shrewd beast at furrowing up a field. " The rage of a wild 
 boar is able to spoil more than one wood," says Herbert. 
 
 But Somerville, in his sketch of the " Arabian " chasing 
 the animal, is somewhat " out of the hunt : " 
 
 " The grisly boar is singled from his herd 
 As large as that in Enmanthean woods 
 A match for Hercules. Round him they fly 
 In circles wide, and each in passing sends 
 His feathered death into his brawny sides ; 
 But perilous the attempt, for if the steed 
 Haply too near approach, or the loose earth 
 His footing fail, the watchful angry beast 
 TV advantage spies, and, at one sidelong glance, 
 Rips up his groin. 
 
 Wounded, he rears aloft, 
 And, plunging, from his back the rider hurls 
 Precipitant ; then, bleeding, spurns the ground, 
 And drags his reeking entrails o'er the plain. 
 Meanwhile the surly monster hurls along, 
 But with unequal speed, for still they wound, 
 Swift wheeling in the spacious ring. A wood 
 Of darts upon his back he bears : adown 
 Pours many a gaping font ; and now, at last, 
 Staggering he falls, in blood and foam expires." 
 
220 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 The Greeks and Romans, when they hunted him — 
 " Adonis' bane " — took extraordinary precautions for their 
 personal safety. They went in large parties, keeping 
 together, and were attended by the largest and fiercest 
 hounds — Locrian, Spartan, or Cretan. Xets were carried 
 with them to throw over the brute, and the javelins used 
 were of a specially murderous description. 
 
 In metaphor the boar is singularly rare. Burns has a 
 "wild Scandinavian boar" that issued forth "to wanton in 
 carnage and wallow in gore," but. changing the beast in the 
 next line into the plural, " brave Caledonia in vain they 
 assailed, as Largs well can witness and Loncartie tell." In 
 Gray's " Bard" we find the English king "the bristled boar 
 that in infant gore wallows beneath the thorny shade ; " and 
 Dryden has a semi-domesticated hog as the type of the 
 Baptist — 
 
 " The bristled baptist boar, impure as he, 
 But whitened with the form of sanctity, 
 With fat pollutions filled the sacred place, 
 And mountains levelled in his furious race ; 
 So first rebellion founded was in grace. 
 But since the mighty ravage which he made 
 In German forests had his guilt betrayed, 
 With broken tusks, and with a borrowed name, 
 He shunned the vengeance and concealed the shame.'' 
 
 Yet in folk-lore and myth it is a constantly recurring and a 
 very formidable figure 
 
 It is sacred to Scandinavian Thor, and drags the car 
 of Freyya, its bristles golden, its head refulgent Vishnu 
 appears as the tusked one, the irresistible piercer ; and the 
 thunderbolts, the fathers of the winds, are red boars, 
 horned, bristled, and fierce. 
 
 Once upon a time the Trinity of the Hindoos disputed 
 for supremacy. Brahma, seated on his lotus, could see 
 nothing else in the universe, and so said to himself, " I am 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 2 1 
 
 the beginning of all." But he descended the stalk and came 
 upon Vishnu asleep. " Who are you?" he asked. " I am 
 the beginning of all things," was the reply. Then Brahma 
 raised his arm to strike. But on a sudden Shiva stood 
 before them. " What are you quarrelling about ? Am not 
 I, Shiva, the first-born ? Which of you can see either the 
 crown of my head or the soles of my feet ? " Brahma stood 
 aghast ; but Vishnu without a word plunged down, and, 
 ripping up the universe, pierced below the infernal regions, 
 and lo ! the feet of Shiva. So the two others did obeisance 
 to him, the sharp-tusked one. 
 
 It was one of the labours of Hercules to kill a boar. 
 Meleager's hunt — 
 
 " A great boar, that no man could withstand, 
 And many a woe he wrought upon the land " — 
 
 gathered all the heroes of Greece together, and for the 
 trophy of the brute's hide cities went to war. Indras, in 
 that he slew the boar that guarded the Demons' treasure, 
 proudly wore its tusks. Mars protected it as the warrior 
 among the beasts : it was once the badge of Rome. 
 
 Even the Christians' boar's head, "crested with bays and 
 rosemary," is said to have honorific origin, as a symbol 
 of gloomy winter slain at the solstice. ' ; Aper significat 
 Diabolum," quoth Du Cange. 
 
 He is always obtrusive, assailing. Gods and heroes are 
 perpetually after him. There is no guardian of a treasure 
 like him, except perhaps the griffin. It is no use trying to 
 pipe him to bed. He will see the whole of Argus asleep 
 and still be awake. He would have rooted Medea out of the 
 garden in no time and tusked Mercury if he had not been 
 too nimble with those heels of his. You never meet with 
 him, in myth, in an amiable mood. He is either red, the 
 colour of fury, or black, the hue of mischief, malignity, and 
 diabolism. He hurtles about bristling and demoniacal. 
 
: : : The Poets Beasts. 
 
 With the poets the deer is a universal favourite. M The 
 ■:-d stag" _ of ten, bearing his 
 
 branches stuidil; - - makes a stanza go 
 
 Even Ossian's tiresome " dun sons of the bound- 
 ing hind, the dark-brown deer of Cromla," relieve the 
 ry monotony of the Phairson's native heath. Every 
 poet likes to talk about them — 
 
 •.'ill herds 
 TL: no noise but that of chattering bii 
 
 ie lawns : both s ;.ned deer, 
 
 Here walk the stately Red. the freckled Fallow there 
 The Bu: S he Rascals strewed, 
 
 ■ among the multitude." 
 
 And they all agree in paying tribute to its courage — " When 
 at bay a desperate foe." 
 
 They exult in its escape. Thus even Somerville— 
 
 "Heaver. te roebuck swift 
 
 Lc . - driving pack, 
 
 And mod-: pursuit. Nor far he flie;, 
 
 the streaming scent 
 That freshens on the .heir rage. 
 
 I eir speed, his weak, deluded foes 
 Sc •: red to excess, each nerve, 
 
 ■cb slackened sinew fails: they pant, they foam. 
 Tr.tr. o'er the lawn he bounds, o'er the high 
 
 :-. and leaves the scattered crowd 
 To puzzle in the distant vale below." 
 
 So, too, Scott seems glad when the " antlered monarch 
 
 of the glen" baulks those dogs "of black St. Hubert's 
 
 breed," and, dashing down "into the Trosach's wildest 
 
 nook," is soon "lost to hound and hunter's ken," and from 
 
 .ace of refuge 
 
 " Hears the baffled dogs in vain 
 Rave he hollow pass amain, 
 
 at yelled a. 
 
Beasts of Chase. 223 
 
 When it dies the poets weep with it. If it is a fawn no 
 Lesbia sheds such tears over her sparrow. Read, for instance, 
 Marvell's dainty poem. But it is a pity that he, so true, 
 as a rule, to Nature, should err (with many other poets) in 
 making fawns " white." 
 
 " I have a garden of my own, 
 And all the spring-time of the year 
 It only loved to be there: 
 Among the bed of lillies I 
 Have sought it oft where it should lye, 
 But could not, till itself should rise, 
 Find it, although before mine eyes ; 
 For in the flaxen lillies' shade 
 It like a bunch of lillies laid. 
 Upon the roses it would feed 
 Until its lips e'en seemed to bleed, 
 And then to me 'twould boldly trip 
 And print those roses on my lip." 
 
 But the wanton troopers riding by shot the fawn, and it 
 
 died — 
 
 " Ungentle men ! they cannot thrive 
 Who killed thee. Thou ne'er didst alive 
 Them any harm : alas ! nor could 
 Thy death yet do them any good. 
 
 And nothing may we use in vain ; 
 Even beasts must be with justice slain; 
 Else men are made their deodands." 
 
 Nor, when full-grown and antlered, does sympathy cease. 
 Thus in Phineas Fletcher's poem — 
 
 " Look as a stagge pierced with a fatal blow, 
 As by a wood he walks securely feeding — 
 In coverts thick conceals his deadly blow, 
 And feeling death swim in his endless bleeding, 
 His heavy head his fainting strength exceeding — 
 Bids woods adieu, so sinks into his grave ; 
 Green brakes and primrose sweet his seemly herse embrave. 
 
 In the actual chase itself the poets' sympathies ate never 
 
224 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 far behind the deer. Drayton is a poet who is seldom read, 
 but as he lived in the days when stags were running wild in 
 England he is well worth the hearing — quite apart from the 
 rare robustness of his verse — 
 
 "The best of chase, the tall and lusty Red, 
 The stag for goodly shape and statelinesse of head, 
 Is fitt'st to hunt at force." 
 
 Such is the beast he starts with. He shows us the 
 huntsman in " the thicke," tracking it by its slot or by his 
 wood-craft, and then on a sudden the stag, startled by the 
 "bellowing hounds," rushes out — 
 
 " He through the brakes doth drive, 
 As though up by the roots the bushes he would rive." 
 
 The hounds fall to, the horns are blown, and the quarry's 
 afoot — 
 
 " The lusty stag his high palmed head upbears, 
 
 His body showing state, with unbent knees upright, 
 Expressing (from all beasts) his courage in his flight." 
 
 But the pack come up to him, and then he exerts his 
 utmost speed. The baying of the hounds dies away, and 
 the stag, to baffle further pursuit, "doth beat the brooks 
 and ponds," and "makes among the herds and flocks of 
 shag-woolled sheep." But wherever he goes he finds him- 
 self shunned or opposed. In the fields the ploughman 
 goes after him with his goad, "while his team he letteth 
 stand." In the pasture the shepherd chases him, "and to 
 his dog doth halow." And all this time the hounds come 
 creeping up again, while the stag has wearied itself in futile 
 stratagem. " Through toyle bereaved of strength, his long 
 and sinewy legs are fayling him at length." A village comes 
 in his way, and he flies for safety to the abodes of men ; 
 but the people turn out and drive him forth. There are the 
 hounds, full in sight ; so there is nothing for it but to stand 
 at bav. " Some bank or quick set finds, to which his haunch 
 
Beasts of Chase. 225 
 
 opposed, he turns upon his foes," and as the "churlish- 
 throated " hounds attack him " dealeth deadly blows with 
 his sharp-pointed head." Then the huntsmen come up, 
 and one of them kills the stag. And so 
 
 " Opprest by force, 
 He who the mourner is to his own dying corse 
 Upon the ruthless earth his precious tear lets fall." 
 
 Thomson's sententious caricature of this passage in his 
 11 Autumn " is well worth noting, but as the poet only knew 
 of fallow deer he makes the stag " spotted " in the face and 
 " chequered " in the sides. But in all matters of fact his 
 animal is simply Somerville's. It starts off with all its faith 
 in its own speed, " bursts through the thickets," and goes 
 away. But — 
 
 " Slow of sure, adhesive to the track, 
 Hot-steaming up behind him come again 
 The inhuman rout." 
 
 And then "oft to full-descending flood he turns," and "oft 
 seeks the herd." But his "'once so vivid nerves" begin to 
 fail, and "he stands at bay," "putting his last weak refuge 
 in despair " — 
 
 " The bi;_j round tears run down his dappled face ; 
 He groans in anguish while the growling pack, 
 Blood-happy, hang at his fair jutting cheek 
 And mark his beauteous checkered sides with gore." 
 
 In metaphor also the deer symbol is often used as of a 
 creature that may lay claim to superior intelligence and 
 special protection. Thus in Quarles — 
 
 •■ Great God of hearts, the world's sole sov'raign Ranger, 
 Preserve Thy deer, and let my soul be blest 
 In Thy safe forrest when I seek for rest : 
 Then let the hell-hounds roar, I fear no ill, 
 Rouse me they may, but have no power to kill." 
 
 P 
 
226 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 The hare is certainly one of the best hunted of animals, 
 and Swift puts its perpetual pursuit delightfully into rhyme — 
 
 " A hare had long escaped pursuing hounds, 
 By often shifting into distant grounds, 
 Till finding artifices vain, 
 To save his life he leaped into the main ; 
 But there, alas, he could no safety find, 
 A pack of dogfish had him in the wind. 
 He scours away ; and, to avoid the foe, 
 Descends for shelter to the shades below. 
 There Cerberus lay watching in his den, 
 He had not seen a hare the Lord knows when. 
 Out bounced the mastiff with the triple head, 
 Away the hare with triple swiftness fled, 
 Hunted from earth and sea and hell, he flies 
 (Fear lent him wings) for safety to the skies : 
 Sirius, the fiercest of the heavenly pack, 
 Failed but an inch to seize him by the back ! " 
 
 Over this universal huntedness of the hare, the poets 
 maintain a very even quarrel. Some applaud the sport, 
 others condemn it. While Gay goes into raptures over 
 coursing, Somerville calls it a "mean, murderous" pastime, 
 and gravely invokes the retributive hand of Heaven upon 
 the "vile crew "-who follow it — 
 
 " Nor the tim'rous hare 
 O'ermatched destroy, but leave that vile offence 
 To the mean murd'rous coursing crew, intent 
 On blood and spoil. O blast their hopes, just Heaven ! 
 And all their painful drudgeries repay 
 With disappointment and severe remorse." 
 
 Not that Somerville was not really more cruel than Gay 
 (who was merely thoughtless), but he thought coursing 
 hares was wasting them. He insisted on their being hunted 
 with beagles. Drayton has a straightforward description 
 of coursing without effusion of sentiment which Dryden 
 seems to borrow (for the occurrence can hardly be called a 
 familiar one) — 
 
Beasts of Chase. 227 
 
 " So have I seen some fearful hare maintain, 
 A course, till tired before the dog she lay, 
 Who stretched behind her pants upon the plain, 
 Past power to kill, as she to get away." 
 
 On the other side are ranged all the rural poets : Hurdis, 
 Clare, Grahame, Bloomfield, Burns, and the rest ; and 
 Cowper, Thomson, and Wordsworth weigh in their sym- 
 pathies with the gentler majority — 
 
 " Poor is the triumph o'er the timid hare, 
 O'er a weak, harmless flying creature " — 
 
 and delight with Grahame in her escape either by her fleet- 
 ness of foot, when — 
 
 " She scorns 
 Thy utmost speed, and from the thistly lea 
 Espies secure thy puzzled fruitless search ;_" 
 
 or by her cunning, when — 
 
 " With step reversed 
 She forms the doubling maze, then ere the morn 
 Peeps through the clouds, leaps to her close recess ; " 
 
 or by some accident, as when, according to Grahame, — 
 
 ("As erst befell in Clyde's fair dale) 
 She gain some floating rick ; there close she squats, 
 Now in the middle current shot along 
 In swift career, now near the eddying side, 
 Whirling amazed. 
 
 . , . Onward meanwhile she sails, 
 Till through the broadened vale, the stream expands 
 In gentle curve and gliding past the bank 
 Restores her, fearful, to the fields again." 
 
 Nor are coursing, hunting, and poaching the whole 
 of the hare's grievances, for, as Clare laments, there still 
 remains the gun. 
 
228 . Poets Beasts. 
 
 In ng foes to s-hnn, 
 
 .s run." 
 
 not mortal, and several 
 poet; maimed existence. 
 
 ..ane protests against an unintentional 
 E D : D ; — 
 
 field, 
 The I - ns ; 
 
 nt plains 
 me yield. 
 j 
 
 The -ad, 
 
 ~ :.t ::._ t -:::. ~ '.:':. : y ': . ;■>,- bosom prest 
 
 rait 
 x&] davra, 
 
 I TO, 
 
 IB, and m: . 
 
 E most melancholy, limping, 
 
 -ble — intended, apparently, by 
 
 .-gles, and given an extra- 
 
 .n order to amuse greyhounds. 
 
 Son.. it and, consideri \ it already 
 
 tural timidity and general help- 
 
 \ if is a shame. . ument is 
 
 _ - . i the poor thing looks, 
 
 dor. . - - how fast the unhappy wretch 
 
 is the triumph o'er 
 
 a weak, harmless, flying creature " — 
 
 -.aken of the sport by the minority, their 
 
 . marked by true pathos, as 
 
 — 
 
Beasts of C/iase. 229 
 
 " And, as an hare whom hounds and horns pursue, 
 Pants to the place from whence at first she flew, 
 I still had hopes, my long vexations past, 
 Here to return, and die at home at last." 
 
 And what can be finer than the distracted Paphian's descrip- 
 tion of the hunted hare ? 
 
 " His grief may be compared well 
 To one sore-sick, that hears the passing bell. 
 Then shalt thou see the dew-bedabbled wretch 
 Turn and return, indenting with the way ; 
 Each envious briar his wear)- legs doth scratch, 
 Each shadow makes him stop, each murmur stay : 
 For misery is trodden on by many, 
 And being low, never relieved by any." 
 
 The rest, strangely enough for poets perhaps, seem to 
 accept the fitness of the hare to be hunted as a matter of 
 course, its suitableness for " the chase " a provision of 
 Nature. " If thou needs will hunt," says Venus, " be ruled 
 by me, uncouple at the timorous, flying hare." 
 
 Pope, Gay, Rowe, Mallet, Drayton, and Somerville are 
 instances in point. Thus the author of " Polyolbion " — 
 
 " The man whose vacant mind prepares him for the sport 
 The Finder sendeth forth to seek out nimble Wat 
 Which crosseth in the field each furlong, every flat, 
 Till he this pretty beast upon the Forme hath found. 
 Then, viewing for the course which is the fairest ground, 
 The greyhounds forth are brought, for coursing then in case, 
 And choicely in the slip, one leading forth a brace, 
 The finder puts her up and gives her courser's law ; 
 Then whilst the eager dogs upon the start do draw 
 She riseth from her seat, as though on earth she flew, 
 Forced by some yelping curre to give the greyhounds view, 
 Which are at length let slip, when leaping out they goe, 
 As in respect of them the swiftest wind were slow, 
 When each man runs his horse, with fixed eyes, and notes 
 Which dog first turnes the hare, which first the other coats, 
 Till oft for want of breath to fall to ground they make her, 
 The greyhounds both so spent that they want breath to take her." 
 
230 The Poets Be.rs/s. 
 
 Gay was not much of a sportsman, as he himself confesses, 
 for, finding himself committed to the subject of rural sports, 
 he feels that he cannot do less than, at any rate, refer, in 
 passing, to hunting as one of them ; but he pulls himself up 
 with pleasing frankness and a " what on earth do I know 
 about it " sort of apology — 
 
 " The theme demands a more experienced lay. 
 Ye mighty hun'.eis ! spare this weak essay." 
 
 Fishing was his weakness, with a fly by preference ; but still 
 he breaks out into an artless linnet-chirrup about "the 
 chase, a pleasing task." He confines his remarks to hare- 
 hunting, and thus abruptly finishes Wat off — 
 
 i- New strategems and doubling wiles she tries — 
 N v circling turns, and now at large she flies — 
 Till, spent at last, she pants and heaves for breath, 
 Then lays her down and waits devouring death ! " 
 
 Somerville is, however, par txcdUnct u the poet of the 
 chase," and the second book of his poem, which is mainly 
 concerned with hare-hunting, cannot be passed over without 
 becoming notice. 
 
 Commencing with some general remarks about " that 
 instinct which, unerring, guides the brutal race, which 
 mimics reason's lore, and oft transcends," he passes on to 
 the special instinct " that directs the jealous hare to choose 
 her soft abode " and " oft quit her seat, lest some curious 
 eye should mark her haunt." He then describes the 
 changes which she makes, according to the season, "as 
 fancy prompts her or as food invites," and counsels the 
 huntsman to make a note of them, as otherwise his labours 
 will be wasted in looking for hares in places they are not 
 likely to be, and " his impatient hounds, with disappoint- 
 ment vexed, each springing lark, babbling pursue, far scat- 
 tered o'er the fields." 
 
Beasts of Chase. 231 
 
 So supposing it to be autumn, and the crops all gathered 
 off the ground, he starts out with his harriers — 
 
 " The gay pack 
 In the rough, bristly stubbles range unblamed : 
 No widow's tears o'erflow, no secret curse 
 Swells in the farmer's breast, which his pale lips, 
 Trembling, conceal, by his fierce landlord awed : 
 But courteous now he levels every fence, 
 Joins in the common cry, and halloos loud, 
 Charmed with the rattling thunder of the field." 
 
 The pack is thrown off; after a while the old hound, with 
 his "authentic voice, avows the recent trail," and away they 
 go. But a double gives them a check, and then they steady 
 down, working the fallow in a business-like way, and all of 
 a sudden the huntsman himself comes upon puss in her 
 form, and away she bolts. The hounds are laid on, and 
 " as winds let loose, from the dark caverns of the blustering 
 god, they burst away." 
 
 " Xow, my brave youths ! 
 Stripped for the chase, give all your souls to joy ; " 
 
 for the hare "o'er plains remote now stretches far away." 
 The country side is up at the sound of the " clanging 
 horns;" the schoolboy, dreading no more the "afflictive 
 birch," runs out of school to see the hunt go by; the 
 travellers on the roads climb up to the highest spots ; the 
 shepherd and ploughman leave their work ; the peasants 
 "desert the unpeopled village." 
 
 " And wild crowds 
 Spread o'er the plains, by the sweet frenzy seized." 
 
 The hare doubles again, gets behind the pack, and " seems 
 to pursue the foe she flies." 
 
 " Let cavillers deny 
 That brutes have reason : Sure 'tis something more. 
 'Tis heaven directs, and stratagems inspires, 
 Beyond the short extent of human thought." 
 
: - : ^sfs. 
 
 But the hounds find her out and the pack sees her s: 
 on an eminence, u hstening with one ear erect,'* and • 
 dering what to do next, "pondering and doubtful what new 
 course to take." At length she decides to trust to her 
 heels again, and is off — 
 
 " Once more, ye jovial train, your courage 
 
 She has gone uphill, which takes it out of the hounds, and 
 down the steep other side, which takes it out of the ric 
 but "smoking along the .he hunt has the hare full in 
 
 A Bock of sheep baulks the hounds for a while, but 
 they take up the " streaming scent ■ again, and M the rustling 
 stubbies bend beneath the driving storm " of harriers — 
 
 • ' 2 •" ■•.'.-. :• y :: r :'..:. 5 ; 
 Begins to flag, to her last shifts reduced. 
 From brake to brake she flies, and visits all 
 Her well-known haunts, where once she ranged secure, 
 With love and plenty blessed. See ! there she goes ; 
 She reels along, and by her gait bet: 
 Her inward weakness. See how black she looks. 
 The sweat that clogs the obstructed pores scarce leaves 
 A :.:-__ ;;;-:. 
 
 And now in open view 
 See, see ! she flies ; each eager hound exerts 
 His utmost speed, and s:re:ches i 
 How quick she turns, their gaping jaws eludes, 
 
 -reedy pack, with infant screams 
 She yields her breath, and there, reluctant, 
 
 r this, of course, there is nothing to come but e 
 tion and, for the hounds, a taste of blood — 
 
 • • The huntsman now a deep incision makes, 
 Shakes out with hands impure, and dashes down, 
 Her reeking entrails and yet quivering heart 
 "'...--.- :".;.:-■. ■'. . 7 -:'/.. :'. - '.'.■- !y"r -_•: :u -::e 
 Of ail their toils. Stretched on the ground she lies 
 A mangled corse ; in her dim-glaring eyes 
 Cold death exults and stifl . :ob." 
 
Beasts of Chase. 2 \ \ 
 
 After all this, the poet— the pod, remember— says this— 
 
 " Thus the poor hare, 
 A puny, dastard animal, diverts the youthful train. " 
 
 The fox— what an endless theme the mere name sug- 
 gests ! The stanchest pen might well despair of running 
 down a creature of such interminable breath, such im & - 
 measurable craft. 
 
 A proverb says that all the cloth of Ghent, if it were 
 turned into parchment, would not hold the stories of vulpine 
 perfidy and sagacity, and though several scholars have 
 devoted themselves to the -epic exploit" of this little 
 animal, it seems to be far from exhausted. Yet its character 
 is by no means altogether despicable. Bacon and Machia- 
 velh say that for success a little of the fox is indispensable. 
 Pope has a line to the effect that -the lion's skin is length- 
 ened by the fox's tail "-a repetition of Lysander's apothegm, 
 V\hen the lions skin does not suffice, add on that of the 
 fox 
 
 Fortunately the poets' fox has but one aspect-the dis- 
 peop ler of the poultry-yard. It eats chickens, therefore it 
 should be vindictively hunted to death. 
 
 In the East the fox is not a familiar beast. It lives a 
 secluded life, and seldom haunts the abodes of men The 
 jackal, therefore, is the original of those Oriental myths 
 which European fabulists have adapted, and wherein the 
 U estern fox takes the place of its foreign congener The 
 two animals have very much in common in habits and 
 character, though the fox is the superior in physical en- 
 durance, speed, and, perhaps, courage. I qualify my 
 opinion on the last point, because it may be that the 
 appearance of inferior pluck in the jackal may be really 
 only due to an extra measure of that astute discretion 
 which has made this animal the foremost figure in myth 
 and folk-lore. 
 
234 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 If we accept the myth translations of Gubernatis we see 
 in the fox-jackal the ruddy interval between daylight and 
 darkness that shades off bye-and-bye into twilight-grey with 
 black night-points. It is the crepuscular phenomenon of 
 the heavens taking an animal form. But just as there are two 
 " auroras," the morning and the evening, so the fox-jackal has 
 in every twenty-four hours two chances at the sun-cock, both 
 of which it punctually fails to score, missing the solar fowl 
 with an invariable accuracy that ought by this time to have 
 had a depressing effect upon Reynard. 
 
 In fables the character of the fox is also dual. It is 
 generally the deceiver, but also on occasions the dupe. 
 Many animals on occasion fall a victim to it — in the single 
 romance of Reincke Fuchs it outwits and infamously ruins 
 the king-lion and pretty nearly all his courtier quadrupeds — 
 but every now and again the same animals flout it, make 
 fun of it, play tricks on it. Even cocks and kids have a 
 joke occasionally at its expense, which is very true to 
 nature, for we often see the professional sharper, the habitual 
 traitor, exposed and put to shame by simple honesty or 
 innocent mother wit. Betty with her mop routs the fencing- 
 master. But, above all, the fox is always beaten when he 
 tries to pass off his dishonesties upon other foxes ; the 
 rogues know each other too well to try to guess where the 
 pea is. So when the fox falls by accident into a dyer's vat, 
 and comes out. a fine blue all over, he goes back to his 
 kindred and tells them that he is a peacock of the sky. But 
 they recognise his voice, and worry him till they pull all his 
 blue fur off, and he dies. Stories of the same purport are 
 abundant and familiar to all. 
 
 Yet there are plenty of occasions in which the fox behaves 
 very honourably to its friends, and appears in the light of a 
 benefactor, notably, in those tales where Reynard plays the 
 part of Puss-in-boots, such as Cosmo the Quickly Enriched, 
 and others. Moreover, the cock is sometimes found on the 
 
Beasts of Chase. 255 
 
 most friendly relations with the fox, who helps it against 
 their common enemy, the wolf. 
 
 It is almost needless to say that many poets condemn 
 fox-hunting, "which rural gentlemen call sport divine," and 
 perhaps superfluous to add that their reasons hardly justify 
 their condemnation. To them the sportsman appears some- 
 thing rather less than human — 
 
 " To the field he flies, 
 Leaps every fence but one, then falls and dies 
 Like a slain deer ; the tumbril brings him home, 
 Unmissed but by his dogs and by his groom.". 
 
 Especially does this class of poet detest to see women in 
 the field — 
 
 " Far be the spirit of the chase from them ! 
 Uncomely courage, unbeseeming skill, 
 To spring the fence, to rein the prancing steed." 
 
 They hope "such horrid joy" will never -'stain the bosom 
 of the British fair." 
 
 Nor when they come to discriminate between one kind of 
 sport and another is their argument such as to increase 
 respect for their opinion. When Venus implores her darling 
 not to hunt fierce beasts, but, if he must hunt, to go after 
 the " timid hare," there is womanly reason enough in what 
 she says. But when Thomson begs "ye Britons" not to 
 hunt the poor "dappled " stag with the "chequered" sides, 
 nor the "flying hare," but, if they must hunt, to ride after 
 the fox, " the nightly robber of the fold," and, " pitiless, 
 pour their sportive fury " upon it, the fustian of his senti- 
 ment is neither masculine nor feminine. 
 
 This idea, that Englishmen hunt the fox because it 
 eats ducks, is quite a common one with the poets, and 
 justifies, to their minds, the chase of it. So that it seems 
 incredible that they could ever have seen a fox-hunter, 
 still less have heard him speak with admiration, pride, even 
 
2;6 
 
 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 affection, of the staunch, plucky, little beast that had given 
 him a fast run, and saved its brush after all. At any rate, 
 the idea that the animal is hunted because it kills chickens, 
 and, therefore, richly deserves the worst that can happen 
 to it, is utterly foreign to the character of "sport." The 
 fact that foxes are preserved in order to be hunted should 
 have corrected the theories of modern poets. 
 
 With the otter it fares exactly the same. Because the 
 beast catches fish which men wish to catch it is said to 
 merit the death which overtakes it when the hounds pursue 
 and tear it to pieces. They all seem to hate it, call it 
 "felon," "robber," and "prowler," and Somerville descants 
 at length in a very spirited but most deliberately cruel poem 
 on the pleasures of murdering an otter. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE POETS' FLOCKS. 
 
 " Let me hear 
 The morning uproar of the fleecy flock, 
 What time, vociferous, their tardy march 
 With baying curs impatient their rude load 
 To the green pastures urge. Loud inquires 
 The bleating mother for her sundered lamb, 
 As loud complaining for his mother lost. 
 With quick infallible perception, she, 
 Amid the mingled outcry, hears distinct 
 His slender shrill entreaty, he remote, 
 With nicety that shames our grosser sense, 
 Her voice acknowledges, and through the crowd 
 Winds his insulted way." 
 
 I think this stanza is exquisite, and, as a sketch straight 
 from Nature, perfect. But the poets are, as a rule, excep- 
 tionally happy in their treatment of sheep. Most of them 
 are born shepherds. They seem to have an instinctive 
 sympathy with the woolly folk. 
 
 " To him the whistling ploughman's artless tune, 
 The bleating flocks, the oxen's hollow crime, 
 Give more delight than the Italian song." 
 
 With what a nice accuracy they watch them ; how exactly 
 faithful they are to the real life of the flocks. 
 
 At morning the sheep-fold pours out its fleecy tenants 
 "o'er the glade, and, first progressive in a stream, they seek 
 the middle field, but scattered by degrees, each to his 
 
23S The Pol is Beasts. 
 
 choice, soon whiten all the land" (Cowper). They are the 
 "restless," "ever-wandering" sheep — 
 
 " Russet lawn and fallows grey 
 Where the nibbling flocks do stray.'' 
 
 So the morning passes and the heat increases. "With 
 numerous bleat," they seek the trees " spreading a shady 
 boon," and "creep close by the grove, to hide from the 
 rigours of day." Here they lie ruminating ; smoothing the 
 knotted thorns by rubbing against them ; and then spread 
 again over the land till evening, and " in the soft sunshine 
 of departing day" the "cheerful lambs skip in the fields 
 and lead the wanton race." The twilight falls, and 
 
 " Every mother ruminates apart 
 Recumbent in the dusk, and every son 
 Sportful no longer, and his bleating hushed, 
 Reclines expectant of the dewy night 
 Fast by his chewing dam/' 
 
 Or the shepherd convenes the flock, and they troop to the 
 fold "with hurried bell and dust-i rovoking feet." 
 
 Not that their days are altogether uneventful. Cowper's 
 "Needless Alarm" is an excellent case in point, when they 
 discuss the propriety of suicide in consequence of the over- 
 whelming horrors of the approaching fox-hunt, thinking all 
 the fiends are let loose upon themselves. The description 
 of the mutton-headed folk is delightful — 
 
 " Awhile they mused. Surveying every face, 
 Thou hadst supposed them of superior race ; 
 Ti.eir periwigs of wool and fears combined, 
 Stamped on each countenance such marks of mind, 
 That sage they seemed as lawyers o'er a doubt, 
 ;h, puzz'.ing long, at last they puzzle out." 
 
 Sometimes, again, dogs worry the flock. Somerville pre- 
 scribes the proper punishment for any hound caught in 
 such an act — 
 
The Poets Flocks. 239 
 
 " If at the crowding flock 
 He bay presumptuous, or with eager haste 
 Pursue them scattered o'er the verdant plain, 
 In the foul fact attached, to the strong ram 
 Tie fast the rash offender. See ! at first 
 His horned companion, fearful and amazed, 
 Shall drag him trembling o'er the rugged ground. 
 Then, with his load fatigued, shall turn his head, 
 And with his curled hard front incessant peal 
 The panting wretch, till, breathless and astunned, 
 Stretched on the turf he lie. Then spare not thou 
 The twining whip, but ply his bleeding sides, 
 Lash after lash, and with thy threat'ning voice 
 Harsh echoing from the hills, inculcate loud 
 His vile offence." 
 
 Even if there is no malicious intent, the presence of a 
 strange dog is enough to bring excitement into their day. 
 "Look," says Hood, 
 
 " How a panicked flock will stare, 
 And huddle close and start and wheel about, 
 Watching the roaming mongrel here and there;" 
 
 and Grahame, how " the startled lambs with bickering haste, 
 fly to their mother's side and gaze around." 
 
 Sportsmen are out and the guns alarm them, as so many 
 poets note. The passing train, the whirring covey, the 
 shouting plough-boy, are each of them episodes of puzzling 
 interest to the woolly ones. Yet they have their amuse- 
 ments also. Panic is not their only dissipation. They are 
 " sportive " — especially as lambs. 
 
 " I am so old, so old I can write a letter, 
 My birthday lessons are done ; 
 The lambs play always, they know no better, 
 They are only one times one." 
 
 The lost lamb affords a theme for countless excellent 
 passages. Who has not, in the course of a country walk, 
 come, as Clare does, upon the small wanderer on the wron^ 
 
240 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 side of the hedge, looking in vain for the hole it got 
 through, "having no sense to find the same again," and 
 " calling for help " as it trots up and down in nervous 
 bewilderment, the mother meanwhile pacing backwards 
 and forwards on the other side, and replying with a grave, 
 troubled voice to the pitiful lamentations of her little one ? 
 Indeed, getting lost or thinking that it is lost, and straight- 
 way abandoning itself to an excessive pity for itself, is 
 almost the normal condition of the lamb. 
 
 " Soon lost and soon inquiring for its dam, 
 Who bleats and mumbles at his slender call." 
 
 As the " playful,"' " dancing " lamb, it is one of the 
 insignia of the poets' Spring, its voice a " vernal note " like 
 the linnet's, its presence contemporary with, and a co- 
 efficient of, the budding flowers and sprouting leaves and 
 birds' nests with their eggs. Spring personified comes with 
 " whinny braes all garianded with gold " (Grahame), and 
 with lambkins sporting round her, " full of May.'' Its asso- 
 ciation with the linnet is often very prettily worked in, as 
 where Crabbe has " browsing by the linnet's bed," and 
 Grahame, the lamb chasing his twin round and round " the 
 linnet's bush." In Phineas Fletcher's eclogue one of the 
 features of the vernal season is the lamb ; " they forget 
 their food to mind their sweeter play," and so too in 
 Bloomfield's " Spring " this charming adjunct of the young 
 year finds, with characteristic affection for Nature, con- 
 spicuous description. The passage commencin_ — 
 
 " A few begin a short but vigorous race, 
 And indolence astonished soon flies the place. 
 Thus challenged forth, see thither, one by one, 
 From every side assembling playmates run," 
 
 makes a delightful vignette. 
 
 But of all the metaphors and similes drawn from this 
 austible source, I would give the palm to Lovelace's — 
 
The Poets Flocks. 241 
 
 " Lost hearts, like lambs drove from their fields by fears, 
 May back return by chance, but not by tears." 
 
 Then comes Summer, when the flies are abroad, and the 
 shearers a-field — " what time the new-shorn flock stand here 
 and there, with huddled head, impatient of the fly." No 
 one who knows the midsummer pastures can have missed 
 noticing how the restless sheep, worried by insects, can 
 hardly venture to stand still to eat a mouthful, but nibble 
 and walk at the same time, and pitied the poor wretches 
 for their uncomfortable feeding ; or how, in despair, they 
 congregate, and, hiding their faces under each other, try to 
 baulk the indefatigable "bot." How carefully they keep 
 their noses down in the grass, even though too fidgety to 
 eat, and then suddenly, when one gives the alarm, how the 
 whole company decamps from one side of the field to the 
 other. Not that the shepherd can do much for them ; as 
 a rule, he merely leans on the gate, and extends a passive 
 sympathy ; so that Quarles' " Emblem," taken from this 
 pastoral incident, would seem somewhat wide of the fact — 
 
 " Look how the sheep, whose rambling steps do stray 
 From the safe keeping of the shepherd's eye, 
 Eftsoon becomes the unprotected prey 
 
 Of the winged squadron of beleaguering fly." 
 
 The shearing of the sheep, once an acknowledged rural 
 festival, gives poetry many a charming passage — as " the 
 gambols and wild freaks at shearing-time," when, after the 
 creatures, soused one by one into the pool, had been 
 hurdled up, and the shearer got him ready for his work, the 
 "queen" of the day, with her chosen "shepherd-kin.-." 
 came, with bravery of summer flowers, and bright clothes 
 and rustic music, upon the scene, and, the short day's work 
 over, headed the long evening's revels — 
 
 " The chief, in gracious dignity enthroned, 
 Shines o'er the rest, the pastoral queen, and lays 
 
 Q 
 
242 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Her smiles, sweet-beaming, on her shepherd-king, 
 While the glad circle round them yield their souls 
 To festive mirth and wit that knows no gall." 
 
 Thomson's description of the scene, " while, ever and 
 anon, to his shorn peers a ram goes bleating " (Keats), is 
 excellent — 
 
 " In one diffusive band 
 They drive the troubled flocks, by many a dog 
 Compelled, to where the mazy, running brook 
 Forms a deep pool : this bank, abrupt and hi^h, 
 And that fair-spreading in a pebbled shore, 
 Urged to the giddy brink, much is the toil, 
 The clamour much of men and boys and dogs, 
 Ere the soft, fearful people to the flood 
 Commit their woolly sides. And oft the swain, 
 On some impatient seizing, hurls them in : 
 Emboldened then, nor hesitating more, 
 Fast, fast, they plunge amid the flashing wave, 
 And, panting, labour to the farthest shore. 
 Repeated this, till deep the well-washed fleece 
 Has drunk the flood, and from his lively haunt 
 The trout is banished by the sordid stream; 
 Heavy and dripping, to the breezy brow 
 Slow move the harmless race ; where, as they spread 
 Their swelling treasures to the sunny ray, 
 Inly disturbed, and wondering what this wild 
 Outrageous tumult means, their loud complaints 
 The country fill ; and, tost from rock to rock, 
 Incessant bleatings run around the hills. 
 At last, of snowy white, the gathered flocks 
 Are in the wattled pen innumerous pressed, 
 Head above head : and, ranged in lusty rows, 
 The shepherds -it, and whet the sounding shears." 
 
 Then stormy Autumn comes with its "huddling" flocks, 
 and 
 
 " The sheep before the pinching heaven 
 To sheltered dale and down are driven 
 Where yet some faded herbage pines, 
 And yet a watery sunbeam shines. 
 
The Poets Flocks. 243 
 
 In weak despondency they eye 
 
 The withered sward and wintry sky. 
 
 The shepherd shifts his mantle's fold, 
 
 And wraps him closer from the cold ; 
 
 His dogs no merry circles wheel, 
 
 But, shivering, follow at his heel ; 
 
 A cowering glance they often cast, 
 
 As deeper moans the gathering blast." — Scott. 
 
 And so to Winter, with "the dun-discoloured flocks, untended 
 spread, cropping the wholesome root" — or, as Graham e 
 more prosaically puts it, "on the turnip-field, in portions 
 due, staked off, the bleating flock their juicy meal, nibbling 
 partake" — or it may be with the same poor woolly folk 
 piteously neglected, like Milton's "hungry sheep that look up 
 and are not fed, but, swollen with wind and the rank mist 
 they draw, rot inwardly," or, as in Thomson — 
 
 " The bleating kind 
 Eye the bleak heavens, and next the glistening earth, 
 With looks of dumb despair, then sad dispersed 
 Dig for the withered herb, through heaps of snow." 
 
 Fond as poets are of their sheep, they hardly justify their 
 excessive affection for them by the character which they 
 give the " woolly people." Their habit of following their 
 leader, " whether led to the downs or from the wave-worn 
 rock reluctant hurled" (Armstrong), brings down upon their 
 heads frequent contempt. Slaves are as obedient "as 
 sheep," and stupid men are "like sheep that follow." As 
 flocks they are always "silly," "the tame, implicit team" 
 (Armstrong), as individuals they are meekly feeble. Says 
 Swift— 
 
 " Therefore the sheep, those foolish cattle, 
 
 Not fit for courage or for battle, 
 
 And being tolerable meat, 
 
 They're good for nothing but to cat." 
 
 xious and sage, the sovereign of the flock," the 
 
244 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 ram, a the flocke's father," finds but scanty reference ; the 
 truth being that this generous and bold-fronted beast mars 
 the symmetry of the poetical sheep-idea. His independent 
 bearing, his courage in misfortune, spoil the wooliy-s: 
 gentle picture. In the olden verse the rams that " fight for 
 the rule of the rich-fleeced flock," and "meet so fierce with 
 horned fronts," receive a robust and becoming sympathy, 
 which is in accordance with the splendid traditions of the 
 bea^t — 
 
 '• As when two rams, stir'd with ambitious pride, 
 it for the rule of the rich-fleeced flocke, 
 Their horned fronts so fierce on eiiher 
 Doe meete, that, with the terror of the shocke 
 Astonied, both stand sence'.esse as a blocke, 
 Forgetfull of the hanging victory : 
 So stood these twaine, unmoved as a rocke, 
 Both staring fiercely, and holding idely 
 The broken reliques of their former cruelty." 
 
 The ewe, the " mumbling " ewe. has but little indivi- 
 duality. They call her " Goody Sheep," and, in Mother 
 Hubbard's delightful tale, the fox and wolf flout her when 
 she comes to complain to the ape — then ruler of the four- 
 footed — of the loss of her young. She is only the mother of 
 the lamb. Eagles stooping from their watch-towers and 
 " gathering large tribute from ever}- vale,*' — wolves rushing 
 from the bushes upon the gamboling lambkins, — the butcher 
 levying his toll upon the flock, all relegate her to obscui 
 Take away her lamb and she vanishes into nonentity. G^ve 
 her another, and she reappears. 
 
 " She provident 
 Her milky treasures or his life reserves. 
 Butting intruders with a frown away. 
 At length he finds her, and with bended knees 
 Emblem of innocence and filial gTace 
 His plenteous meal receives, and bleats no more." 
 
 In Nature the mother and her young one are ever a delight- 
 
The Poets Flocks. 245 
 
 ful and loveable sight ; and the charm is often beautifully 
 translated into verse. Thus in Blomfield— 
 
 " The teeming ewes, that still their burdens bear : 
 Beneath whose sides to-morrow's dawn may see 
 The milk-white strangers bow the trembling knee. 
 And at their birth the pow'rful instinct's seen 
 That fills with champions all the daisied green, 
 For ewes that stood aloof with fearful eye, 
 With stamping foot now men and dogs defy, 
 And obstinately faithful to their young 
 Guard their first steps to join the bleating throng." 
 
 Hurdis has the following curious passage about the 
 pastoral artifice of dressing up a lamb in the skin of another, 
 and thus palming it off upon some bereaved mother— 
 
 "Often let me mark 
 The sullen ewe's authoritative stamp 
 Where'er the sheep-dog passes. Let me smile 
 At her deluded sense, what time her lamb 
 By the bleak season slain, his wilted coat 
 Yields to the flayer, and the ravished twin 
 Of some fond mother, in the coarse disguise 
 Appears loose-coated, and usurps the due. 
 Dull fool, how ill perceives thy stupid eye 
 The palpable imposture ! " 
 
 The lamb, when not "prancing" and "gambolling," is 
 "witless" and "unconscious." Above all, it is innocent. 
 " Is not this a lamentable thing, that the skin of an innocent 
 lamb should be made parchment? that parchment being 
 scribbled o'er should undo a man ? " 
 
 That the wolf should eat the lamb is therefore one of that 
 beast's most infamous points. It is intolerable to the poets, 
 and they are never weary of denouncing the base assassina- 
 tion. They admit the provocation the lamb gives by losing 
 itself, by bleating loudly, by opening doors which its mother 
 had particularly cautioned it to keep shut ; but their indig- 
 nation against the murderer is none the less unmeasured 
 
?4'3 
 
 and persistent Their lambs are innocent and white and 
 
 tie j so the wolves that eat them are atrocioi> 
 and unspeakably swarthy and grim. But th 
 only the survival of the world"s origin: 
 
 Judged from any but a pc 
 almost be accounted the happiest and most fortunate of 
 animals. Death, after all. is the universal lot ; 
 policeman calls with his summons upon each in turn. Not 
 that sheep ever seem to contemplate any; er ahead 
 
 than their own noses. :bled with visions 
 
 of cold mutton — 
 
 '• The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to - 
 Had he thy 
 
 -d to the last he crops the flow'ry food 
 licks the hand just raised I 
 
 But, with the poets, their mildly-idiotic vacuity of face, I 
 
 -.-less imitation of each other's actio:" - 
 evasion of anything like vigorous independence for at: 
 or self-defence, are interpreted into innocence, docility, and 
 
 •cness. Their timidity is called _ Thus 
 
 invested with many good qualities — those which - 
 
 _;e the poetic fancy — we find them con,-: ^'Jng 
 
 1 Whai an admirable nnjsanrs — 
 
 The lamb rejoiceth in 
 An d 
 
 to his mothc 
 
 From the flowe: i In a time 
 
 Of which . run short pains 
 
 ■ warm hear:, and then, from whence 
 He 1. falls 
 
 dow; and his native - 
 Where lie was a 
 
 - 
 And some: J . darkness . 
 
 forehead on 
 
The Poets Flocks. 247 
 
 as a virtuous people whose lives are sadly oppressed. Their 
 perpetual nervousness, one of the most absurd phenomena 
 of animal life, is excused on the ground that the events that 
 cause the alarm are arbitrary and brutal. Some tyrant or 
 another, a dog that barks, or man with a gun, rudely disturbs 
 the happy calm of the gentle sheep. So all persecuted 
 sects, communities, or persons are called " flocks " and 
 "sheep," although, says Herbert, "to a short-shorn sheep 
 God gives wind by measure." 
 
 So it becomes the symbol of home-life, and its peace. 
 In the pet-lamb, Burns' lamented "hoggie," this idea, as in 
 Mary Howitt's very charming poem, reaches its extreme 
 expression, but the flocks in general convey the same sig- 
 nificance in a hundred different ways. Their mere presence 
 suffices to tranquillise the scene, and, like some other sounds 
 in Nature, their voices emphasise the rural silence. 
 
 " For sheep-bells chiming from a wold, 
 Or bleat of lamb within its fold, 
 Or cooing of love-legends old 
 
 To dove-wives makes not quiet less ; 
 Ecstatic chirp of winged things, 
 Or bubbling of the water spring, 
 Are sounds that more than silence bring 
 
 Itself and its delightsomeness." — Jean IngeUrw. 
 
 Wordsworth hears, in the bleat of the lamb on the hill, " the 
 plaintive spirit of the solitude." Thomson is very fond of 
 "the bleating mountains," 1 the "distant bleatings of the 
 hills," as an emblem of repose. The absence of sheep 
 from the landscape (as in Grahame) reminds the wanderer 
 in other lands of the happy tranquillity of "home." He 
 longs, with Faber, to hear 
 
 " The bleating tribes, 
 The nomads of the moorland, which send down 
 A plaintive greeting from the windy heights." 
 
 1 So too we have with the herds " lowing vales." 
 
24S The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 Thomson's shepherd therefore "dwells with Peace," and 
 " the porch of his mossy cottage ; ' is in Wordsworth 
 rendered more touchingly home-like by the corner-stones 
 on either side being 
 
 '• With dull red stains discoloured, and stuck o'er 
 With tufts and hairs of wool, 
 
 As if the sheep that fed upon the common, thiiher came 
 Familiarly, and found a couching place 
 Even at the threshold." 
 
 It follows therefore that any accidental association of 
 sheep with stirring scenes or sounds of the chase or battle 
 — as lambs " in friskful glee " that sport round ' f the mossy 
 mound, the rampart once of iron war " — should give the 
 poets a point of strong contrast. So (in Pitt) " the bleating 
 flocks that along the bastion pass, and from the awful ruins, 
 crop the grass," illustrates the peaceful meeting of generals 
 to sign a truce upon their recent battlefield. The utter- 
 ness of change is shown in Byron by sheep feeding on the 
 lost site of Ilion's outworks — " where I sought for Ilion's 
 walls, the quiet sheep feeds, and the tortoise crawls," and 
 so too in Leyden — 
 
 " Green waves the harvest, and the peasant boy 
 Stalls his rough herds, within the towers of Troy ; 
 Prowls the sly fox, the jackal rears her brood, 
 Where once the towers of mighty Iiion stood." 
 
 Though thus idealised as a genus, the various species are 
 all practically rendered. A poet's acquaintance with Nature 
 is not, as a rule, so extensive that he can afford to waste a 
 variety of sheep. The " small black-legged sheep " that, 
 '•fleshless, lank, and lean," devour "the meagre herbage "' 
 of the Cumbrian hills; the "goat-horned" animals "'of 
 fleece hairy and coarse, of long and nimble shank," that 
 "browse their thinly-scattered meal o'er the bleak wilds " of 
 the Cambrian; the Cotswold, "hills of milder air, that 
 
The Poets Flocks. 249 
 
 gently rise, o'er dewy dales, a fairer species boast, of shorter 
 limb and frontlet more ornate, such the Silurian ; " the 
 Southdown, " the larger sorts of head defenceless," " whose 
 fleece is deep and clammy, close and plain ; " the other, 
 
 " Whose tawny fleece in ringlets curls, 
 With horns Ammonian circulating twice 
 Around each open ear — like those fair scrolls 
 That crrace the columns of th' Ionic dome," 
 
 and many another, is specifically described, while the 
 elaborate minuteness of Dyer's history of the Fleece, from 
 the ingredients that compose the soil, that grows the grass, 
 that feeds the sheep, that gives the wool, that makes dyers 
 rich, and ought to make England mistress of the world, is 
 probably too well known to need any detailed reference 
 here to that amazing abuse of poetical instinct, and unique 
 infelicity of choice of subject. But the "poem," for such 
 Akenside declares it to be, contains some delightful refer- 
 ences to foreign sheep and shepherds, which are worth a 
 passing notice. Having put the Indus in Cashmere, he 
 calls the goats of the country sheep, and then, rambling 
 off across Cathay, refers enraptured to the shepherd by 
 " China"s long canals," and so, coming round to the west, 
 sees Mississippi " lengthen-on " her sheep-walks, and finally 
 arrives in South America, where he speaks of the llama or 
 the alpaca of Peru as 
 
 " That sheep 
 Of fertile Arica, like camels formed, 
 Which bear huge burdens to the sea-beat shore 
 And shine with fleeces soft as feathery down." 
 
 But the whole poem is too pathetic in its vain struggle with 
 the hopeless to be made fun of. There are lines and 
 occasional passages of tolerable merit, but of the work, as a 
 whole, Johnson's verdict on it will generally commend itself 
 to the majority. 
 
The Poets Beasts. 
 
 The value of our wool productions is, however, a fre- 
 
 and though the old 
 
 e unluxurious 
 
 times of yore, when flocks and herds were no inglorious 
 
 is usually spoken of as an 
 
 important factor in individual, local, and national wealth. 
 
 . fleecy produce of the Cotswold field 
 
 I equal what Peruvian mountains yield." The beauty 
 
 of the wool itself comes often also under admiration, its 
 
 - and its - . iing indeed sometimes the 
 
 poets' stock of simile and comparison. More than one 
 
 far as to blame us for and to draw 
 
 a moral of voluptuous -.herefrom. So Hammond, 
 
 for instance — 
 
 B charm of Nature lost 
 I 
 
 i rds : creatures of a 
 " witless le simplicity. Thus Parnell's — 
 
 " Gaping, teni e 
 
 Or, again, in Spensei — 
 
 e was, as meek might be, 
 - e P> 
 
 The flock 
 
 Indeed, " the cheerful tendance of the flocks " would hardly 
 seem, from the poets' description of those who tend them, 
 to conduce to much dignity of thought or intellectual 
 occupation. m grazing, as Crabbe says, " with 
 
 what a pure and simple joy 
 
 tep, 
 
 . busy keep." 
 
The Pods Flocks. 251 
 
 And when they meet they have but a slender stock of 
 intelligence to exchange, as in Herrick — 
 
 " But say, what news 
 Stirs in our sheep-walk? 
 None. Save that my ewes, 
 Wethers, and lambs, and wanton kids are well, 
 Smooth, fair, and fat." 
 
 Yet Faber would seem to be envious of such company — 
 
 " That in mute company with the creatures, 
 And gazing in their patient features, 
 I might receive seme sweet sense 
 Of our original innocence." 
 
 There are, however, two varieties of the shepherd. The 
 first is the strictly poetical shepherd, " with his artless reed." 
 This is Mallet's " rural king amid his subject flocks," who 
 (Dyer) flutes to "charm his sheep" and (Otway) " pipeth to 
 his feeding sheep." Jean Ingelow has, in " Gladys' Island," 
 
 " A grassy down, 
 Where sheep and lambs were feeding, with a boy 
 To tend them. 'Twas the boy who wears that herb 
 Called heartsease in his bosom, and he sang 
 So sweetly to his flock, that she stole on 
 Nearer to lUten." 
 
 The other is the ordinary rustic, who lies about on the 
 grass, and, when he is awake, gazes at his sheep and the 
 landscape generally, and who has a dog to do all his work 
 for him. A pleasing sub-variety, however, is " the blooming 
 maid," who sometimes drives her flocks afield. Their 
 queen is surely Lovelace's Chloris — that 
 
 " Chloris, the gentlest shepherdess 
 That ever lambs or lawns did bless." 
 
 Country folk take omen and augury from so many beasts, 
 birds, and plants, that it would be strange if sheep were 
 exempt from prophetic functions, and not invested with 
 prognostic powers. 
 
252 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " When Blouzelind expir'd, the wether's bell 
 Before the drooping flock toll'd forth her knell, 
 The solemn death-watch click'd the hour she dy'd, 
 And shrilling crickets in the chimney cry'd. 
 The boding raven on her cottage sate, 
 And with hoar.-e croak warn'd us of her fate ; 
 The lambkin, which her wonted tendance bred, 
 Dropp'd on the plains that fatal instant dead. 
 Swarm'd on a rotten stick the bees I spied, 
 Which erst I saw when Goody Dobson died."— Gay. 
 
 Certain noises are said to sicken the ewes ; shrew-mice in 
 the grass, newts in the water, are supposed to " blast " them. 
 The poets take due cognisance of these superstitions ; and 
 the fauns and fairies who avert such disasters are becomingly 
 admired. Of old-world fancies, Keats has beautifully pre- 
 served the following — 
 
 " And it had gloomy shades, sequestered deep, 
 Where no man went ; and if from shepherd's keep 
 A lamb strayed far adown those inmost glens, 
 Never again saw he the happy pens 
 Whither his brethren, bleating with content, 
 Over the hills at every nightfall went. 
 Among the shepherds 'twas believed ever, 
 That not one fleecy lamb which thus did sever 
 From the white flock, but passed unworried 
 By any wolf, or pard with prying head, 
 Until it came to some unfooted plains 
 Where fed the herds of Pan : ay, great his gains 
 Who thus one lamb did lose." 
 
 This beautiful legend of Pan — " Hearkener to the loud- 
 clapping shears " — and the fauns guarding the shepherd 
 and his sheep — the cloud-flocks of the divinities — of 
 Oceanus — the golden fleece of Colchos — 
 
 " There was a shepe, as it was tolde, 
 The whiche his flees bare all of golde, 
 And so the goddess had it sette, 
 That it ne mi^ht awaie be fette " (Gozuir — 
 
The Poets' Flocks. 253 
 
 the strange shepherding of Orpheus, " when lambs would 
 scorn their food to hear his lay, and savage beasts stand by 
 as tame as they " (Cowley), and many another fancy of a 
 pastoral antiquity, finds a place in our poets' verse ; while 
 the similes, analogies, morals, and metaphors from the sheep 
 of Scripture, the classics, or folk-lore individuality are innu- 
 merable. The Lamb of the Messiah — 
 
 '■ Tell me, was he a Shepherd or a Lamb? 
 Shepherd and Lamb at once. He took each name. 
 Since then our God a Shepherd's name doth we 
 The name of lamb who will not wish to bear ? 
 And who will not be shepherd, since God deigns 
 To be a Lamb for suffering of sin's pains." — Cms 
 
 Of Pentecost, of sacrifice, " the useful beast on Isaac's pile 
 consumed" (Cowley), the flocks of David and of the shep- 
 herds of Bethlehem, afford again and again an image or a 
 thought — 
 
 " A deceitful concubine, who shore me 
 Like a tame wether, all my precious fleece," 
 
 Una with her milk-white lamb, Joan of Arc with her crook, 
 Don Quixote's army of Pentapolin. 
 
 Being thus prepossessed in favour of sheep, it is almost 
 a natural sequence that the poets should be prejudiced 
 against the goat, which is the moral antithesis of their 
 favourite animal. Allan Ramsay's fable admirably illustrates 
 this difference of sentiment. A ram " of upright, hardy 
 spirit, really a horned head of merit," who all summer and 
 autumn through had led his family to abundant pastures, 
 takes them, as winter comes on, ''to crop contented frozen 
 fare, with honesty, on hills blown bare. - ' Then he meets 
 a goat who by his rascally trespassing upon fields and 
 gardens had earned the hatred of all his neighbours, and 
 who, anxious if possible to secure a friend, offers to give 
 the ram some of his coat, which is close and intact, while 
 
Poets' Beasts. 
 
 ram's, being torn by brambles, leaves his body half 
 naked to the biting mountain-wind. But the sturdy old 
 refuses. 
 
 bat I scorn 
 To 1 E price 
 
 in as I noo 
 ao\ 
 
 Boc : 
 
 Frc . . make reci. 
 
X. 
 
 THE BEARD-BLOWN GOAT:' 
 
 Goats possess the great advantage over sheep of having 
 beards. This should be especially in their favour with the 
 poets, for the beard makes the animal romantic — it becomes, 
 in Tennyson, the " beard-blown goat " — and gives it that air 
 of the rude and shaggy which Dr. Syntax assures us is the 
 soul and essence of the picturesque. 
 
 Bearded is always a favourite epithet with the poets, when 
 they wish to convey an idea of rugged strength or venerable 
 wisdom. Thor, with all his presence, could hardly spare 
 that red torrent from his chin ; Peru's dignity and strength 
 lies in his thunder-black beard. Remember Schaibar. He 
 was a dwarf, and a dreadful ogre at that. But he trailed 
 thirty feet of beard. When the wind blew he looked forth 
 as from a mist of flame. Regiments of guards fell flat 
 before him as he walked. Kings upon their thrones 
 shivered in their golden sandals at the sight of the much- 
 bearded brother of the Peri Banou. How better describe 
 the grim earl than to call him " Hakon Grizzle-beard ? " 
 The portrait is authentic at once. From the beard we 
 straightway deduce the complete man. Barbarossa stands 
 out from the page forthwith. 
 
 Conversely, disrespect attaches to the shabby beard ; as 
 Don Quixote, admonishing Sancho on the manner of His 
 life when he should come to be s;overnor of an island or an 
 
256 Beasts. 
 
 earldom, says, "What thou art will be seen a bow-shot off 
 . beard be not as it should t 
 
 Tne anomalous beard makes the whole man eccentric, 
 grotesque, and absurd. What reverence would attach to 
 the appearance of the Nestors of the Moon-folk, whose 
 beards, as we know, grew just above their knees ? or to 
 those elders of the wise sea-folk with their faces smothered 
 in gr js? 
 
 Again, to be altogether beardless has passed into an 
 expression of scornful contempt. It was David's hairless 
 operated Goliath. It is true that some races 
 affect to despise the beard — thus the Red Indians, who say 
 that a European's face resembles a dog's with a squirrel in 
 its mouth — but they are those who cannot grow a really 
 handsome and venerable length of beard, and illustrate, 
 therefore, very aptly the fable of the fox that had lost its 
 tail. As a rule, all nations of antiquity prided them?-. 
 on this adornment No oath carried with it the same dignity 
 of earnestness as u by my beard " — even when a Welshman 
 pronounced it with a " p ; " no affront such humiliation as 
 that which was offered to the beard. The gods themselves 
 pledged their honour "by their beards." The reddened 
 beard of Ahenobarbus, black till then, was the great Twin 
 Brethren's gage of victory. 
 
 When men succumb to the vril-staff of women in the 
 
 ce they are to become Ana and beardless. 
 
 is prophesying thus to the Assyrians moved them 
 
 to paint Apollo with a large, long beard beseeming an old 
 
 ed person of a most sedate, staid, and grave demeanour : 
 
 young and beardless as he was pourtrayed most usually 
 
 among the Grecians." In fairy tales, again, what beard- 
 
 _ dan, the have ! When they are 
 
 blue or scarlet (as in the Red Shoe- or green, like 
 
 those of the pine-forest Kobolds. they are a trifle whimsical, 
 no doubt, but never ridiculous. 
 
The Beard- Blown Goat. 257 
 
 Thus the goat starts, as it were, with a beard "to the 
 good "— 
 
 " Hung high in air the hoary goat reclined, 
 His streaming beard the sport of every wind." 
 
 What a delightful confusion of mental pictures the couplet 
 innocently conjures up — Rogers' Swiss mountaineers — Keat's 
 discrowned Titans — the Last Minstrel. Put any other word 
 in the place of "goat" and see the effect. " Hung high in 
 air the hoary god reclined," &c. Lo ! Saturn overlooking 
 the conflict that shook the Elder Divinities out of the 
 heavens. Try "prince" instead of "goat," and we have 
 doomed Saul lying stretched upon the mountain side, his 
 eyes, ominous of to-morrow's woe, scanning the hosts of 
 Philistia as they darken the spurs of Gilboa. Change it 
 for "chief," or "sage," or "bard," and the effect of the 
 couplet remains the same. 
 
 It is the beard that does it. Dignity is inseparable from 
 it — when it is long enough to " stream," and the owner is 
 in repose. " The old romantic goat, his white beard low- 
 waving." Here Coleridge has the vignette complete. 
 
 Not that the goat's beard, as such, is in itself a reverend 
 symbol. On the contrary, if it is transplanted from the 
 animal's chin to any other, it carries with it those scarcely- 
 admirable significances which the folk-lore of all nations 
 has attached to the he-goat. " Mad and careless, hot and 
 vain," is the poets' summing-up of the male animal, and 
 Spenser tells us how — 
 
 " The "blossoms of lust to bud do begin, 
 And spring forth rankly under his chin." 
 
 Satyrs and all sorts of misbehaving persons, even Apollyon 
 himself, cohircinate therein, and in the "Beasts' Confes- 
 sion " of Swift we read how — 
 
 " The goat advanced with decent pace, 
 And first excused his youthful face ; 
 
2f S The Poets Baists. 
 
 Forgiveness begged that he appeared 
 i'Twas Nature's fault) without a beard. 
 
 - true, he was not much inclined 
 To fondne- 
 
 For he had made a holy vow 
 Of chastity, as monks do now. 7 ' 
 
 Moreover, there is a popular superstition that no he-goat 
 ever remains in sight for twenty-four consecutive hours. 
 For just as ever)- Grimalkin has to be a cat for eight of her 
 lives and a witch for one, so. the] hint, the goat has 
 
 to go once a day to the Devil to have his beard combed. 
 
 In the practical household the appendage had its use as 
 a cider-strainer. Thus the Poet of the Apple advises — 
 
 '• With timely care 
 To shave the g _y beard, lest thou too late 
 
 In vain should'st seek a strainer to dispart, 
 The husky terrene dregs from purer m 
 
 When the Bachelor disguises himself to deceive the Don, 
 he ties on to his face a beard which the innkeeper's wife 
 angrily despoils him of, it being her strainer. 
 
 But the poets have very skilfully utilised both aspects. 
 As the beard promiscuous or general it claims for the animal 
 a uniform picturesqueness ; as the beard particular — caprine 
 — it gives the poet an easy simile. 
 
 Next to their beards, the sure-footedness of this daring 
 mountaineer that — 
 
 imbs," 
 
 attracts poetical regard, and certainly not without cause. 
 For the amazing confidence of this animal is certainly 
 among the chief marvels of Nature. Caution in moving and 
 deliberateness in setting down the foot on a new spot are 
 characteristics of nearly all wild things, whether furred or 
 feathered. Even cats look carefully before they leap. 
 Birds flutter before settling on an untried perch. But goats 
 
TJie Beard-Bloiun Goat. 259 
 
 appear to have no fear whatever, and never fail in their 
 trust of themselves. They make no pauses between their 
 bounds, but spring from point to point, from sliding shingle 
 to hard rock, sharp peak to sloping boulder, without 
 apparently the least calculation — and sometimes they break 
 their legs. So the poets call them " the careless goats " — 
 Spenser has them '• dancing on the craggy cliffs at will," and 
 Montgomery speaks of them " vaulting through the air, as if 
 a thought conveyed them to and fro." They delight to 
 " hang " them upon " dizzy heights," or make them, as 
 Wordsworth does, frolic " by the side of dashing waterfalls." 
 
 " The vine-mantled brows 
 The prudent goats unveil, regardless they 
 Of hourly peril, tho' the rifted domes 
 Tremble to ev'ry wind." 
 
 There is, indeed, a fine independence of character about 
 the goat which separates it by many parasangs from the 
 sheep. The latter lives placidly by faith, and seems assured 
 of redemption ; the former is possessed by the restless 
 genius of unbelief. You cannot keep goats on the level 
 road, even though you take the greatest possible pains to 
 show them the farmyard and the fold at the end of it. 
 They detest the commonplace. Rather than plod safely 
 home by the regular way, they prefer to travel adventurously 
 by paths of their own. By choice, they take the ups and 
 downs of life ; and when they do not find them ready made 
 for them, they make them for themselves. If there is a 
 heap of stones by the roadside, they get up on to it — their 
 spirits at once rise at finding themselves on an eminence : 
 and till the herdsman comes up they snatch a precious half- 
 minute in playing " Tom Tiddler's Ground." If there is a 
 ditch it is just the same. As many goats as possible get down 
 into it and pretend it was in their way. They get among 
 the sheep, and deliberately disorder the woolly procession 
 
260 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 They jump over the sheep's backs to show their indifference 
 to orthodoxy. 
 
 It is very seldom indeed, therefore, that the versatile, 
 generous-minded goat is found in Nature mixed up with the 
 dull but eminently respectable sheep. They are bored by 
 them. When the herdsman calls his charges together, the 
 sheep come along the valley in a compact body, taking the 
 beaten track. But the goats drop in promiscuously, singly, 
 or in twos or threes ; and most of them from above. 
 
 " At feeding time the goats will be browsing in long lines 
 on the mountain sides, while the sheep are grazing in the 
 plain. At midday, when the flocks are gathered round the 
 wells to await the rolling away of the stone that guards the 
 water, the goats assemble on one side and the sheep on the 
 other. And at night, when they are all gathered into one fold 
 by one shepherd, they are still separated from each other." 
 
 I confess this exclusiveness commends itself to me, and 
 I cannot find it in me to reproach goats for avoiding the 
 company of sheep. I can imagine no company less exhila- 
 rating or improving. Sheep are very woolly. 
 
 This independence of character is finely shown in the 
 goat's demeanour. He bears himself in a stately way. 
 Read Proverbs — 
 
 "There be three things which go well, yea, four are 
 comely in going. 
 
 "A lion which is strongest among beasts, and turneth 
 not away from any. 
 
 "A greyhound; ati he-goat also; and a king, against 
 whom there is no rising up." 
 
 Indras, therefore, does not derogate from his dignity in 
 assuming the form of the " warrior he-goat," nor Thor select 
 unbecoming steeds for his thunder-car when he yokes the 
 Butting Ones. 
 
 Boldness is in the blood of it — an inheritance from its 
 great-horned ancestry of the Asiatic ranges. These are the 
 
The Beard-Blown Goat. 261 
 
 paseng and the ibex, among the bravest of animals and 
 symbols of proud and fearless freedom. The markhor, too, 
 is a grand type of the mountaineer, with its gravity of bear- 
 ing, induced as it were by a life of constant peril, and an 
 implacable courage. 
 
 As distinct from sheep — the ordinary fleecy flocks of the 
 dawn — goats are the shaggy clouds that hang on the hill- 
 side, as in Phillips' lines — 
 
 " On the cliffy height 
 Of Penmenmaur and that cloud-piercing hill 
 Plinlimmon, from afar the traveller views 
 Astonished, how the goats their shrubby browse, 
 Gnaw, pendent " — 
 
 or are blown about the peaks, as in Montgomery — 
 
 " Goats that swing 
 Like spiders on the crags/' 
 
 They are the darker nimbus clouds as contrasted with the 
 lamb's- wool cirrus of meteorologists. A suspicion of the 
 sinister lurks about them. They have latent potentialities 
 for mischief. They huddle together at twilight in the 
 wolfish gloaming, and threaten with their horns the monster 
 of Night, whether wolf or witch, that fills the herdsman's 
 hours of darkness with terror — substantial, four-footed terrors, 
 some of them : superstitious, aerial, the others. They patrol 
 the midnight sky lest the enemy with the myriad eyes, the 
 sleepless one, should do them harm, ^"hen day breaks, 
 and Aurora opens her folds to drive her charges afield, they 
 separate each after its kind, just as in the pastoral land- 
 scape — 
 
 " Goats upon the frowning steep, 
 
 Fearless with their kidlings browse, 
 Here a flock of snowy sheep, 
 
 There a herd of motley cows." 
 
 For the cloud- myth, a fancy of primitive man, is altogether 
 
262 The P: 
 
 pastoral ; and goats — more common than sheep in the 
 countries where that myth originated — have always their 
 appropriate prominence. 
 
 Goatherds differ from shepherds only as their charges 
 differ, being more picturesque and in a manner more 
 on& They are described in prose, in Don Quixote 
 and Gil Bias, for instance, as of a more active, aggressive, and 
 enterprising kind than the Gentle Shepherd. Byron's little 
 goatherd "in his white capote, leaning his boyish form 
 along the rock," affords a pleasing vignette from the rocks, 
 and many speak of him as delighting, like the guardian of 
 the i'r.etr. :r. rv.us;:. 
 
 " Meantime on earlier pipe a lowly lay, 
 As my kids browse obscure in shades, I play." 
 
 Following goats naturally called for a greater robustness 
 of limb and character, and so, though we occasionally find 
 in the poets an M Acantha roaming in thymy valleys, tending 
 her milk-white goats and gathering honey," the goatherdess 
 is a very rare phenomenon. It may be feminine enough 
 to follow the " silly sheep " among their level pastures : but 
 trying to keep order among goats, or clambering after them 
 to lend assistance to adventurous kids in distress, is scarcely 
 becoming to the sex. 
 
 Of the antiquity of their domestication we have some 
 evidence from the first sacrifice, from which we learn that 
 they were kept in herds by the second generation of man- 
 kind ; and we may, therefore, without any unreasonable 
 license of assumption, suppose that the First Man, "the 
 old gardener," was a goatherd also. By what devices our 
 great Progenitor circumvented the original goat we are not 
 told But they were not, probably, very different from 
 those by which Robinson Crusoe caught his. For that 
 Adam, cast upon the desert island of the earth outside of 
 Paradise, had a dog for a companion, the traditions of 
 
The Beard-Blown Goat. 26 
 
 j 
 
 antiquity suffice to assure us, and, given a dog, even-thing 
 becomes possible for man in the most natural way. More- 
 over, Lilith, who is called the first wife of Adam, came, it is 
 said, from a pastoral folk ; and it may be that she brought 
 with her into the solitary wigwam that stood among the 
 thistles hard by the gates of Eden, the secret of weaving 
 the primitive pushm. 
 
 " Wiih glossy hair of shaggy goat, 
 
 Are light tiaras woven that wreath the head, 
 And airy float behind." 
 
 There, too, was first made goats'-milk cheese, the original 
 Gruyere, such as the son of Jesse carried down to the camp 
 in the valley of Elah, for a present to the captain of the 
 thousand in which his brothers served. There, too, the 
 wandering jackal first sniffed the odour of the Kibab, the 
 roasted kid-flesh, such as Rebecca made haste to get ready 
 for old Isaac's deceiving, preparing it like Esau's venison, 
 " the savoury meat which his father loved." 
 
 How is it, by the way, that this excellent meat is not 
 more common in England ? The empty hills of Wales 
 would surely support innumerable herds of goats, and the 
 flesh of the kid is infinitely better eating, both in flavour 
 and texture, than half the " lamb " which is sold in butchers' 
 shops. 
 
 That this animal was selected to bear away upon its head 
 the sins of the people, has somehow brought it obliquely 
 into disrepute, and the " scape-goat " has become a symbol 
 of reproach. Yet it should not be forgotten that when the 
 lots were cast, there were only two chances, and that the 
 goat which was not Azazel, " the departing one," was drawn 
 "for Jehovah." So that it rested only on the hazard of the 
 Levite's choice which of the two remained in the Hebrew 
 camp, consecrated for sacrifice to the Lord, and which was 
 sent forth. 
 
264 The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 " The scape-goat on his head 
 I eopie's trespass bore, 
 And to the desert led, 
 
 Was to be seen no more : 
 In him our Surety seemed to say, 
 1 Behold, I bear your sins away.'" 
 
 Nor also should it be overlooked that the goat which 
 was drawn " for Jehovah " was at once led to the altar and 
 slain for the " Great Atonement 1 ' So that the one which 
 was set at liberty was not less honourable than the other 
 which was dedicated to death. Nor can it be said to have 
 been less fortunate. 
 
 The legend of the scape-goat is a very widespread one, 
 and belongs indeed to those " primitive fancies " with 
 which each nation seems to have started as a stock in 
 common. In sacrifice, also, it has always been conspicuous. 
 But this is a melancholy distinction which in one way or 
 another has befallen every animal man could manage to 
 catch for the purpose, but which should never be supposed 
 to derogate from the victim's respectability, or else humanity 
 itself becomes contemptible on the altar, and the life of 
 man be held a worthless offering. 
 
 Ir. .arts of Egypt the he-goat was sacrificed; in others 
 it was worshipped. Thus, the Memphians held public 
 mourning, whenever one of the "horn-lifting" animals went 
 over to the major: 
 
 As the wet-nurse of the King of Olympus — 
 
 " Above the rest in grace Adraste stood, 
 Who rocked the golden cradle of the God, 
 On his ambrosial lips the goat distilled 
 Her milky store, and fed ih' immortal child " — 
 
 the she-goat arrives at considerable consequence, and its 
 horns, presented by grateful Jove to Amalthea, the sister 
 of the honey-nymph, flourishes immortal as the cornucopia, 
 the horn of plenty, and glitters among the stars. Indeed, 
 
The Beard-Blown Goat. 265 
 
 the astral honours of the goat are rather exceptional. The 
 Milky Way, "the bridge of souls," is the she-goat — the 
 same whose milk " nurse Amalthea skimmed for the boy 
 Jupiter," and when called "St. James' Way," is still of 
 caprine significance, though perhaps of a kind somewhat 
 deplorable for the animal concerned, inasmuch as on that 
 Saint's day it was the custom in Germany to throw a goat 
 out of the window. The Pleiades, again, are called in many 
 parts of Europe the Seven She-goats, and no one who has 
 read of the notable ride of Don Quixote and his Squire on 
 the wooden horse Clavileno, can forget how Sancho — wish- 
 ing to have something to say as to what he saw when blind- 
 folded — declares to the Duchess that he found himself at 
 one point of the journey so near the sky that it was not a 
 span above him. 
 
 " And it so fell out that we passed close by the place 
 where the seven she-goats are kept ; and, truly, having been 
 a goatherd in my youth, I no sooner saw them but I longed 
 to play with them awhile ; and had I not done so, I verily 
 think I should have died \ so what does I but, without 
 saying a word, softly slide down from Clavileno, and play 
 with the sweet little creatures, which are like so many 
 violets, for almost three-quarters of an hour." 
 
 On being further questioned, he goes on to say that two 
 of them were green, two carnation, two blue, and one 
 motley-coloured. The Duke protests that he had never him- 
 self seen such goats. "No," replies Sancho; "but your 
 highness will allow that there must be some difference 
 between celestial goats and those of the lower world." 
 
 The she-goat in Aquarius has two kids, and Hindoo 
 astrology knows them as the Rain-bringers. In this aspect 
 they descended to the Romans, and Ovid, Horace, and 
 Virgil have each of them due reference to the " signum 
 pluviale capellse." Her character is always beneficent and 
 motherly, whether we find her in classical fancy as Galathea, 
 
266 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 "the milky one," or in contemporary folk-lore as the self- 
 sacrificing she-goat that gives up her life for her less in- 
 telligent companions. "Billy" maybe overbearing, hot- 
 tempered, and unprincipled; but "Nanny "is meek and mild 
 and benign. Though " the goat of El-Akhfash " has passed 
 into Arab proverb as a fool, the adult animal in fable is in- 
 variably discreet. The " wanton kiciling " is a trifle imbecile. 
 Wolves and other villainous personages are the cause of 
 " kiddie's " succumbing to the most obvious frauds, as in 
 the Shepherd's Calendar — and thereafter punctually in ail 
 poets. 
 
 " All save a bell, which he left behinde 
 In the basket for the kidde to finde ; 
 Which, when the kidde stouped downe to catch, 
 He popt him in, and his basket did latch ; 
 Ne stayed he once the dore to make fast, 
 But ranne away with him in all hast." 
 
 That goats carry with them an ungracious aroma — are, 
 in fact, the Bassas of the flock — is a circumstance most 
 reproachfully urged against them ; yet, though, as Sir 
 Thomas Browne would say, " I concede many questionable 
 points, and dispute not the verity of sundry opinions which 
 are of affinity thereto," I know not how to admit that their 
 odour is a diabolical one. For Chaucer is not the only 
 poet who thus unsavourily associates goats and devils — 
 
 " And evermore wherever that they gon, 
 Men may hem kennen by smell of brimston, 
 For all the world they stinken as a gote." 
 
 Now, Sancho Panza, who, having been a goatherd in his 
 youth, was an authority on the subject, speaks endearingly 
 (as we have seen) of certain goats as "little violets," while 
 in another place he refers specifically to the demoniacal 
 odour as something very different. "Truly, sir," quoth 
 Sancho, " I have already touched them, and this same 
 
The Beard-Blown Goat. 267 
 
 devil, who is so very busy about us, is as plump as a 
 partridge, and has another property very different from 
 what your devils are wont to have, who all smell of brim- 
 stone." 
 
 It is a curious point, too, that in England, as well as in 
 other countries, the goat is considered a healthy animal, and 
 its fragrance especially is supposed to be beneficial to cattle, 
 horses, and sheep. For this obsolete reason a single goat 
 is still often kept in our farmyards. 
 
 This may have arisen out of the world-wide superstition, 
 that these creatures are wise in simples and the medicine of 
 the fields. Indeed, it is said that man got his first ideas of 
 vegetable efficacies from the leechcraft of this animal and 
 its knowledge of the uses of wild balsam. 
 
 " Fresh dittany beloved of goats " is a poet's allusion to 
 the wondrous ^virtues of the herb which the deer also are 
 said to have recourse to when wounded. 
 
 It had other drugs, too, "for its secure." Thus — 
 
 " Here grows melampode everywhere, 
 
 And terebinth good for goats, 
 
 The one my madding kids to smear, 
 
 The next to heal their throats." 
 
 Mrs. Bury Palliser, in her delightful work, tells us 
 how the Count of Soriano, who fell by the hand of 
 Francis I. at Pavia, bore the device of the wild 
 goat, " which when pierced by the arrow-shaped leaves of 
 the palm-tree, seeks, to heal its wounds, for the herb 
 dittany, which grows under the shade of the same tree," 
 with the motto " Hinc vulnus, salus et umbra." Of the 
 herb dittany Pliny says, "The goats first showed us the 
 virtue of the herb dictamnus or dittany, to draw out arrows 
 forth of their bodies. Perceiving themselves shot with a 
 shaft, they have recourse presently to that herb, and with 
 eating thereof it is driven out again." So in Virgil we find 
 
2 6S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Venus, in order to cure her son, speeding to Crete to fetch 
 the plant 
 
 " Well known to wounded goats, a sure relief 
 To draw the pointed steel, and ease the grief." 
 
 It is true that "the goddess-mother brews the extracted 
 liquor with ambrosial dews, and odorous panacea," but the 
 healing of /Eneas' hurt is none the less due to the herb. 
 
 In Folkard's "Plant-lore" 1 I find many items about the 
 weed. Thus, that Plutarch says that the women of Crete, 
 seeing how the goats, by eating dittany, cause the arrows to 
 fall from their wounds, learnt to make use of the plant to 
 aid them in childbirth. Gerard recounts that the piant is 
 most useful in drawing forth splinters of wood, bones, &c, 
 and in the healing of wounds, "especially those made with 
 invenomed weapons, arrowes shot out of guns, and such 
 like." The juice, he says, is so powerful, that by its mere 
 smell it li drives away venomous beasts, and doth astonish 
 them." When mixed with wine, the juice was also con- 
 sidered a remedy for the bites of serpents. According to 
 Apuleius, however, the plant possessed the property of 
 killing serpents. The dittany of Crete, it should be noted, 
 is not to be confounded with the dittany, dittander, or 
 pepper-wort of the English herbals. This plant, the 
 lepidium latifolium, from its being used by thrifty house- 
 wives to season dishes with, obtained the name of poor 
 man's pepper. 
 
 From this knowledge of natural medicines, the goat then 
 became itself medicinal. Its blood had singular potencies. 
 False emeralds shivered to pieces under a drop of it. 
 Smear the palms of a sleeping man with it, and he will tell 
 you all his secrets. 
 
 "To artists who wish to engrave glass handsomely, now 
 will I 'disclose to you a method exactly as I myself have 
 
 1 "Plant-lore Legends and Lyric;." Sampson Low & Co. 
 
The Bcard-Bloivn Goat. 
 
 269 
 
 proved it. I collected fat earthworms turned up by the 
 plough : and at the same time took vinegar and the hot 
 blood out of a big he-goat, which I had skilfully fed upon 
 strengthening herbs for a short time, when kept tied up in- 
 doors. With the hot blood I then rinsed the worms, and 
 the vinegar, and so anointed the whole of the bright glass 
 bowl j which being done I essayed to engrave upon the glass 
 with the hard stone known by the name of pyrites." Those 
 who "desire to attack with the steel the noble gems which 
 the princes of Rome loved far above gold," had also to use 
 goats' blood, and so, too, had those who wished to engrave 
 on crystals. But whether Heraclius meant what he said, 
 or whether he was only " showing the way the trick was 
 done," after the manner of Maskelyne and Cook — whose 
 delightful explanations of their mysteries only serve to make 
 them more mysterious than before — nobody will ever know. 
 But as far as the professors of the glyptic art have gone yet, 
 the blood of goats appears to be about as inefficient for 
 softening gems as it is for calling up witches. For this also 
 was one of its deplorable potencies. 
 
 But the witches had their revenge upon the animal that 
 could thus disturb their rest For on their " Sabbaths " 
 they murdered goats, black ones — and ate them, raw. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE POETS' HERDS. 
 
 In the earliest poetry of the world, the prose myth, the 
 " epic exploit " of cattle is so conspicuous a theme that, if 
 I might take poetical license, I should speak of " horned 
 legend " and of " lowing verse." 
 
 That amazing puzzle, " the Solar myth," is largely bovine, 
 and the primitive mythology being naturally zoological, found 
 its constant illustration and most frequent subject in the bulls, 
 cows, and calves without which man, in the first days of uni- 
 versal discomfort, would have been himself little, better than 
 a beast of the field. The phenomena of Nature represented 
 to the bucolic generation a herd of cattle, and nothing more. 
 Everything suggested itself to them as a mode of beef. 
 
 Men started with a cow as the original datum of con- 
 sciousness, and round it, as the one and only positive fact 
 they possessed, their lives and thoughts were grouped. Let 
 their imagination wander as far as it might, it never got 
 outside the cattle-run, and fancy could not stray beyond 
 ear-shot of the lowing kine. As they fed their bodies upon 
 the produce of their herds, so they pastured their minds 
 upon beef and milk. The skies became meadows, and the 
 firmament a cattle-yard. Thunder lowed, and the hurricane 
 bellowed.- The lightning was horned, and the storm, rat- 
 tling overhead, went on hoofs. Black and white, red, dun, 
 and dappled, the clouds went grazing or ramping across the 
 
The Poets Herds. 
 
 271 
 
 fields of heaven. The lowering, gloomy rain-nimbus tossed 
 its head and pawed the air ; in the lighter drift they saw 
 the sporting calves. The end of the world was a slaughter- 
 yard, and Nature closed the volume in a catastrophic 
 Smithfield. 
 
 This is no exaggeration of the prominence of the cattle 
 in myth. The bull and the cow represent in turn nearly 
 everything that man then distinguished in the elements of 
 the earth or their functions, everything that he saw in the 
 skies above the earth, and everything that he guessed at in 
 the depths below it. Never were there such kine before. 
 
 They wandered about in such a maze of avatars that it 
 seemed impossible they could ever turn up as mere cows 
 again, and no Protean divinity — whether in classical myth 
 or modern fairy tale — had such a phantasmagoric repertory. 
 They impersonated everything, and everything at once. 
 The cow was a cloud in the sky, which was itself a cow. 
 The king in his fortress was a cow, and the forest about 
 the fortress was a cow, and so was the cave within the 
 forest about the fortress, and so was the giant inside the 
 cave within the forest about the fortress in which the cow- 
 king lived. Cow was stuffed within cow, like the bird within 
 bird which we find in the Yorkshire pie ; and every incident 
 of Nature — human, zoological, or elementary — -revolved 
 round the bovine idea just as things do round the malt 
 " that lay in the house that Jack built." The cow, again, 
 is the thunder and the lightning too, both rain and sunshine, 
 sun, moon, and stars. Then it gets mixed up with auroras 
 and twilights, till, in the confusion of metamorphoses, we 
 find the cow-morning pursuing the cow-night — each being 
 attended by its appropriate twilight calf — and we find them 
 also running away from each other by the light of the cow- 
 stars that are shining out of the cow-sky. 
 
 And the bull is alongside all the time, and every now 
 and then there is a calf to complicate the situation. It 
 
272 
 
 The Pods Beasts. 
 
 is a dreadful myth altogether, ranging from language to 
 language with exasperating indifference, and from people 
 to people as if there were no fences in the ethnical and 
 religious pastures in which it roves. It drags in, too, by 
 countless arms, like some octopus of theory, every symbol 
 of the folk-tale and fairy lore. 
 
 Cinderella's slipper is proved to be a bull's tail. The 
 bean-stalk which Jack climbs is a cow's tail. The won- 
 derful lamp and the persecuted maiden, the girl that was 
 seven years old whom the thunder carried off, the three 
 dwarf brothers, and the magic flute, — are all of them modi- 
 fications, we are told, of the bovine idea, and the cock 
 comes in, and the hare and the crow, and the grateful 
 pike, and the quail and the fox, and the red apples, and 
 the kidney bean, and grief that inspires song, and the 
 shrimps that saved the fairy. 
 
 Who, too. cannot at once see the connection between the 
 saviour bull and Turn-little-Pea, and Ivan who went out on 
 his crook-backed horse to look for the casket under the oak 
 at the bottom of the sea? and the witch that was burned in 
 the form of a cat, and the cock that came out of the moun- 
 tain, the Bird of Light that performed such wonders against 
 the serpent and tortoise, and Medea and Orpheus, and the 
 Strong Bear of the Finns ? Was not the bull sold to a tree, 
 and did not the tree burst and out of it come gold which 
 turned into bees? And does not all this make it as clear 
 as cow-daylight that stock-raising was the only religion of 
 the earth once upon a time, and justify a firmament filled 
 with stars of beef that illuminate the Milky Way? 
 
 Wander as you will in these antique myths, and Nature 
 all round and above you, sunlit or moonlit or eclipsed, 
 is still all cattle. Go where you choose, they still bellow 
 and low, and paw and toss their heads, the luminous calf 
 and the azure cow, the black bull with the golden horns, 
 demoniacal cattle and celestial, malignant and benign. 
 
The rocts Herds. 273 
 
 Time passed, and then came the days of sacrificial honour 
 and of temple worship. 
 
 " The pontiff knife 
 Gleams in the sun, the milk-white heifer lows, 
 The pipes go shrilly, the libation flows." 
 
 In the melancholy honour of the sacrifice cattle have 
 been always conspicuous, and in nearly all countries. 
 Among the Hebrews they were selected for the purposes 
 of the altar "without blemish," and were conscientiously 
 consumed to ashes. Among the Spartans the leanest 
 specimens were specially chosen, and the gods put off with 
 only the entrails, the attendants of the shrine eating the 
 meat. Even the Athenians made believe that the deities 
 preferred the smoke of the sacrifice to the flesh. It was a 
 convenient credulity, for while Olympus sniffed, the popu- 
 lace feasted. Hecatombs were therefore vastly popular in 
 Greece. The pagans of Africa at the present day piously 
 economise in their burnt-offerings much in the same way, 
 for though they sacrifice a beast in honour of Aunt Sally — 
 as one feels irreverently inclined to call their idols — they 
 eat it themselves. But they are very careful to give the 
 medicine-man some of the teeth, to put inside his rattle. 
 None the less, consecration was an honour, and the horned 
 folk have in their day suffered from a surfeit of it. The poets 
 prefer to see the heifer at the altar — 
 
 '• Who are these coming to the sacrifice ? 
 To what green altar, O mysterious priest, 
 Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, 
 And all her silken flanks with garlands dies! 
 
 Yet as a rule it was a bull or bullock — in Egypt alwaj s. 
 Yet Cowley has — 
 
 " With less complaint the Zoan temples sound, 
 When the adored heifer's drowned, 
 And no true marked successor to be found." 
 
 S 
 
274 lh e -P^ts Beasts. 
 
 The allusion is of course to the Egyptian practice of leading 
 out the sacred bull at a stated period and drowning it, the 
 people going into mourning until a successor with the 
 proper marks upon it was found by the priests. It was 
 essential that the animal should be black, with a white spot 
 on the forehead, and a white crescent on the right flank ; 
 the image of an eagle on the spine, a knot under the tongue 
 that resembled the scarabaeus beetle, and the hairs of 
 the tail double. In Roman sacrifice the white oxen of 
 Umbria that pastured by the Clitumnus were for their size 
 and beauty specially preferred ; otherwise the poets' prefer- 
 ence for this colour has no countenance from the past. The 
 fact of the devoted animals being gaily garlanded and orna- 
 mented, and their consequent appearance of a superior 
 stateliness as they approached the place of doom, has given 
 the poets many occasions for apt simile. 
 
 " Like as the sacred oxe that carelesse stands 
 With gilden homes and flow'ry girlonds crownVi, 
 Proud of his dying honor and deare bandes, 
 Whiles th' altars fume with frankincense around, 
 All suddeinly with mortall stroke astound, 
 Doth groveling fall, and with his streaming gore 
 Distaines the pillours and the holy ground, 
 And the faire flowres that decked him afore." 
 
 Those honours, such as they were, of gilded horns and 
 rose-wreathed neck, of fillet and votive garland, are things 
 of the past — 
 
 " Nor is Osiris seen 
 In Memphian grove or green, 
 Trampling the unshowered grass with lowings loud." 
 
 At any rate, they only survive in the form of Christmas beef. 
 We no longer strew the victim's head with roas'ted barley 
 and salt; we pin a blue rosette on instead. When the 
 
The Poets Herds. 275 
 
 Smithfield butcher draws the head upwards, 1 it might be 
 whimsically inferred that we still sacrifice to the Olympic 
 deities. In the scrutiny of the sanitary inspector we may 
 recall the careful divination by entrails of the old haruspex, 
 while the poets' descriptions of the ancient holocaust apply 
 to our own Yule-tide immolations. 
 
 Indeed, who can say, visiting any great Cattle-show, that 
 the old worship of the horned things is extinct ? If the cult 
 is dead, what means this thronging of people to see these fat 
 cattle? Pilgrims come from every part of the kingdom, 
 and among those who officiate in the rites are the highest 
 in the land. 
 
 ' ' The sacred herd march proud and softly by, 
 Too fat and gay to think their deaths so nigh. 
 Hard fate of beasts, more innocent than we, 
 Prey to our luxury and our piety ! " 
 
 Suppose a Herodotus on his travels had chanced to pass 
 through London and seen the Show, and inquired of the 
 intelligent native what it meant, would he not have put 
 it down in his note-book that we had a great saint named 
 Christmas, who was commonly, depicted as an aged man 
 of jolly ' countenance, and crowned with evergreens and 
 berries ; that the priests of the temples, of which the chief is 
 called Smithfield, annually sacrificed large numbers of fatted 
 kine or sheep and pigs in his honour, and that the people 
 exhibited the utmost reverence for this festival, never failing, 
 even to the poorest, to do their best to celebrate it with 
 merrymaking? This festival, he might have added, "comes 
 but once a year,'" and it is commonly alleged by those who 
 sing at night for alms in the streets, and have often to wait 
 a long time before they get them, that this is the reason 
 why they are so punctual in their observance of it. 
 
 1 If downwards the Greeks meant that the sacrifice was to heioes 
 or the gods of the lower world j if upwards, to Olympus. 
 
276 The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 Nor would any one be surprised at such a conjecture, for 
 whether we look at the solemn crowds that gravely survey 
 the devoted animals and then go away complacent as if a 
 religious duty had been paid, or watch the experts reve- 
 rently punching a bullock's ribs or handling a fat sheep, it is 
 very difficult not to imagine that one is assisting at a pious 
 rite. Gazing at these prodigies of beef and mutton, women 
 are serious and men stern. There is less cheerfulness than, 
 for instance, at any Oriental shrine, where pilgrims from 
 the country meet to offer their dues and chatter, and there is 
 all the difference between the crowd inside and outside, as if 
 the Agricultural Hall were some kind of sacred edifice. As 
 a matter of fact, indeed, there is something solemn about 
 the uniform nobility of size, something that represses mirth 
 in the monotonous flatness of these prize animals' backs. 
 You could lay out tea upon the back of that Hereford 
 there, or play a game of cards upon that Southdown. It 
 looks as if a roller had been passed over them all. On the 
 other hand, there is a tendency to lofty exultation, chastened 
 yet inspiriting, in the contemplation of all this meat to so 
 little bone. It mollifies the spectator ; when he thinks of 
 so much tenderness he melts unconsciously himself. He 
 would not, if he could help it, harm even the most trifling 
 butcher. But it does not conduce to much hilarity. A 
 baron of prize beef is not a thing to jest about. So the 
 visitors are mostly of a solemn kind. 
 
 If the oxen that once, in pre-historic times, wandered about 
 the Thames valley where Islington now stands, could return 
 to the scenes of their lives, and see the Agricultural Hall, 
 with its contents, they would probably be astonished It 
 is permissible, at least, to suppose they would be. 
 
 For, though the Pleistocene cattle may naturally have 
 been of a kind that required much astonishing, seeing that 
 they were fami'.iar with the mammoth and the woolly 
 rhinoceros and other marvels of Nature, it is still within the 
 
The Poets Herds. 277 
 
 possibilities that the alterations which have taken place 
 since their day in Islington and the neighbourhood would 
 be calculated to surprise. When they were in the flesh the 
 site of London was an agreeable forest, interspersed with 
 patches of marsh-land, affording the finest of grazing for 
 everybody. Occasionally, perhaps, a man painted blue 
 would come creeping along and whiz a pebble at them out 
 of a sling, and then scramble up the nearest tree as fast 
 as he could, or a carnivorous beast — lion, bear, or wolf, — 
 would come up from the jungles about King's Cross, and 
 make a meal off one of them. 
 
 But if they came back now they would find but poor 
 pasturage in Islington. There is no great luxuriance of 
 meadow-grass in Pentonville, nor would oxen find much of 
 the old bush herbage left in St. John Street Road. On the 
 other hand, there would be no chance of azure aborigines 
 coming up from the Smithfield marshes to annoy them with 
 pebbles out of slings, or of lions and bears lying in wait to 
 eat them as they passed along to the Agricultural Hall. So 
 that, "taking one thing with another,"' it is not easy to say 
 whether the antiquated old cattle whom we find in the 
 Essex fossil-beds would prefer the present state of things or 
 the old. 
 
 Imagine, for instance, an ancient auroch, accustomed all 
 his life to fight for everything he wanted, seeing the modern 
 shorthorn in its stall. In his day, he would say, cattle were 
 cattle. They had horns with which they could drill a hole 
 through a rhinoceros; long and sinewy legs that carried them 
 nimbly up the hills when tigers ran after them ; tough and 
 shaggy hides, loose-fitting, that stood them in good stead in 
 many a tussle for the lordship of the herd or the possession 
 of a juicy pasture. In his day it was the hardest head and 
 the stoutest heart that gained for their possessors all the 
 luxuries of life ; dexterity in defence and ferocity in attack 
 that won for them the reward of unmolested enjoyments ; 
 
2/8 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 and when they were too old to live they died. He only 
 knew of one kind of food, and that was grass ; and as far 
 as he could remember, never saw but one human being in 
 all his life, and if that one had not been so remarkably 
 agile in getting up a tree that happened to be near, he 
 would have tossed him on his horns sky high. 
 
 With the animals of to-day it is vastly different. They 
 are perpetually being fed upon new kinds of food, none of 
 which bear the slightest resemblance to grass, and instead 
 of having to go out and look for it for themselves — and 
 fight for it, probably, before they could eat it — they find 
 their meals being constantly replenished and put under 
 their very noses. The result is that the hide grows fine, 
 the bones become small, and the fattening beasts get bulkier 
 every day, and shorter-winded. A pretty figure the prize 
 beef would look trying to run up Box Hill, with a pack of 
 wolves after it ! 
 
 Yet the comfort of such arrangements — a thickly-littered 
 stall and a pail of appetising "patent food " always at hand, 
 and nothing to worry him — would certainly suggest itself to 
 the old-world visitor. For, after all, this was the utmost 
 ambition of his own life in the Pleistocene days — plenty of 
 food, comfortable quarters, and absence of enemies. For 
 a moment, perhaps, he would regret that he had been born 
 in such early times ; but on a sudden, probably, he would 
 remember that, though the lives of these stalled cattle were 
 made very pleasant for them, they did not last long, and so 
 in the end he would come to the conclusion that liberty, 
 with length of years, was better than domestication and 
 sudden death. 
 
 Yet a very little further on he will find some of his 
 posterity that have the true old feral ring about them, and 
 all the shaggy romance of mountain and forest, as fleet and 
 fierce as any primeval beast that had to fight with lions or 
 escape from them. 
 
The Poets Herds. 279 
 
 They are the Highland cattle, with their long-haired 
 ruddy coats, their bison heads, bold wild eyes peering out 
 through the overhanging locks, and horns with a menacing 
 up-lift and terribly keen at the points. 
 
 " Mightiest of all beasts of chase 
 That roam in woody Caledon, 
 Crashing the forest in his race 
 The mountain bull comes thundering on. 
 
 Fierce, on the hunter's quivered hand 
 
 lie rolls his eyes of swarthy glow, 
 Spurn?, with black hoof and horn, the sand, 
 
 And tosses high his mane of snow." 
 
 Some are coal-black, the veritable beasts of Ossian, and at 
 once suggestive of those old myths in which they figure as 
 storm clouds and malignant agencies. 
 
 Nor are the Welsh cattle on the other side of the Hall 
 much behind them in wild picturesqueness, while that fine 
 black fellow, for ever restlessly tramping and turning his 
 horns this way and that in the vain hope of finding some- 
 thing near enough to prod, is a beast that the gladiators 
 must have found some trouble with when the Romans 
 imported British bulls for the spectacles of the amphitheatre. 
 It looks as if it could go up hill as fast as down, and is fierce 
 enough to perplex even a Texan cow-boy. But the breeder, 
 when he selects his stock, thinks of Smithfield and not of 
 the prairies, and lays his plans for the approval of the 
 Christmas judges and not of wild herds of bison. 
 
 Yet the spectacle of a prize bullock set down in the 
 middle of a prairie, and submitted to the criticism of a herd 
 of American bison, or taken down to the source of the 
 Congo and left alone with some old buffaloes, would be a 
 very interesting one. What a puzzle such a phenomenon 
 of beef would be to them. How they would walk round it, 
 and snort and wonder. 
 
2 So The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Stood all astound, like a sort of steeres, 
 'Mongst whom some beast of strange and forraine race 
 Unwares is chaunc't, far straying from his peers." 
 
 Then familiarity with the object would probably lead to 
 personalities, and when it came to fighting the prize-winner 
 of Smithfield would have but a hard time of it. So it is 
 better that he should remain where he is appreciated, and 
 where his points are understood. 
 
 The beef again, when sporting in the meadow, is not the 
 master of its own fate. 
 
 " The pampered wanton steer of the sharp axe, 
 Regardless that o'er his devoted head 
 Hangs menacing, crops his delicious bane, 
 Nor knows the juice is life." 
 
 It may think it is, and behave as if it thought so. But 
 other hands shape its destiny, rough-hew it as it may, and 
 the widely divergent results are such as to justify any con- 
 scientious person in hesitation before he decides to com- 
 mit the heedless bullock to the unhonoured publicity of 
 the suburban meat-stall, or to reserve it for the blue-riband 
 dignities of Smithfield in December. What does the 
 horned yearling know of Christmas or its possibilities of 
 obsequious sacrifice? It is of Christmas but not in it. 
 Pantomimes do not compete for its patronage ; the shops 
 expect no purchases of him. In all the acres of fir forest 
 robbed for Christmas trees not one is lit up for his amuse- 
 ment. No one sends him hampers of game or barrels of 
 oysters. He knows nothing of plum-puddings, snapdragon, 
 or crackers. How is he to do so? Is he not himself 
 part of the festivity, a passive actor in the bright scenes of 
 social enjoyment? Who can have time to think of the 
 animal that gives us the beef we eat, even though his life 
 was given with it ? Yet if we do think of him why not 
 remember that he has had a life of jollity himself in order 
 
The Poets Herds. 281 
 
 that he might add to the pleasures of the season ; that but 
 for our great annual holiday he would have died long ago, 
 unwept, unhonoured, and unsung ? If it had not been for 
 the Christian institution of the 25th he would have been a 
 common bullock. As it is, he has had a twelvemonth's 
 grace of life, and luxurious life too. Fed upon the best of 
 everything, and tended as if he were an emperor's favourite, 
 he has dreamed away his days in obese contentment, and 
 now that the end has overtaken him he goes to his fate 
 surrounded with every accessory of importance. 
 
 The influence, therefore, of human society upon the 
 bullock is all for its advantage. If it had not been for 
 Christmas he would have been common beef long ago. 
 But as it is he is prize beef, and those who bred him, sold 
 him, and ate him, are all the better for the time and money 
 spent upon his education. 
 
 In Greece and Rome it was a matter of popular belief 
 that animals devoted to sacrifice walked to the altar with 
 something of a nobler gait than when at liberty in the grass. 
 They were conscious of an exceptional dignity in the occa- 
 sion, and paced to death with a becoming stateliness. 
 
 "The fatter the ox," says the Pilgrim, "the more game- 
 somely he goes to the slaughter." The significance of the 
 fancy is of course obvious. The ancients wished to think 
 that the animal world was in alliance with them in the 
 honours that were conferred upon their divinities, and in 
 harmony with themselves. The thought of unwilling death 
 jars upon the dignified composure of the sacrificial rite. 
 
 Whether or not bullocks look upon Yule-tide as an occa- 
 sion for high spirits, is of course a point involved in some 
 doubt. But I do not think we need feel any hesitation in 
 congratulating ourselves upon having given these amiable 
 animals the opportunity of doing so if they liked. We 
 bring a great moral purpose into their lives and add a 
 dignity to decease. If they do their duty in death, they 
 
2$ 2 The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 live in ease and peace. Fate spins them a more generous 
 length of days, and when the fatal day comes it is really an 
 altar that awaits them. 
 
 For what is Christmas in its festal aspect but a feast in 
 honour of the genius of good living, and what are the store 
 of choice viands that we prepare for it but sacrifices ? So 
 the pig, the bullock, and the sheep find, just as in the old 
 pagan days, the fillets of sacrificial flowers, the garlands, 
 and the ornaments ready. There is ceremony over the act 
 of offering, and reverent appreciation of the remains. 
 
 The Pontifex Maximus of the market himself prepares 
 the prize beef, and the ordinary ministers of the place 
 attend the rite in deferential attention. With what scientific 
 nicety the joints are got ready ; with what conciseness of 
 skill and brave affectations of gesture the operator does his 
 work. He might be a surgeon with an emperor for his 
 subject. And then with what parade of circumspection 
 each portion is removed, with what fine quibblings as to 
 trifles of position each is placed aside. Dexterous hands 
 have already carved the lucid turnip and the glowing carrot 
 into floral effigies, and the blue satin bows have fringes of 
 silver tinsel, and the skewer is gilt. Under the master's 
 own eye the decorations are affixed. In private there are 
 many rehearsals, till at length taste is satisfied, and then 
 the lordly fragments are brought out for public view. Now 
 all this circumstance of demise, this consequential pomp 
 of posthumous adornment, ought surely to have an elevating 
 influence upon the bullock and his friends. 
 
 They are the descendants of " the wild herds that own 
 no master's stall," of the reem — the animal that had such 
 wide horns that Noah (so the Talmudists say) could not 
 get it into the ark, and had to tow it behind — and of the 
 urus, which Julius Csesar says was only a trifle smaller than 
 the elephant. And to-day they are the brothers of the 
 American bison, "the majestic brute that roams in herds 
 
The Poets Herds. 
 
 which shake the earth," and of the gigantic gour of the 
 Indian swamps. It is not true (though the natives believe 
 it is) that the latter snuffs up chunks of stone with its 
 nostrils, and then disc'. m with the force of a c 
 
 pult at those who attack it, but it is beyond doubt that the 
 gour shows no hesitation whatever in charging anything 
 that stands in front of it. 
 
 In the East the whole family of ''horned beas: 
 treated with superstitious reverence, for all the animals 
 which are the " ' or " vehicles " of the gods are sacred, 
 
 and amongst these are the bull and buffalo — but above all 
 the cow. For Brahma is said to have created the Brahmin 
 and the cow at the same birth ; the former to offer sacrifice, 
 the latter to yield the " ghee " for anointing the offering. 
 The eating of ghee (or "clarified butter") in sufficient 
 quantities destroys all sin — so the Hindoos say — while the 
 consumption of the five products of the cow cleanses from 
 all pollution. One of these is used all over India for spread- 
 ing over the floors and walls on scrubbing days, and, str;, 
 to say, it has the effect of cleansing them perfectly, and 
 giving the rooms the fragrance of the Tonquin bean. 
 " How." asks Sir George Birdwood, "would Dr. Richard- 
 son explain this ? " The Hindoo explains it easily by a 
 miracle. Yet the enormous importance of the cow in 
 Hindooism is only of comparatively recent date, for, as the 
 Brahmins themselves confess, the blessed animal is 
 coeval with themselves, and until recently India has known 
 so little of its ancient self that Hindoos have come to believe 
 that it was ordained at the creation that man should not 
 eat beef. The impulse to literary research given by British 
 encouragement of education has. however, resulted in show- 
 ing that the original, ante-Brahminical gods of the Hindoos 
 used to eat beefsteaks habitually — it was their favourite 
 diet, in fact — and, what is mor ley got very drunk 
 
 on soma after their meals. 
 
2S4 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 No animal in all the range of zoolatry has ever arrived 
 at such dignities as the Hindoo cow. The monkey is suffi- 
 ciently sacred, and it goes hard with the novice who, uncon- 
 scious of any sacrilege, shoots the village peacocks. In 
 other countries, as in the case of the dog and baboon, bull 
 and ram. crocodile, hawk, and ibis of ancient Egypt, or the 
 eagle and crow, snake, wolf, shark, and pike of the modern 
 clan-animal worship, many birds and beasts, reptiles and 
 fishes, have attracted to themselves the homage of nations. 
 But, putting them all together, whether in fur, feather, or 
 scales, they do not collectively outweigh the stupendous 
 sanctity with which Brahminism has invested the cow. The 
 bull shares in some degree his consort's honours, and in the 
 more exclusively Hindoo towns sacred cattle of both sexes 
 lounge about the streets. No place is forbidden to them, 
 and they are free of every stall. Wherever they choose to 
 feed, there they are at liberty to eat ; and wherever they 
 choose to lie down, that place is theirs. The sweetmeat- 
 seller may bribe the sacred bull with a lump of sugar-stuff to 
 pass on to the next stall, or the grain-seller may exchange a 
 chatty of cheaper grain for that into which the fastidious beast 
 has plunged its black muzzle. Yet they are never struck 
 and seldom reproached, except with qualifying phrases of 
 respect, in which the merchant deprecates his four-legged 
 visitor's displeasure, or apologises for his refusal of more 
 viands on the score of his own poverty. 
 
 The cow, and not the bull, however, is pre-eminently the 
 object of worship. The latter may be specially sacred as 
 the " vehicle " of this god or a particular symbol of that, 
 but the former pervades the whole religion, and itself adds 
 a sanctity to every deity in the Pantheon. When Brahma, 
 the All-Father, took upon himself the beneficent function 
 of creation, he first made the gods and then the holy men, 
 and the cow and the Brahmin were produced by the same 
 act of creative power. So Brahminism and the cow are 
 
The Poets Herds. 285 
 
 inseparable, and the animal, the twin, as it were, of the 
 holy " twice-born," takes rank above many castes of men. 
 To save the life of a cow, to do it a service, to tend it in 
 sickness, to revere it at all times, are almost as advantageous 
 in the hereafter as if the same acts had been done towards 
 a Brahmin. To kill a cow, to wound it, or to insult it, is 
 reckoned, in the full austerity of Brahminism, a more 
 heinous offence than similar wrongs inflicted upon the 
 lower orders of Hindoos. 
 
 The camel selected to carry the Sultan's annual gift of 
 the new veil to Mecca is, in memory of El Kaswa which the 
 Prophet rode, treated, while on the road, with all the pomp 
 and care that would be extended to majesty itself, and the 
 competition for the honourable posts of attendance upon 
 the brute is sometimes very keen. So too in Egypt the 
 sacred animals became, once a year, by priestly condescen- 
 sion, the objects of public solicitude and recipients of 
 public services. But among the Hindoos the kine live in 
 the same sanctity perennially, and enjoy a universal tender- 
 ness of treatment from year's end to year's end. During 
 all the rest of the twelvemonth, when it is not loitering 
 along the caravan-route to the Holy City, the camel of 
 Islam receives but scant respect from a provoked rider or 
 short-tempered owner. So, too, the furry obliquities of 
 Egyptian adoration relapsed in the majority of cases and 
 for the greater part of the year into their proper places in 
 the animal world. But the glory of the cow of Hindostan, 
 like that of its prototype in Vedic legends, is never in 
 eclipse. It is always at the meridian. So to this day we 
 find it in Hindoo zoolatry as the supreme expression of the 
 kindliness of the powers of Nature to man, an authentic 
 proof of the goodness of the gods. Though all the herds 
 that other peoples worshipped have gone from the earth 
 with the credulities upon which they pastured, the bull of 
 Shiva and the cow of Brahma have still their altars in a 
 
2 86 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 thousand temples, and arrogate the central dignity !n a 
 religion which has two hundred millions of believers. To 
 this day Hindoos devoutly believe in Kamadhuk, the "cow 
 of plenty/' which yields in heaven, from her exuberant 
 udders, every gift and blessing which the spirit of the dead 
 can demand. 
 
 Yet, elsewhere, in the West, cattle are called prosaic 
 animals, and it is a common thing for men to speak super- 
 ciliously of the bovine atmosphere of bucolic society. 
 From the supposed stupidity of kine the dulness of all 
 such as have their being among them is arbitrarily inferred. 
 The companionship of the bulky, slow-moving, cud- 
 chewing things is presumed to have a corresponding effect 
 upon the temperaments of those who are much with them. 
 To call a man a buliock is to suggest that he is clumsy- 
 footed and thick-headed, with an inert mind in a heavy 
 body. 
 
 Even the poets are of this way of thinking. They have 
 the same name for the animals and the men that tend 
 them ; they are all " herds " together, and which is the 
 more " simple," the quadruped or the biped, it were hard 
 to decide. But it is quite certain that the poetical "herd" 
 is as nearly an idiot as man could be without positively 
 gibbering, and his "patient charges," if absence of char- 
 acter be significant of defective intelligence, are not much 
 above him. 
 
 " The bound of all bis vanity, to deck 
 
 With one bright bell a fav'rite heifer's neck.'' 
 
 Yet the poets make excellent use of their cattle, and the 
 complete calendar of the year might be easily constructed 
 out of the moods of the kine in verse. 
 
 Spring is quiet with "placid beeves" " unworried in the 
 meads," " the calm pleasures of the pasturing herds," and 
 "the tranquil tinkle of the heifer's bell." 
 
The Poets Herds. 2S7 
 
 " Straight to the meadow then he whistling goes, 
 With well-known halloo calls his lazy cows, 
 Down the rich pasture heedlessly they graze, 
 Or hear the summons with an idle gaze ; 
 For well they know the cow-yard yields no more 
 Its tempting fragrance, nor its wini'iy store. 
 Reluctance marks their steps, sedate and slow, 
 The right of conquest all the law they know. 
 Subordinate they one by one succeed, 
 And one among them always takes the lead, 
 Is ever foremost, wheresoe'er they stray, 
 Allowed precedence, undisputed sway. 
 With jealous pride her station is maintained, 
 For many a broil that post of honour gained." 
 
 Then comes Summer with its flies and "restless herds" 
 with tails perpetually on the swing. They rush from their 
 tormentors into the pools. 
 
 " What time the cow stands knee-deep in the pool, 
 Lashing her sides for anguish, 
 
 Scaring off with sudden head reversed the insect swarm, 
 That basks and preys upon her sunny hide, 
 Or when she flies with tufted tail erect, 
 The breeze- fly's keen invasion to the shade, 
 Scampering madly." 
 
 This breeze-fly is specially popular with the poets as 
 a summer detail. Spenser draws an illustration of the 
 " World's Vanity " therefrom — 
 
 " In summer's day, when Phoebus fairly shone, 
 I saw a Bull as white as driven snowe, 
 With gilden homes embowed like the moone, 
 In a fresh flowring meadow lying lowe ; 
 Up to his eares the verdant grasse did growe, 
 And the gay flowres did offer to be eattn ; 
 But he with fatnes so did overflowe, 
 That he all wallowed in the weedes downe beaten, 
 Ne car'd with thorn his daintie lips to sweeten : 
 Till that a Brize, a scorned little creature, 
 
2 88 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Through his faire hide his angrie sting did threaten, 
 And vext so sore, that all his goodly feature 
 And all his plenteous pasture nought him pleased : 
 So by the small the great is oft diseased." 
 
 Next Autumn with its cattle "conscious of storms,*' "and 
 huddling side by side, in closest ambush seek to hide," 
 Winter with its " miry herds '* or " kine in stalls." 
 
 Winter is, indeed, a season of horrors for the poets' herds. 
 In the morning — 
 
 " Driven from their stalls to take the air, 
 How stupidly they stare ! and feel how strange ! 
 They open wide their smoking mouths to low, 
 But scarcely can their feeble sound be heard ; 
 Then turn and lick themselves, and step by step 
 Move, dull and heavy, to their stalls again.'" — J. Ba: 
 
 This is bad enough, but it is much worse sometimes. 
 They go afield, but there " in icy garments mourn, and wildly 
 murmur for the spring's return " (Crabbe). They then return 
 " from the untasted fields," and " wail their wonted fodder, 
 not, like hungering man, fretful if unsupplied, but silent, 
 meek '"' (Cowper), while " drooping the labourer-ox, stands 
 covered o'er with snow, and then demands the fruit of all his 
 toil" (Thomson). After this the end cannot be far — 
 
 " The grazing ox lows to the gelid skies, 
 Walks o'er the marble meads with wuh'ring eyes ; 
 Walks o'er the solid lakes, snuffs up the wind, and dies." 
 
 The seasons, again, could be divided off almost into 
 months — so punctually are the changes in cattle-life noted ; 
 while the different periods of the day have each of them 
 their herds characteristic of the hour and in keeping with 
 the weather. 
 
 The cool air of the dewy morning, the still heat of noon, 
 the languor of the afternoon, the quiet of evening — are all 
 marked off by their special cattle features \ and rainy 
 
The Poets Herds. 2S9 
 
 weather and fine, hot and cold, present us with just as 
 different aspects of the herds as the seasons. In the 
 morning 
 
 '•' The cattle are grazing, 
 Their heads never raising, 
 There are forty feeding like one " ( Wordsworth) ; 
 
 and there is 
 
 " A balm, 
 Of palpable and breathing calm, 
 By song of birds confessed, 
 And gentle kine that graze and move, 
 Spotting the misty pastures o'er." — Faber. 
 
 The sun rises higher over "green valleys musical with 
 lowing kine" — the "lowing vales," as several poets auda- 
 ciously called them 1 — and with "the heifer's wandering 
 bell." And then noon. If it be summer — 
 
 "A various group the herds and flocks compose — 
 Rural confusion ! On the grassy bank 
 Some ruminating lie ; while others stand 
 Half in the flood, and, often bending, sip 
 The circling surface. In the middle droops 
 The strong laborious ox, of honest front, 
 Which incomposed he shakes ; and from his sides 
 The troublous insects lashes with his tail, 
 Returning still. Amid his subjects safe, 
 Slumbers the monarch swain ; his careless arm 
 Thrown round his head, on downy moss sustained ; 
 Here laid his scrip, with wholesome viands filled ; 
 There, listening every noise, his watchful dog." 
 
 If winter, there is Cowper's picture — 
 
 " The very kine that gambol at high noon, 
 The total herd receiving first from one 
 That leads the dance, a summons to be gay, 
 
 1 Tennyson says the ox fills " the horned valleys " with his lowing. 
 Is this an analogous instance of the transfer of epithet ? 
 
 T 
 
290 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 ,:gh wild their strange vagarie?, and uncouth 
 •. resolved with one consent 
 To give such act and utterance as they may 
 . istacy too big to be suppressed." 
 
 The herds " screened from the sun and from molesting 
 bite of vexing flies, peaceful enjoy the cool and fragrant 
 meal," and ao on to evening, when " the horned cattle will 
 forget to feed, and come home lowing from the grassy 
 mead." We iaear them "rub the pasture's creaking gate," 
 and see them , in the yard, " their rustling feast enjoy, 
 and snatch sw(iet mouthfuls from the passing boy." If the 
 weather be stormy, we see them in the morning " on the 
 scowling heavens cast a despairing eye," at noon "gaze 
 upon the gloor.n, and, seemly, dread the threatened storm 
 to come." "with broadened nostril to the sky upturned, 
 the conscious heifer sniffs the stormy gale." 
 
 In poetry, therefore, the cow is regularly recurrent as a 
 .re of the passing day or changing year; indeed, if we 
 except the birds as a class, no other image is such a 
 favourite with the bards as the herd. Whether they speak 
 of them colle ft beavies," and " patient kine," 
 
 or, individually, .as the "lordly stiff-necked bull," "the 
 tyrant of the field," — the "milky mother," — "the strong 
 laborious ox with honest front," or " the slow team of steers 
 down-sunk forehead and depending ton = ue," — "the 
 lowing heifer, loveliest of the herd," — the "stubborn" 
 bullock, or " the s portive calves with lifted tails," we find 
 them extending to . the horned things all that sympathetic 
 admiration which Ls characteristic of the poets when speak- 
 ing of animals that are of direct use to man. 
 
 The bull is a really noble animal when you are not on 
 the same sice of the hedge. As Hurdis says — 
 
 •■ T:e pleasure to approach, 
 And by the str ong fence shielded, view secure 
 Thy terrors, Nature, in the savage bulL 
 
The Poets Herds. 291 
 
 Soon as he marks me, he, the tyrant fierce, 
 
 To earth descends his head ; hard breathe his lun^s 
 
 I pon the dusty sod ; a sulky leer 
 
 Gives double horror to the frowning curls 
 
 That wrap his forehead, and ere long is heard 
 
 From the deep cavern of his lordly throat 
 
 The growl insufferable." 
 
 But when you and it are both on the same side of the 
 palings, the spectacle of the bull— 
 
 " To the hollowed earth 
 Whence the sand flies, muttering bloody deeds, 
 And groaning deep," 
 
 is not nearly so inspiriting. For the beast has a reckless 
 way about it that defies the calculations of the amateur— 
 
 " At random faces, 
 And whom he hits nought knows, and 
 Whom he hurts nought cares." 
 
 The professional torreador has the creature at his mercy 
 and I can conceive nothing better calculated to impress 
 upon the mind a befitting sense of the superiority of human 
 reason over brute force and cunning, than the Portuguese 
 bull-ring. The vile cruelty of Madrid is not permitted in 
 Lisbon, and in the latter city therefore is to be seen the per- 
 fection of courage and skill— 
 
 " The bull's hoarse rage in dreadful sport to mock, 
 And meet with single sword his bellowing shock." 
 
 Byron has given an admirable description of the Spanish 
 
 scene. 
 
 The contests for "the lordship of the lowing herds" 
 afford the poets some fine touches— how they "fill the 
 fields with troublous bellowing," and " in impetuous battle 
 mix." The baited bull was a specially favourite image 
 
292 The Poets Be 
 
 with Spenser, perhaps a favourite sport His sympat: 
 always with the bull, as in the following — 
 
 " Like a wylde boll, that, being at a ha j, 
 
 I-. \;- : :-. . .: - r:.-z .:'.-. --.. --'..--- I. 
 :-.:.'- ■- : "t-iz. ::--: i :■_ ': ::. •':.-:: :. :.; 
 "_ - t v;-- -.::.- i '..::: il ._: :...-.-. :..:.'. : 
 I.:::::;::.:: :::i ':■:.'; —.-.':. '::-:-: . 
 And Beef - g -:. QbebJD '.-. i .:':. Yam in Dombei; 
 T 1 .:. >...: :..: ::7i. :.z ..:■ . :':.z :::-.-. !ei ~"--r. -• 
 And threats bis bonis, and bellows like the thonder : 
 So did that squire bis foes disperse and drive asonder." 
 
 The bullock is, in the poets, very properly the type 
 of headstrong, unmanageable youth, without the mature 
 dignity of the bull, but a sufficient measure of dangerous 
 potentiality. 
 
 Oxen are "sluggish," "stubborn," "dull," 'toiling," "moyl- 
 ing," "tired," "patient," "willing," "slowpaced," "faint" 
 
 ■ 7: z • .- ••:--" 
 " :' ::-;•;. :t\. ::--•. ::-•■. -^ -_- ;':.z y ... : . 
 V.".-.-. ..--•;■_:./ f.rdtzl ::.: f t per. '-.:.. :;-_ ■;. 
 With winding shonlders and slow-pacing Coot, 
 Pants." 
 
 Hurdis wrote this from the life, or he could never have 
 used the word " winding " for that laboured circular working 
 of the fore-legs. Yet what noble upstanding brutes the 
 oxen of the East are, and how admirably they look trotting 
 along an Indian road to the rhythmic tinkling of their bells, 
 with the crimson-canopied carriage behind them. 
 
 One great poet called the cow " the milky mother," a 
 phrase that does not sound so well in English as in Latin, 
 but five or six adopt it from him. She is a ponderous, 
 lethargic, slow-footed personage, but benevolent and 
 quiL Those who live in the country may not be c: 
 same opinion, for many milky mothers are very awkward 
 '. '. — 
 
The Poets Herds. 
 
 "Straight down she ran like an enraged cow 
 That is berobbed of her youngling dear " — 
 
 and after all, in the matter of being tossed, it does not 
 matter much whether you are pitchforked by a " tyrant of 
 the herd " or a " milky mother." Sancho swore they were 
 clothworkers from Segovia : the Don said they were m 
 cians. Whichever they wei aire's bones ached for 
 
 ever so many cays, and his self-respect :d out of 
 
 him for the rest of his life. 
 
 The heifer is always, in the poets, a thing of V. 
 
 " balmy-breathing, 7 ' " sleeker than night-swollen 
 mushrooms " ( Keats). Yet they like to see it, in the tradi- 
 tional tigress fashion, looking on while rivals combat to 
 death for her possession — 
 
 •• A lowing heifer, loveliest of the herd, 
 Stood feeding by . fierce bulls prepared 
 
 Their armed heads for fight, by fate of war to prove 
 The victor worthy of the fair ont'j love." 
 
 Xor outside the natural animal do the poets neglect 
 their kine. Scattered up and down are references to 
 bull-baiting — 
 
 '• When through the town, with slow and solemn air, 
 Led by the nostril, walks the muzzled bear ; 
 Behind him moves, majestically dull, 
 The pride of Hockley Hole, the surly bull " — 
 
 and bull-fights — the sympathy of the poet being ah 
 with the baited beast — to the kine that Egypt worshipped, 
 the bovine metamorphoses of Jupiter and of Io, the beast of 
 the Bethlehem stable — 
 
 •• When He incradled was, 
 In simple cratch, wrapt in a wad of I 
 r.-tweene the tovlful oxe and humble 
 
294 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 the punishment of Nebuchadnezzar — 
 
 " That great proud King of Babylon, 
 
 That would compel all nations to adore, 
 
 And him as only God to call upon, 
 
 Till, through celestial doom thrown out of door, 
 
 Into an ox he was transformed of yore " — 
 
 Brahma's white bull and Europa's — 
 
 " Now lows the milk-white bull on Afric's strand, 
 And crops with dancing head the daisied land ; 
 With rosy wreaths Europa's hand adorns 
 His fringed forehead, and his pearly horns ; 
 Light on his back the sportive damsel bounds, 
 And pleased he moves along the flower)' grounds, 
 Bears with slow step his beauteous prize aloof, 
 Dips in the lucid flood his ivory hoof; 
 Then wets his velvet knees, and wading laves 
 His silky sides amid the dimpling waves" — 
 
 the bulls of heraldry, notably the " dun " the bulls of 
 Percy — 
 
 " Lord Westmoreland his ancient raised, 
 The Dun Bull he raised on high " — 
 
 the cows of popular superstition — white, black, and " shelly 
 coated." dappled, and sand-red, and brindled — and many 
 other creatures of story and myth, from Taurus of the zodiac 
 to the cow of Dunsmore Heath, of which the horn, albeit 
 an elephant's tusk is shown to this day, in proof of the 
 great Earl's great achievement. 
 
XII. 
 
 SOME POETS' HORSES. 
 
 It is curious that poets should see so little of the natural 
 animal in the horse. As a beast, a quadruped, they 
 absolutely ignore it. It is only in its artificial varieties 
 that they recognise it at all, and even then so seldom as 
 to surprise the student of their pages. About the horse 
 particular, individual steeds of fame, a volume might easily 
 be gathered from our poets. But of the creature in Nature 
 they say nothing. The beast has become so thoroughly 
 relative that it has lost all individuality. It is either the 
 other half of a cavalier, a warrior, a war-chariot, a plough, 
 a coach, or a cart, or something else, that it cannot be 
 contemplated apart from its rider, its accoutrements, or the 
 vehicle it draws. All other animals have characters of their 
 own. The horse has none. It varies only according to the 
 kind of man on its back or the kind of thing behind it. 
 Attach a plough to it, and it becomes at once " heavy" and 
 "dull;" set a soldier upon it, and it is "fiery" and 
 " proud." When ladies ride, their horses turn to " milk- 
 white palfreys ; " the hero of a poem, whether knight or 
 highwayman, bestrides, as a rule, a "courser." There are 
 also "swift-heeled Arabians," and "barbs," and "jennets;" 
 but these are not meant for real horses. 
 
 There is, of course, nothing surprising in the fact that 
 poets have but little in sympathy with stable-boys or book- 
 
296 The Poets Bl asts. 
 
 makers. When they do speak of grooms they rate them as 
 second-class horses, and the " horsey " gentleman as an in- 
 ferior amateur groom. This is. poetically, as it should be ; 
 but, on the other hand, when we remember that near', 
 history has been made on horseback, and that it is to the 
 character of that animal that man is indebted for the 
 moiety of his achievements, it strikes strangely to find 
 the poets so consistently disregarding the strongly-marked 
 individuality of the horse. Its sympathy with human 
 beings — as is the case with the poets' dogs also — has 
 doubtless much to do with the doubling-up of the animal 
 with its master. Whatever nature it may show, it is always 
 in accordance with that of its rider. Its temper a'.~ 
 matches its trappings is in keeping with its 
 
 harness. 
 
 Once upon a time — so the Greeks had the story 1 — Athena 
 and Poseidon contended for the honour of being the best 
 friend of humanity, and. to clinch his claim, the ocean-god 
 created for the use of man the horse. Olympus had to 
 arbitrate between the rival divinities, and eventually decreed 
 in favour of Athena's olive-tree, " for,'' said Zeus, u I fore- 
 see that man will pervert the gift of Poseidon to the 
 purposes of war." 
 
 Appeal, however, lies from the judgment 0/ the Thunderer 
 to the ultimate voice of history, and if <; in the fulness of 
 time " we could ask the question again, Eternity would 
 certainly reverse the decree of the Olympian bench, for 
 the horse has done far more for man than salad oil. 
 
 In myth it is always noble. No monstrous form in 
 the classics has dignity except the Centaur, the Asvinau of 
 the Hindoos. The conjunction of man and horse in one 
 being was not considered degrading. 
 
 1 How miserably the poets use this beautiful episode. See, for 
 instance, Congreve (To the Earl of Godolphin), or Parnell (The 
 Horse and the Oiive). 
 
Some Poets Horses. 297 
 
 To complete the majesty of deities, they rode or drove 
 horses. In primitive legend they go in pairs — the black 
 steed of Night with the grey of the Morning, the red horse 
 of Carnage and the white of Death. In the sunrise and the 
 sunset there glitter the peacock-feathered manes of the 
 coursers of the sky. The spirit of the Whirlwind sweeps 
 along charioted by a swarthy team. Thunder and Light- 
 ning, the' terrific Dioscuri, ride in the heavens upon their 
 neighing, fire-breathing, stallions. The rain-god Indras 
 comes up drawn by the Rohits, " the brown ones ; " the 
 Dawn has harnessed to her car three dappled greys. From 
 the stables of Asgard issue Hrimfaxe and Skimfaxe, the 
 steeds of Day and Night, just as from the stalls of Olympus 
 the Hours lead forth Xanthos " the golden," and Belios 
 " the mottled," and Memnon's mother — " Tithonia conjux" 
 — springs from bed to chariot, and, shaking their dewy 
 manes, Lampas and Phaethon whirl her upwards through the 
 reddening skies to awaken gods and men. 
 
 The spirits are all mounted — " Heaven's cherubim, 
 horsed upon the sightless coursers of the air" — '•'night-roam- 
 ing ghosts, by saucer-eyeballs known" (Gay) — "the Kelpy 
 on its water-palfrey" (Wordsworth) — the angels of death, 
 whose "coal-black steeds wait for men" (Jean Ingelow) — 
 the fays of Collins on milk-white steeds, and of Shelley on 
 "the coursers of the air," the elfin king of Leyden on his 
 coal-black horse that goes with noiseless hoofs. Ossian's 
 steeds — " bounding sons of the hill," like every other 
 animal in that tiresome imposture — are wreaths of mist. 
 But more substantial, in their way, are the night-steeds of 
 the moon in Campbell, the " pale horses " of famine, war, 
 and plague (Mallet), the white horse, splashed with blood, 
 which Anarchy rides in Shelley, and the " pale horse," 
 which is the steed of death in a score of poets. Coleridge 
 makes fun of it — 
 
2 9$ The Poets Beasts. 
 
 ' • A Poihecary on a white horse, 
 Rode by on his vocations, 
 And the Devil thought of his old fr;-:. 
 Death in the Revelations." 
 
 But it is reserved for Eliza Cook to speak of " the brave 
 iron-grey," which is Eternity s Arab ! 
 
 The Oriental horse-myths have their exponent in Sir 
 William Jones, whose "green-haired steeds," " with verdant 
 manes," gallop through the skies. "The seven coursers 
 green" of Love and Bounty, "with many an agate hoofed, 
 and pasterns fringed with pearl," and those others, u the 
 steeds of noon's effulgent king, that shake their green manes, 
 and blaze with rubied eyes," are strictly in sympathy with 
 Hindoo tradition. Campbell, on the same theme, wanders, 
 as usual, into sunless skies of error. 
 
 Of horses more specifically, historically, individual, there 
 is a multitude, of course. Starting from the commence- 
 ment, there is the wild Scythian, supposed (by Phineas 
 Fletcher) to drink the blood of the horse he is riding— 
 " yet worse ! this fiend makes his own flesh his meat " ■ — 
 and the horses of ancient tradition, such as that * : wondrous 
 horse of brass on which the Tartar king did r i so 
 
 we pass, through the classic steeds of Greece and Rome, 
 the steeds of Caesar and Alexander, to those of mediaeval 
 heroes, Arthur and the Cid ; and so al«ng the picketed 
 lines of Rhenish steeds, knightly coursers, and milk-white 
 palfreys of the old-ballad age, to the horse of Mazeppa, and 
 the Tartar steeds of the revolt of Islam. 
 
 The horses of St. Mark and of Pharaoh, of which Miriam 
 sang when she went up before the host, with all the women 
 with timbrels and dances — of Darius, which neighed him 
 into the throne of Persia — of Diomed, anthropophagous 
 brutes, "Thracian steeds with human carnage wild — 
 
 " Which fell Geryon nursed, their food 
 The flesh of man, their drink his blood " 
 
Some Poets' Horses. 299 
 
 — of Nereus, the sea-horses, a very favourite fancy of the 
 poets — of Dan Phoebus — 
 
 " When he doth tighten up the golden reins 
 And paces leisurely down amber plains 
 His snorting four " — 
 
 the air-bred and wind-begotten steeds of Thrace — the 
 winged steeds of Perseus and Endymion, — and all the 
 <; other foales of Pegasus, his kynde." So, step by step, pass 
 to Black Besses of the heath and road, the chargers of 
 our Joan-of-Arcs and other warriors of history, of Queen 
 Elizabeth and other sovereigns, to the Rozinantes, Grizzles, 
 and Dobbins, of Cervantes, Hudibras, and Syntax, to hacks 
 of John Gilpin and the " Parish Doctor," and many a local 
 hero and heroine beside whose jades are the subjects of a 
 passing jest. 
 
 I remember having seen somewhere a picture of Adam, 
 in the garb of Eden, riding a bare-backed mustang, a lion 
 gamboling by his side. But in Holy Writ the horse 
 appears in only one aspect — as the war-horse. i: He saith 
 among the trumpets, Ha ! ha ! and he smelleth the battle 
 afar off, the thunder of the captains and the shouting." x 
 
 In Genesis the name does not occur at all. Nor, as a 
 matter of fact, could it do so, seeing that the first " horse " 
 (the first that science* knows of) was a little, five-toed, sharp- 
 nosed creature, much too small for a man of even our 
 degenerate stature to ride upon, and otherwise also unsuit- 
 able for a steed ; and it is, therefore, very probable that 
 " the first man " never was on horseback. 
 
 Yet the use of the animal dates back to a prodigious 
 antiquity. The Assyrian sculptures show us high-bred and 
 carefully-caparisoned chargers, three thousand years and 
 more ago. Xor is it at all likely that they were the first to 
 
 1 Job's splendid poem has incited several poets (Quarles, Young, 
 Broome, for instance) to attempt the same theme, which, however, 
 gains no accession of beauty or power from their paraphrases. 
 
500 Poets' Beasts. 
 
 r of Cev. and 
 
 ■ Aryan : have wasted such a 
 
 mi to which the 
 
 :s show us that 
 
 some eighteen hundred years 
 
 en a long time in 
 
 The r.e more than their usual 
 
 :ribe a primitive race catching the 
 se and toe is in " Be 
 
 — 
 
 ed mane, 
 
 » o'er the plain, 
 
 he course, 
 
 ; 
 
 ! 
 
 and shaggy mane 
 • of his future t 
 : his own" (Hurdis), grows up, 
 and for a while longer retains his libei 
 
 •• \\\ 
 
 ■ 
 
 . and throwing up his heels, 
 
 Eut in due . .>ecomes a full-grown horse. 
 
 free, 
 
 td doom 
 cay, 
 
Some Poets' Horses. 301 
 
 The phrase "which ever" is not, however, strictly correct 
 in England, whatever, according to Grahame, may be the 
 universal rule in Scotland. For, as Cowper says — 
 
 " The veteran steed excused his task at length, 
 In kind compassion of his failing strength, 
 And turned into the park or mead to graze, 
 Exempt from future service all his days, 
 There feels a pleasure perfect in its kind." 
 
 This may be accepted as almost the total sum of the 
 natural horse in poetry. That episode in Venus and 
 Adonis, where the conduct of the young boar-hunter's steed 
 suggests to the quick-witted goddess an argument from 
 analogies, has suggested several exaggerated descriptions 
 of the stallion at large, but they are scarcely sketches from 
 the life. 
 
 In the chase, Somerville of course excepted, the horse 
 does not occupy the prominent place that might have been 
 expected. Hunting is not a favourite pastime of the poet. 
 He does not ride as Byron says Don Juan did — 
 
 " So that his horse, or charger, hunter, hack, 
 Knew that he had a vider on his back." 
 
 And they skirt the subject, except so far as sentiment goes, 
 with the utmost delicacy. Some, indeed, contemn "the 
 squire " who takes a pride in his steed. 
 
 Somerville, of course, is a unique exception, and his 
 apostrophes of the "brave youths" who go a-hunting are 
 delightful rubbish, as the opening rhapsody goes to show — 
 
 " Hail, happy Britain ! highly favoured isle, 
 And Heaven's peculiar care ! to thee 'tis given 
 To train the sprightly steed, more fleet than those 
 Begot by Winds, or the celestial breed 
 That bore the great Felides thro' the press 
 Of heroes armed, and broke their crowded ranks." 
 
 But he knew a good horse as well as Hurdis did, and 
 
302 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 was a far better sportsman than he was a poet. For the 
 utter humiliation of the noble brute read Eliza Cook. 
 
 The race-horse finds but few friends among the poets. 
 They see only the cruelty of the sport The jockeys are 
 " murderers," and the animals come in with " rivers of 
 sweat and blood flowing from gored sides." They admire 
 the animal " with his nostrils thin, blown abroad by the 
 pride within,*' but they avoid it. 
 
 The war-horse finds more frequent and appreciative 
 reference, but the poets cannot shake Job off. The few 
 lines of the Patriarch's poem stretch farther than all their 
 laboured eulogies, just as the staff of Moses reached farther 
 than the linked sceptres of all the Kings of Edom. It 
 neighs and paws and snorts, but it gets no further, after all, 
 than the 25th verse of the 39th chapter of the Book of Job. 
 " Taboring the ground " is, however, an excellent conceit 
 of Quarles, and shows an unusual judgment in plagiaris- 
 ing. 
 
 The poet's cart-horse is a most dismal creation. Not 
 long ago cruelty to animals was much more prevalent than 
 it is now — thanks to a society that has the eyes of Argus, 
 the funds of Croesus, and the sympathy of the country — 
 and from Chaucer to Wordsworth the draught-horse is a 
 miserable brute, habitually ill-treated, and dying from cruel 
 over-work. It is "as lene as is a rake" (Chaucer); "all 
 bones and leather " (Butler); " a wretched unlucky corse " 
 (Ramsay); "toil-worn" in Grahame, who seems to have 
 had an exceptionally bad opinion of Scotch treatment of 
 horses. Cowper implores the carter to spare his "poor 
 beasts ; " Worilsworth beseeches the waggoner to be mind- 
 ful of his responsibilities. Both these poets, however, pay 
 a tribute of respect to the draught-horse's willingness, while 
 those who know him better — Hurdis, Clare, and Bloom- 
 field, for instance — admire it, " patient of the slow-paced 
 swain's delay ; " or as 
 
Some Poets' Horses. 303 
 
 " Up against the hill they strain, 
 Tugging at the iron chain." 
 
 Joanna Baillie has a bitter passage : is there still all the 
 old truth about it ? 
 
 *' What forms are these with lean galled sides ? In vain 
 Their laxed and ropy sinews sorely strain 
 Heaped loads to draw, with lash and goad urged on. 
 They were in other days, but lately gone, 
 The useful servants, dearly prized, of those 
 Who to their failing age give no repose — 
 Of thankless, heartless owners. Then full oft 
 Their arched, graceful necks, so sleek and soft, 
 Beneath a master's stroking hand would rear 
 Right proudly, as they neighed his voice to hear. 
 But now how changed ! And what marred things are these, 
 Starved, hooted, scarred, denied or food or ease ; 
 Whose humbled looks their bitter thraldrom show, 
 Familiar with the kick, the pinch, the blow ? 
 Alas ! in this sad fellowship are found 
 The playful kitten and the faithful hound." 
 
 In metaphors and analogies, similes and morals drawn 
 from an original so exceptionally promising as the horse, 
 the poets show themselves strangely self-denying and even 
 parsimonious. In a great measure the dog forestalls it. 
 Moreover, when comparisons of courage, speed, or a gene- 
 rous spirit are sought there are the poets' lions and eagles 
 to draw upon. The horse therefore is made an adjunct 
 in description rather than a moral auxiliary. It adds a 
 material feature to the scene, but affords no lesson. The 
 poets, in fact, do not recognise the horse as an animal. It 
 is an equipment, an adornment, furniture. 
 
 Herbert is a very striking exception ; he has a whole 
 quiver full of equine "jacula." Thus, for example, "a 
 jade eats as much as a good horse ; " " Who lets his wife 
 go to every feast, and his horse drink at every water, shall 
 neither have good wife nor horse ; " " The master's eye 
 
3^4 
 
 The Pods Beasts. 
 
 fattens the horse :'" " For want of a nail the shoe is lost : 
 for want of a shoe the horse is lost : for want of a horse 
 the rider is lost;" "The horse thinks one thing, and he 
 that saddles him another ; " " Speed without pains, a horse/' 
 These must suffice. Cowper uses the metaphor "pack- 
 horse constancy," and Churchill, though with deficient 
 skill, utilises the colt as a simile for "loose Digression," 
 that " spurning connection and her formal yoke, bounds 
 through the forest and wanders far astray." The colt, in- 
 deed, furnishes an analog}' to many things and persons that 
 depreciate it, for the poets too often forget that, after all, 
 innocence in the young beast sets it quite apart from the 
 deliberate obliquities of reasoning humanity. 
 
XIII. 
 
 SOME POETS' DOGS. 
 
 " Mastiff, greyhound, mongrel grim, 
 Hound or spaniel, brach or lym, 
 Or bobtail-tyke or trundle-tail." 
 
 Premising, in the poet's humour, that animals are only 
 worthy of regard relatively to man, it follows that no animal 
 is so suitable for poetical treatment as the dog, for the dog 
 has virtually no independent existence. Apart from man 
 it has no identity. 
 
 For the wild dog is hardly a dog. It smells like a fox, 
 has eyes that gleam in the twilight like a wolf's, is silent 
 under all canine provocations to bark, and when it does 
 give tongue, its howling is in a voice that is absolutely 
 unlike any other created utterance. In appearance it is a 
 cross between a jackal and a wolf, assuming a furry winter 
 coat in high latitudes, while its manners in captivity re- 
 semble neither the one nor the other. In Byron it " howls 
 o'er the fountain brim, with baffled thirst and famine grim," 
 but as he is speaking of the deserted courts of Hassan's 
 palace, the animal intended is probably only the "pariah- 
 dog " of the East, as also in the following — 
 
 " He saw the lean dogs beneath the wall 
 Hold o'er the dead their carnival ; 
 
306 The Pods B casts. 
 
 Gorging and'growling o'er carcass and limb, 
 
 They were too busy to bark at him ! 
 
 From a Tartar's skull they had stripped the flesh, 
 
 As ye peel the fig when its fruit is fresh ; 
 
 And their white tusks crunched o'er the whiter skull, 
 
 As it slipped through their jaws when their edge grew dull, 
 
 As they lazily mumbled the bones of the dead, 
 
 When they scarce could rise from the spot where they fed ; 
 
 So well had they broken a lingering fast 
 
 With those who had fall'n for that night's repast. 
 
 The scalps were in the wild dog's maw, 
 
 The hair was tangled round his jaw ; 
 
 But close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, 
 
 There sat a vulture flapping a wolf, 
 
 Who had stolen from ihe hills, but kept away, 
 
 Scared by the dogs, from the human prey ; 
 
 But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, 
 
 Picked by the birds, on the sands of the bay, 
 
 And see, worms of the earth, and fowls of the air, 
 
 Beasts of the forest, all gathering there; 
 
 All regarding man as their prey, 
 
 All rejoicing in his decay." 
 
 By the way, were pariah-dogs ever a feature of English 
 life ? Or how is it that Spenser, Chaucer, and others talk so 
 often of vagrant curs that beset well-bred dogs ; of "a sort 
 of hungry dogs y-met, about a carcass in the common way," 
 and so forth. It is very probable that we once had pariahs, 
 just as every other half-civilised country still has them. 
 This opens up, it seems to me, rather an interesting point 
 for inquiry and research. At .any rate, our older poets 
 evidently saw them in packs quarrelling over offal on the 
 roads. 
 
 When, therefore, the poets speak of dogs they mean the 
 tamed descendants of the creatures which were given to 
 man by a compassionate Providence to be his eyes and 
 ears, and which centuries of experience have proved to be 
 the best servants beyond all comparison that humanity has 
 ever dignified into utility. Under domestication the dog 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 307 
 
 has varied from its original types with such extraordinary 
 ingenuity that it would now be very difficult indeed to 
 resolve the different species of Europe into their primal 
 elements or to refer each to its old wild-brier stock. 
 
 I do not say it would be impossible, for I have myself 
 seen so many transition-varieties between the bond fide 
 " wild dog " — the tiger-hunting pack of the Indian jungles 
 — and the thoroughly civilised animal, that I have no doubt 
 that if travellers put their experiences together, the exist- 
 ence of most of our dogs, with their present special char- 
 acteristics in full development, could be traced back to 
 the remotest ages. Thus, long before white men went to 
 North America, the Red Indians had possessed the grey- 
 hound ; the dames of old Mexico centuries ago cherished 
 curly-haired lap-dogs ; the villagers of the Himalayas 
 guarded their hill-paths in the Vedic days with ferocious 
 thick-coated shepherd-dogs ; Nineveh borrowed the mastiff 
 from Egypt — and Egypt from " Accadia." 
 
 I yield to no one in my honourable and affectionate 
 regard for the dog. But I place it far below man ; for 
 man, I contend, made the dog, and I agree with him who 
 says that " man is the Providence of the dog." The sagacity, 
 fidelity, and disinterested, passionate attachments of the 
 dog are such old facts that the person who would disbelieve 
 in them can hardly be imagined; and for myself, I am 
 almost afraid to think of the dog's possibilities in intelli- 
 gence and affection, if its life were only commensurate with 
 our own. Yet granting all this, I always find myself resent- 
 ing the irrational infatuation of dog enthusiasts, and being 
 thus apprehensive of the excesses of others, am perhaps 
 inclined to weigh out the measure of my own admiration 
 with too exact a hand. For a margin of eulogy is excusable 
 for an animal that without reason learns in its short span 
 of years so nearly to simulate it ; that without inherited 
 data evolves from its own perceptions such an admirable 
 
308 TJie Poets Beasts. 
 
 morality ; that without free agency formulates so fearlessly 
 and faithfully its table of duties to be done and temptations 
 to be resisted; that without any hope of a hereafter, so 
 often seems to be living in expectation of a life to come. 
 But the sum of all this does not reach by many figures the 
 full equation of man. 
 
 Yet the dog is a beautiful symbol, and though here and 
 there individuals may exceed into Egyptian idolatry of the 
 animal, it is as a type of courageous, self-forgetful friendship 
 that the poets use it most justly. 
 
 Occasionally, too. they confess that the best of dogs may 
 " from the path of duty err." x As Somerville admits — 
 
 " He may mistake sometimes, 'lis true, 
 None are infallible but you ; 
 The dog whom nothing can mislead 
 Must be a dog of parts indeed ; " 
 
 and as Eliza Cook delightfully illustrates in her address to 
 the staghound Bran — 
 
 •• You have strength of muscle and length of limn, 
 Your jaws are deep and your beard is grim, 
 Your fangs are strong and ivory white, 
 Your mouth is as black as a cloudy night. 
 'Tis pleasant to hear the wise ones utter 
 
 The worth of your power and pace ; 
 But why did you swallow that pound of butter, 
 
 Dog of an ancient race?" 
 
 So, too, Cowper, rising for once out of his indolent, 
 timid life, to impatience with a little dog that persisted in 
 quarrelling with others, orders it to — " go 
 
 1 " E'en the docile pointer knows disgrace, 
 Thwarting the gen'ral instincts of his race ; 
 E'en so the mastiff or the meaner cur 
 At times will from the path of duty err." 
 
Some Pods Dogs. 309 
 
 " I care not whether east or north, 
 So I no more may find thee ; 
 The angry Muse thus sings thee forth, 
 And claps the gate behind thee." 
 
 To measure the real worth of a dog's attachment, the 
 true value of its friendship, we have only to take any one 
 of the poets' desperate assertions that the dog they deplore 
 was their " only" friend. Thus Byron — 
 
 " Ye who perchance behold this simple urn 
 Pass on — it honours none you wish to mourn ; 
 To mark a friend's remains these stones arise, 
 I never knew but one — and here he lies." 
 
 Now, what is the effect of this stanza on the mind ? Does 
 it exalt the worth of a dog's fidelity ? or does it not rather 
 fill the reader with an indignant pity for the man who in 
 all this world of men and women says he could find, or 
 keep, no better friend than a dog? Sympathy is of so 
 subtle a crystal that it shivers to pieces at the first drop of 
 cynicism, and so, instead of admiring Byron's dog the more, 
 I feel inclined to admire the dog's master the less. 
 
 By his own showing, too, the poet was barely honest 
 to his one friend — - 
 
 " Perchance my dog will whine in vain 
 Till fed by stranger hands ; 
 But long ere I come back again, 
 He'd tear me where he stands" — 
 
 and there is either gross injustice in this verse or false sen- 
 timent in the other. And each is alike disagreeable and 
 unjust. 
 
 Meanwhile, the beauty of the dog's fidelity remains unim- 
 paired, and when the same poet (in his terrific dream of 
 " Darkness ") pays the tribute of his verse to the hound 
 faithful even to death, he commands a universal sympathy — 
 
310 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 •• With a piteous and perpetual moan 
 
 And a quick desolate cry, licking the hand 
 Which answered not with a caress — he die I." 
 
 Mary Howitt's lines — 
 
 " My mother is dead, and my father loves 
 His dogs far more than me," 
 
 are within the facts, and so too is Tennyson's 
 
 "He will hold thee when his passion shall have spent its moral force 
 Something better than his dog, something dearer than his horse." 
 
 Nothing, of course, can prevent a Cowper making even 
 a dog's friendship sometimes ridiculous, nor an Eliza Cook 
 arousing one's furious scorn with such a couplet as this — 
 
 " Xor deem me impious if I say 
 That next to God I hold my hound." 
 
 What a confession of faith — to worship God, and love her 
 dog better than her neighbour ! But where the poet does 
 not fall a victim to want of taste or to cheap cynicism, the 
 expression of affection for a worthy dog is always sure to 
 command a reasonable sympathy with the writer, if only for 
 the reason that the dog is one of man's finest triumphs. 
 
 King Lear bemoans it as " the most unkindest cut of all," 
 that the dogs about his palace, " the little dogs and all," 
 should bark at him. How many men have said it in half 
 earnest that they place their hopes no higher than the 
 Red Indian who " in another life expects his dog, his bottle, 
 and his wife," and that they envy Tobit and Arjuna their 
 canine companions in heaven — 
 
 " He asks no angel's wings, no seraph's fire, 
 But thinks, admitted to that equal sky, 
 His faithful dog shall bear him company." — Pope. 
 
 It forms a feature, therefore, of all the happiest aspects 
 of life, is an emblem of the security and tranquil domestic 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 3 1 1 
 
 simplicity that are accepted as characteristic of the poetical 
 country-side. 
 
 The dog at ease is significant of auspicious times and 
 events ; the miserable one ominous of disaster present or 
 to come. The lazy dog is a feature of the summer's day, 
 and the active one of winter and spring. It is on the hills 
 with the shepherd, on the road with the carter, in the 
 corner of the field with the ploughman. No door or gate 
 opens without its appropriate dog. Guests, good and bad, 
 are to be distinguished by the kind of dogs that meet 
 them. 
 
 And there are few incidents of the animal's life that have 
 not been noted. The meeting of strange dogs, their making ■ 
 acquaintance, their courtships, the birth of puppies, their 
 blindness, and sometimes untimely death by drowning ; the 
 playing of the puppies with the children of the house, their 
 being reared as members of the family circle, their entering 
 upon the duties of life, their different careers, and the 
 various incidents of each. And what delightful vignettes 
 they often suggest ! Grahame's haymaking dog for instance, 
 or Joanna Baillie's summer-afternoon dog — 
 
 " Silence prevails — 
 Nor low, nor bark, nor chirping bird is heard, 
 The shady nooks the sheep and kine convene ; 
 Within the narrow shadow of the cot 
 The sleepy dog lies stretched upon his side, 
 Nor heeds the footsteps of the passer-by, 
 Or at the sound but raises half an eyelid, 
 Then gives a feeble growl and sleeps again, 
 While puss composed and grave on threshold stone 
 Sits winking in the light." 
 
 And Jean Ingelow's delightful sketch of the fisherman's 
 puppies — 
 
 " The village clogs and ours, elate and brave, 
 Lay looking over, barking at the fish ; 
 
Beasts. 
 
 ic the bait, 
 And when the ■ .i floundered on the i 
 
 ~-jtis misery, a bd 
 
 jp would deal, then back away, 
 them with sagacious d 
 
 slippery th 
 
 I play or at war, s: era bone, quarrelling over 
 
 a piece of meat, crouching under the lash, barking at pass- 
 ing beggars, barking at nothing, asleep, awaking, awake, 
 the grass or dus: ".rinking, chasing cats, 
 
 ng cats, annoyed by flies, wistful, honest, 
 _wning: big dogs beset by little ones, 
 js" hour. .egree; the poor man's 
 
 '. man's dog, the poacher's dog, the mad dog ; 
 — in each and all these phases we find the dog in pot 
 
 mood of temper, no circumstance of life 
 
 which, in one poet or another, the animal 
 
 does not figure, from the | :nd to the dog 
 
 .d — 
 
 ! ?lung 
 
 ilesh obscene of 
 est of cock purlo::. 
 From his accustomed per 
 
 : f all terms of reproach, the whole world over, and 
 
 from time immemorial, none is comparable in frequency of 
 
 provocative potentialities on the individual 
 
 abused, to the name of our best friend. "Treacherous, 
 
 and so forth, could be multiplied 
 
 I Dm the poets if there were any need to go 
 
 :.ce to the ignominy of the name. 
 
 Sper Book vi. c. vi. $$) the phrase 
 
 ._ and in I -tanza "cowheard 
 
 fear-; [n stanza a r, we find "craven cowherd 
 
 in u cowardize doth delight." These spellings 
 
 occur in Johnson's edition, and, though I have not met 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 3 1 3 
 
 with it, I make no doubt commentators have elucidated 
 this complexity of etymology. 
 
 Even more curious, perhaps, is it that the hound, held in 
 such special honour, should if possible suggest an aggrava- 
 tion of the dog reproach. All over the world, in every 
 language from the far East to the far West, among savages 
 of all countries and from the earliest days to the present 
 time, " dog " is the supreme epithet of scorn. Whenever 
 a European goes among an unfriendly population he is a 
 "dog of an infidel," "a Christian dog;" and the worst 
 that savages can say of him is that he "eats dog's meat." 
 and has "dog's teeth." But for us, who have evolved the 
 hound from the dog, the former stands a point in contempt 
 below even the latter. 
 
 In the same spirit the canine element in a composite 
 monster horribly enhances its deformity. How abominable 
 the Scylla form always is — 
 
 " Thereto the body of a dog she had, 
 Full of fell ravin and fierce greedinesse." 
 
 " Cur " is in poetry a genus which includes many specific 
 varieties— " mongrel of low degree," "bob-tailed tyke," 
 "trundle-tail," "curtail dog," and so forth. It has long 
 been in use as a term of reproach ; and in this sense the 
 poets always use it. Thus Wyati's " curs do fall by kind 
 on him that hath the overthrow," and Herbert's "babbling 
 curs never want sore ears." And King's 
 
 " Cur of shabby race, 
 The first by wand'ring beggars fedj; 
 His sire, advanced, turned spit for bread, 
 Himself each trust had still abused, 
 To steal what he should guard was used 
 From puppy ; known where'er he came, 
 Both vile and base, and void of shame." 
 
 In the same way " puppy " and, with less reason perhaps 
 
314 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 "whelp." '• A fierce Hibernian whelp" is, in Hurdis, 
 curiously enough, a metaphor for a Scotchman, and " wanton 
 whelp that loves to gnaw," in Davenant for disease. Now, 
 seeing that man has given the young of a dog its name, 
 it is an illustration of human unfairness to arbitrarily attach 
 to the word any disagreeable significance. But whether 
 we call them puppies or whelps the result is much 
 same to the animal. 
 
 Poetical proverbs and metaphors, all harping on the 
 worst points of the dog, are very numerous ; and as curious 
 as any, to my mind, are Watt's well-known lines, " Let dogs 
 delight to bark and bite, for God hath made them so" in 
 which he throws the responsibility for the dog's implacable 
 ferocity upon an inscrutable Providence. " He that lies 
 with the dogs riseth with the fleas" (Herbert); "dog in 
 office, set to bark all beggars from the door " ( Hood) ; " the 
 miserable pack that ever howl against fallen greatness" 
 (Rogers) ; " two-legged dogs still pawing on the peers " 
 (Pitt) ; " he can snap as well as whine " (Pope) ; " in 
 every country dogs bite," and " look not for musk in a 
 dog's kennel " (Herbert) ; M it is an houndes kynde, to 
 bark upon a man behynde " (Gower). Avarice is a dog- 
 madness (Young) ; Russians are "the dogs of Moscow," 
 " Jews the curs of Nazareth " (Byron) ; " Malice is a cursed 
 cur " (Pope). The Furies, like clinging crime, in Shelley, 
 " track all things that weep and bleed and live, as lean 
 dogs pursue through wood and lake some struck and 
 sobbing fawn." Spaniards, in Phineas Fletcher, are "curres 
 whelpt in Spain " — the laws of murder (Mallet) ; the meanly 
 envious, that " ever howl against fallen greatness" (Rogers). 
 Quarles likens the prayers of an unrepentant man to the 
 howling of a dog, and associates dogs and devils in a 
 curious way — 
 
 " Depart like dog?, with devils take your lot, 
 Depart like devils, for I know ye not ; 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 3 1 5 
 
 Like dogs, like devils goe, goe howle and barke, 
 Depart in darknesse, for your deeds were darke." 
 
 But not only, of course, does every mood of the canine 
 character find abundant recognition in our poets, but every 
 variety also of the animal ; above all, each variety of hound 
 used in sport. 
 
 " Trusty household guardians, mastiffs fell 
 Nightly to watch the walls, 
 Stout terriers that in high-hilled Sutherland 
 Beat up the wild cat's lodge or badgers rouse ; 
 And russet bloodhounds, wont near Annand's stream 
 To trace the sly thief with avenging foot, 
 Close as an evil conscience, still at hand : 
 Fleet greyhounds that outrun the fearful hare 
 And many a dog beside the faithful scent 
 To snuff his prey, on eager heel to scour 
 The purple heath and snap the flying game." 1 
 
 Supreme of course as a creature of the chase is the fox, 
 and its correlative, the foxhound, is therefore proportion- 
 ately conspicuous. 
 
 " Of horn and morn and hark and bark, 
 And echo's answering sounds, 
 All poets' wit hath ever writ 
 In doggiel verse of hounds." 
 
 A reasonable quantity of rubbish was only therefore to 
 be expected. But bearing in mind the excessive sympathy 
 of the poets for the birds of sport and their habitual 
 lamentations over pheasants and partridges, the robust tone 
 in which they approve of the doings of foxhounds, beagles, 
 staghounds, otter-hounds, badger-hounds, spaniels, pointers, 
 and the rest, comes upon the student of poetical psychology 
 as a surprise. It would be too much, of course, to say 
 that the general tendency of poets to dislike wild beas:s 
 
 1 Leyden. 
 
3 16 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 influences them in their opinion of the anim:. man 
 
 has taught to kill those quadrupeds; but it really does 
 seem as if the poets' aversion to foxr ::ers, 
 
 badgers, boars, and their indifference to rabbits and hares, 
 made them rather unfairly partial to their de In 
 
 the single case of the deer (for which they have a 
 sincere admiration), there arose an obvious difficulty, which 
 the poets have audaciously met I ith the hounds, 
 
 and weeping with the deer. They " hang on the haunc. 
 of s:. . le tears chase each own the innocent 
 
 noses " of their victims. 
 
 Some poets of the chase, however, have very c 
 opinions as to its morality generally. On the one side are, 
 as examples, Somerville and Gay, on the other Thomson 
 and Cowper. These, being altogether on the side of the 
 
 :ns, hold with the hares. Those, affecting a prodigious 
 indignation against the robbers of hen-roosts and consumers 
 of sprouting wheat, hunt with the hounds. 1 lust 
 
 their satire and denunciation against the hunters. Those 
 against the hunted. And neither are 
 
 :he just middle of sport is an easy one to hit, and 
 the significances of our national pastime are admirable 
 themes for the moralist and poet It is not necessary for 
 poetical fidelity to be either cruel with the one or g 
 the other. It is not more remarkable that foxes should eat 
 
 e than that geese should eat grass, nor more culpable ; 
 and for the men whom England has been most proud of, 
 they are rather those who have ridden straight to hounds 
 with Somerville, not those v. _ th Thomson. 
 
 We can never have too many fox-hunting youths, but a 
 few Cowpers are enough. For myself, all sport has a dark 
 
 in the death of the victim. I eat the lamb 
 equanimity, and "the pullet of tend; .out 
 
 mingling my tears with its sauce. I g ret the death 
 
 ie fox and the otter. My sympathy is with Nature, and 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 3 1 7 
 
 not with the stock-yard. I had rather, if sheep had the speed 
 and pluck of foxes, hunt a sheep than a fox. But the poets' 
 sympathy is with the villatic and the domesticated, not with 
 the independent and the wild. 
 
 One poet at any rate — Somerville — was sportsman first 
 and p'oet afterwards, and his rhymed instructions for the 
 breeding, rearing, and hunting of hounds is an admirable 
 instance of poetical ingenuity applied to an obstinately 
 technical subject. A notice of his poem in some detail 
 will cover all the others on the same subject, and may be 
 accepted, from the unswerving similarity of poetical " hunts," 
 as typical of all ; while by selecting Somerville as the spokes- 
 man I give the other poets the advantage of that knowledge 
 of the subject in which they are so conspicuously deficient. 
 
 He commences by describing the origin of hunting, and 
 the rude manner of the first hunters — 
 
 " Wl en Ximrod bold, 
 That mighty hunter ! first made war on beasts 
 And stained the woodland green with purple dye, 
 New and unpolished was the huntsman's art ; " 
 
 and goes on to state that at first the chase was only a means 
 towards sacrifice, but afterwards a necessity for food, the 
 Creator having added flesh to man's vegetable diet — 
 
 " So just is Heaven 
 To give us in proportion to our wants." 
 
 Then comes a gap from Cain to William the Conqueror, 
 bridged over by the poet only with a passing allusion to 
 "our painted ancestors being slow to learn." But the 
 Conquest arrives, and 
 
 " Victorious William to more decent rules 
 Subdued our Saxon fathers, taught to speak 
 The proper dialect, with horn and voice 
 To cheer the busy hound, whose well-known cry 
 His listening peers approve with joint acclaim. 
 
3 i S The Poets Beasts. 
 
 From him successive huntsmen learned to join 
 In bloody social leagues, the multitudes 
 Dispersed, to size, to sort, train various tribes 
 To rear, feed, hunt, and discipline the pack. 
 Hail, happy Britain ! highly favoured isle, 
 And Heaven's peculiar care ! " 
 
 He then describes in detail the arrangements for the kennel, 
 insisting upon the necessity for perpetual watchfulness, 
 especially when the hounds are at food or at play. 
 
 " Which too often ends 
 In bloody broils and death, 
 
 ... for oft in sport 
 Begun, combat ensues ; growling they snarl, 
 Then on their haunches reared, rampant they seize 
 Each others' throats ; with teeth and claws in gore 
 Besmeared, they wound, they tear, till on the ground 
 Panting, half-dead, the conquered champion lies, 
 Then sudden all the base ignoble crowd 
 Loud clam'ring seize the helpless, worried wretch, 
 And thirsting for his blood, drag difTrent ways 
 His mangled carcass o'er the ensanguined plain. 
 O breasts of pity void ! t'oppress the weak, 
 To point your vengeance at the friendless head, 
 And with one mutual cry insult the fall'n ; 
 Emblem too just of man's degenerate race." 
 
 Directions are then given for the choice of hounds for the 
 different kinds of chase, pointing out the necessity for 
 selecting animals of medium size, and containing the 
 following description of the poet's " perfect " foxhound — 
 
 " See there, with count'nance blithe, 
 And with a courtly grin, the fawning hound 
 Salutes thee cow'ring, his wide-op'ning nose 
 Upward he curls, and his large sloe-black eyes 
 Melt in soft blandishments and humble joy. 
 His glossy skin, or yellow pied, or blue, 
 In lights or shades by Nature's pencil drawn, 
 Reflects the various tints ; his ears and legs, 
 
Some Pods Dogs. 3 1 9 
 
 Flecked here and there, in gay enamelled pride 
 
 Rival the speckled pard ; his rush-grown tail 
 
 O'er his broad back bends in an ample arch : 
 
 On shoulders clean, upright and firm he stands : 
 
 His round cat-foot, straight hams, and wide-spread thighs, 
 
 And his low-dropping chest, confess his speed, 
 
 His strength, his wind, or on the steepy hill 
 
 Or far extended plain ; in ev'ry part 
 
 So well proportioned that the nicer skill 
 
 Of Phidias himself can't blame thy choice ; 
 
 Of such compose the pack. 
 
 But here a mean 
 Observe, nor the large hound prefer. 
 
 For hounds of middle size, active and strong, 
 
 Will better answer all thy various ends 
 
 And crown thy pleasing labours with success." 
 
 For " the amphibious otter " or rt stately stag " he advises 
 
 " The deep-flewed hound, 
 Strong, heavy, slow, but sure ; 
 
 Whose ears down-hanging from his thick round head 
 Shall sweep the morning dew, whose clanging voice 
 Awake the mountain echo in her cell 
 And shake the forests. " 
 
 And then comes a page or two on the " lime-hound " — 
 
 " The bold Talbot kind 
 Of these the prime, as white as Alpine snows, 
 And great their use of old " 
 
 on the Borders to track human culprits, cattle-lifters, and 
 horse-thieves. 
 
 A whole book then follows on the virtues of the beagle 
 and the merits of hare-hunting, but reverting, as antithesis 
 to " so mean a prey," to the sketch of a wild beast hunt in 
 the days of the Great Mogul. Book III. finds us back in 
 England in the days of King Edgar and wolves, and from 
 the wolf the transition is easy to the fox. 
 
320 The Pods Bea 
 
 " Oh ! how glorious 'tis 
 To right th' oppressed, and bring the felor, 
 To jus: disgra : 
 
 And then follows a eulogy of fox-hunting — 
 
 " Heav'ns ! what melodious strains, how beat our he 
 Big with tumultuous joy ! The loaded gales 
 Breathe harmony ; and as the tempe; 
 From wood to wood, thro" every dark rec. 
 The fores: thunders, and the mountains shake. 
 The chorus swells. 
 
 See how they range 
 Dispersed, how busily this way and that 
 v cross, examining wi:h curious nose 
 Each likely ha v. : on the drag I 
 
 Their doubtful notes, preluding to a : 
 More nobly fulL and swelled with ev'ry mouth. 
 
 The gay pack 
 In the rough bristly stubbles range unblamed. 
 No widow's tears o'erflow, no secre: : 
 
 :'zt farmer's breast, which his pale lips 
 Trembling conceal, by his fierce landlord awed ; 
 But courteous now he levels every fence, 
 Joins in the common cry, and halloos loud, 
 Charmed with the rattling thunder of the field." 
 
 The book then proceeds to give instructions for catching 
 foxes in traps, and thence digresses to pitfalls for lions and 
 elephants, with some hints how to hunt leopards with 
 looking-glasses, returning again to England with an account 
 of the royal staghounds out in Windsor Forest, remarkable, 
 apart from the ecstatic narrative of the actual hunt, for an 
 address to the ladies in the field — 
 
 • • How melts my beating heart ! as I behold 
 Each lovely nymph, our island's boast and pride, 
 Their garments looseiy waving in the wind, 
 And all the flush of beautv in their ch« 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 321 
 
 While at their sides their pensive lovers wait, 
 Direct their dubious course, now chilled with fear 
 Solicitous, and now with love inflamed. 
 O grant, indulgent Heaven, no rising storm 
 May darken with black wings this glorious scene. 
 Should some malignant pow'r thus damp our joys 
 Vain were the gloomy cave, such as of old 
 Betrayed to lawless love the Tyrian queen — 
 For Britain's virtuous nymphs are chaste as fair ; " 
 
 and an equally preposterous address to the King, who 
 orders the hounds off the stag when it has been run 
 into — 
 
 " mercy, heavenly born ! sweet attribute ! " 
 
 Book IV. reverts to details of the kennel, the care neces- 
 sary in selecting " the parents of the pack " — 
 
 " The vain babbler shun, 
 Ever loquacious, ever in the wrong ; 
 His foolish offspring shall offend thy ears 
 With false alarms and loud impertinence. 
 Nor less the shifting cur avoid, that breaks 
 Illusive from the pack : to the next hedge 
 Devious he stray?, there ev'ry muse he tries ; 
 If haply then he cross the steaming scent, 
 Away he flies vain-glorious, and exults 
 As of the pack supreme, and in his speed 
 And strength unrivalled. Lo ! cast far behind, 
 His vexed associates pant and lab'ring strain 
 To climb the steep ascent. Soon as they reach 
 Th' insulting boaster, his false courage fails, 
 Behind he lags, doomed to the fatal noose, 
 His master's hate, and scorn of all the field. 
 "What can from such be hoped but a base brood 
 Of coward curs, a frantic, vagrant race ? " 
 
 Counsel is then given for curing sheep- worrying by strap- 
 ping the offender to a ram to be butted into repentance, 
 
 x 
 
322 
 
 and a long dissertation on hydrophobia, elaborately horrible, 
 leads the poem to its conclusion. But 
 
 " One labour yet remains, celestial rr. 
 Another element demands my s 
 
 and a spirited description of an otter-hunt closes "The 
 
 For fairr.: and to strike the balance equally be- 
 
 tween the en:' □ praise and denunciation, Thomson's 
 
 'here (plagiarising as he goes) he condemns 
 the " falsely-cheerful, barbarous game of death," should be 
 read, especially the delightful account of the tipsy fox- 
 hunters up at the Hall — 
 
 " The table floating round 
 And pavement faithless to the fuddled foot ; 
 Thus as they swim in mutual swill, the talk, 
 Vociferous at once from twenty tongues, 
 Reels fast from theme to theme ; from horses, hounds, 
 To church or mistress, politics or g't. 
 In endless mazes, intricate, perplexed. 
 
 e to take up the cumbrous word 
 L:e Before the maudlin ej 
 
 Seen dim and blue, the double tapers dance, 
 •a sliding soft — they drop." 
 
 ; is a counterblast of course to Somer .ort 
 
 repast and temperate,'" to which the grateful farmer in- 
 the avengers of his hen-roosts. Nor less pointed is Thom- 
 son's reproof to ladies in the hunting ground, that com- 
 mences — 
 
 " Let not such horrid joy 
 E'er s'ain the bosom of the Br. 
 
 .; of the chase from the 
 
 _n together, the poems are illustrations of 
 
Some Pods Dogs. 325 
 
 poetical extremes, and of the poetical weakness of false 
 sympathies. 
 
 Metaphors and similes from the chase are very numerous, 
 and the "deep-mouthed," "cannon-mouthed" (Davenant), 
 "chiming," "yelling," "baying" hounds are as industrious 
 and as apt in poetical pursuit and apothegm as in the field. 
 Wordsworth's line — "Keen as a fine-nosed hound, by soul- 
 engrossing instinct driven along " — is one of the many fine 
 metaphors which the subject affords. 
 
 Remembering the lamentations of the poets over the 
 '• wheeling coveys " pursued by " leaden showers," it is 
 remarkable that the " full-eared " pointer and " wise-eyed " 
 setter should be so warmly eulogised. When the wolf eats 
 a sheep, all the sympathy is with the sheep, and when the 
 leopard kills a deer the poets bewail the dead. Yet when 
 the dogs of men hunt and murder a little animal which they 
 are not going to eat, they applaud the dogs. And so, ex- 
 tending this incongruous partiality for human weaknesses 
 a step further, they congratulate the pointer, setter, spaniel, 
 and retriever, upon their success in assisting man to kill. 
 Even Cowper, usually so fierce in his satire and denuncia- 
 tion of sport of all kinds, epitaphises a pointer without a 
 word of disparagement : indeed, after the manner of epitaphs 
 generally, with many compliments on his successful com- 
 plicity in bloodshed — 
 
 " Here lies one who never drew 
 Blood himself, yet many slew ; 
 Gave the gun its aim, and figure 
 Made in field, yet ne'er pulled trigger. 
 Armed men have gladly made 
 Him their guide, and him obeyed ; 
 At his signified desire, 
 Would advance, present, and fire. 
 Stout he was and large of limb, 
 Scores have fled at sight of him, 
 
324 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 And to all this fame he rose 
 Only by following his nose. 
 Neptune was he called ; not he 
 Who controls the boisterous sea, 
 But of happier command, 
 Neptune of the furrowed land ; 
 And, your wonder vain to shorten, 
 Pointer to Sir John Throckmorton/' 
 
 That Gay should applaud ' : the obsequious ranger " is not to 
 be wondered at. 
 
 The staghound — its very name is knightly — is an adjunct 
 of all baronial scenes, of royal sport, of chivalrous society. 
 It is the companion of chiefs and their daughters, a feature 
 of earls' firesides. How Scott delighted in it, its power and 
 grace. His verse is full of staghounds, though sometimes, 
 as in the "Lady of the Lake," he employs bloodhounds of 
 black St. Hubert's breed in pursuit of the antlered quarry. 
 But what an unmitigated bore they are in Ossian, those 
 "grey-bounding dogs," "long-bounding sons of the chase," 
 that are for ever pursuing the everlasting " dun sons of the 
 bounding roe ! " In a score of our poets, conspicuously the 
 older and more robust, the staghound occupies a place of 
 considerable dignity, and not without reason, for it is a 
 noble animal. 
 
 Greyhounds are " gentle " and " graceful " — " a grey- 
 hound's gentle grace" is becoming both in a ship ("the 
 vessel from the land, like a greyhound from the slips, 
 darted forth ") and an elegant woman — so that they are 
 popular with the poets. "A gentleman's greyhound and a 
 salt-box, seek them at the fire." But it is as the pursuer of 
 the hare that it receives most frequent notice ; and, singularly 
 enough, in spite of the poets' usual sympathy with the hare 
 apart from greyhounds, coursing is only here and there 
 considered cruel. Gay, for instance, forgets all his kindness 
 for the hare as soon as the greyhound is after it — 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 325 
 
 " Let thy fleet greyhound urge his flying foe, 
 With what delight the rapid course I view ! 
 How does my eye the circling race pursue ! 
 He snaps deceitful air with empty jaw?, 
 The subtle hare darts swift between his paws. 
 She flies, he stretches ; now with nimble bound 
 Eager he presses on, but overshoots his ground ; 
 She turns, he winds, and soon regains the way, 
 Then tears with gory mouth the screaming prey. "' 
 
 Xor less emphatic than Gay's " delight " at such a scene 
 is Somerville's denunciation of it. Not, be it remembered, 
 from any sympathy with the hare, but because he preferred 
 killing it with harriers — 
 
 " Nor the tim'rous hare 
 O'ermatched destroy, but leave that vile offence 
 To the mean, murdering, coursing crew, intent 
 On blood and spoil. Oh blast their hopes, just Heaven ! " 
 
 The spaniel, as a pet — "household spaniel," "parlour 
 spaniel," " fond spaniel " — is a touch of description which 
 the poets use with excellent effect as completing the 
 domestic scene or rounding off strong family emotions. 
 As the water-spaniel it is utilised as the disturbing element 
 of water-fowl existence, the acid in the mixture that effer- 
 vesces the general tranquillity of life among water-lilies. 
 
 As the ordinary spaniel of bird-shooting, and " skilful to 
 betray " when it is usually " the snuffing spaniel " — its habit 
 of making a point often makes another for the poets. 
 Thus Thomson — 
 
 " In his mid career the spaniel struck 
 Stiff by the tainted gale, with open nose 
 Outstretched and finely sensible, draws full, 
 Fearful and cautious, on the latent prey." 
 
 While Grahame, Hurdis, Pope, and others find the simile 
 of the spaniel that — 
 
326 The Poets Beast*. 
 
 nt struck, 
 With lifted paw, stands stiffened." 
 
 Gay has the cocker, " the roving spy," at the copse side. 
 
 " Cool breathes the morning air, and winter's hand 
 Spreads wide her hoary mantle o'er the land ; 
 Now to the copse thy lesser spaniel take, 
 Teach him to range the ditch and force the brake ; 
 X 1 closest coverts can protect the game. 
 Hark ! the dog opens, take thy certain aim ; 
 The woodcock nutters ; now he wav'ring flies ! 
 The wood resounds : he wheels, he drops, he d 
 
 In character the spaniel appears to be more feminine 
 than other dogs (though Cowley uses it as a simile for 
 death) and proverb has extended the resemblance into a 
 humility that women of spirit will hardly concede, 1 and 
 that is hardly creditable to the spaniel — " like a thorough 
 true-bred spaniel licks, the hand which cuffs him and the 
 foot which kicks " (Churchill). Nor indeed do the poets 
 carry it altogether to the credit of the spaniel that it should 
 be so eager to forgive — " the beaten spaniel's fondness not 
 so strange " as a woman's love that is abused, and that, in 
 spite of abuse, strengthens. " Xo sycophant although of 
 spaniel race," says Cowper of his fop. Its extreme docility, 
 again, affords many a contemptuous simile ; as in Pope, 
 
 " So well-bred spaniels civilly delight 
 
 In mumbling of the game they dare not bite." 
 
 The sea, "spaniel-like with parasitic kiss," laps on the 
 shore. 
 
 The "baying beagle" is a general favourite, in spite of 
 the hare being its victim, and a score of poets are to be 
 found in the meet when puss is the game. To 
 
 1 " A woman, a spaniel, a walnut-tree, 
 
 The more you beat them the better they be." 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 327 
 
 " See the deep-mouthed beagles catch 
 The tainted mazes, and on eager sport 
 Intent, with emulous impatience try 
 Each doubtful trace," 
 
 is one of Armstrong's counsels for " Preserving Health," 
 and Allan Ramsay asks — 
 
 '• What sweeter music wad ye hear 
 Than hounds and beagles crying ? 
 The started hare runs hard wi' fear 
 Upon her speed relying." 
 
 Now and again the poets draw a sad moral from the chase, 
 as Pope, after admiring the beagles on the track, inter- 
 polates in brackets — 
 
 " Beasts, urged by us, their fellow-beasts pursue, 
 And leam of man each other to undo." 
 
 There are "wolf-dogs" in Leyden, Byron, and Words- 
 worth ; and the boar-hound — not a favourite with the 
 poets — being the " dastard curres " of Spenser, the defeated 
 assailants in Venus and Adonis — is a frequent species — 
 
 " Here kennelled in a brake she finds a hound, 
 And asks the weary caitiff for his master, 
 And there another licking of his wound 
 'Gainst venomed sores the only sovereign plaster ; 
 And here she meets another sadly scowling 
 To whom she speaks, and he replies with howling. 
 When he hath ceased his ill-resounding noise, 
 Another flap-mouthed mourner, black and grim, 
 Against the welkin volleys out his voice. 
 Another and another answer him, 
 Clapping their proud tails to the ground below, 
 Shaking their scratched ears, bleeding as they go." 
 
 Bloodhounds, " sure-nosed as fasting tigers " (Davenant) 
 
328 The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 are, not unnaturally perhaps, even less popular with the 
 poets. They never forget the abuse of this animal's terrific 
 instinct — Moore's " precious scent " — of which man has at 
 different periods of history been guilty, and the crime is 
 poetically transferred from the human criminal to his inno- 
 cent instrument. They are gloomily apostrophised as " ban- 
 dogs." The flying slave, 
 
 " 'Midst the shrieks of murder on the wind, 
 Heard the mute bloodhound's death-step close behind," 
 
 and the poets have never ceased to hear it ever since. It 
 is " the sagacious bloodhound " in many poets, but the 
 sagacity is that of the sleuth-hound, " skilled too well in all 
 the murd'ring qualities of hell " (Pomfret). It is " staunch " 
 also, but only in its fearful steadfastness to "the bloody 
 trail." Shelley adds a horror to imprisonment in "the 
 prison bloodhounds huge and grim" that were permitted 
 to become familiar with the convicts whom they might 
 have to track, and they are used as similes for the relent- 
 less whirlwind in Faber, and for famine and pestilence in 
 Shelley. Says Byron, " Kings ! 'tis a great name for blood- 
 hounds," and Shelley, " the bloodhound of Religion's hungry 
 zeal." 
 
 As the "limehound," "creatures whose cold secrecy was 
 meant, by Nature, for a surprise," this animal was at one time 
 in demand on the Cheviot marches for tracking human 
 delinquents — 
 
 " Soon the sagacious brute, his curling tail 
 Flourished in the air, low bending plies around 
 His busy nose, the steaming vapour snuffs 
 Inquisitive, nor leaves one turf untry'd, 
 Till, conscious of the recent stains, his heart 
 Beats quick ; his snuffing nose, his active tail, 
 Attest his joy ; then with deep op'ning mouth 
 That makes the welkin tremble, he proclaims 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 329 
 
 Th' audacious felon : foot by foot he marks 
 His winding way, while all the list'ning crowd 
 Applaud his reas'nings. 
 
 O'er the wat'ry flood, 
 Dry sandy heaths and stony barren hills 
 O'er beaten paths with men and beasts detained, 
 Unerring he pursues, till at the cot 
 Arrived, and seizing by his guilty throat 
 The caitiff vile, redeems the captive prey : 
 So exquisitely delicate his sense." 
 
 Davenant pays them the compliment of saying " Wise, 
 temperate limehounds that proclaim no scent, nor har- 
 b'ring will their mouths in boasting spend," and Spenser 
 and others of the older poets refer to the sleuth-hound with 
 respect. Barry Cornwall's poem on the animal is an en- 
 thusiastic panegyric of "the resolute fond bloodhound." 
 
 The mastiff, strangely enough, arrives at little honour in 
 the poets' company. " Sagacious of his prey," " with eye 
 of fire," says Falconer, and as the opponent of " the salvage 
 bull " it arrives at many compliments. In Chaucer they are 
 a noble figure — 
 
 " About his car there wenten white alauns, 
 Twenty and more, as great as any steer, 
 To hunten at the leon and the deer, 
 And followed him with muzzle fast y'bound." 
 
 But it is "an ill-conditioned carl," "gaunt," and "gruff," 
 has to be taught manners by being kicked in the mouth by 
 donkeys in Wordsworth, and, "growling at the gate," is 
 possessed with a horrible longing to eat beggars in Pope. 
 The sea when rough is, in Hurdis, a furious mastiff — 
 
 " Lo ! as we speak, 
 The wolfish monster kindles into rage. 
 Enormous mastiff, how he gnaws his chain 
 And struggles to be free, fast bound by fate 
 And never to be let loose on man. 
 
330 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Aloud lie bellows, with uplifted paw 
 Dances upreared, menaces the foot 
 Of earth with trembling diffidence protruded. 
 Lo ! the saliva of his deafening tongue 
 Her pebbled instep stains : his rugged coat 
 Is whitened o'er with foam." 
 
 On the whole, it seems to me, a poet's sentiments 
 towards animals generally are very much like those of an 
 average girl. Both prefer little animals, with smooth skins, 
 and, for choice, white. 
 
 In this analogy perhaps is to be found the prevalent 
 fastidiousness with regard to mastiffs. Ladies as a rule do 
 not like them, nor do poets. When they baited bulls they 
 always received a measure of admiration, and in the stouter 
 verse of our older poets " the fell mastiffe " was a frequent 
 simile for furious ferocity. 
 
 " When an eager mastiffe once doth prove 
 The taste of blood of some engored beast, 
 No words may rate, nor rigour him remove 
 From greedy hold of that his bloudy feast." 
 
 " With that all mad and furious he grew 
 Like a fell mastiffe." 
 
 An especial favourite is of course the " officious " sheep- 
 dog, "faithful to teach thy stragglers to return" (Dyer). 
 But just as it is impossible to think of dogs apart from man, 
 so it is very difficult to think of the shepherd-dog apart 
 from sheep. For the pet "colley," so rapidly being degene- 
 rated by town fashion into a cowardly sycophant, is not the 
 typical shepherd-dog. It is becoming a variety by itself, 
 " the colley," and seen in the street recalls no rural sound 
 or sight. Far different is the unkempt muddy dog that 
 may be sometimes seen driving a flock of sheep through 
 the busiest thoroughfares of London. For as a rule the 
 
Some Poets Dogs. 3 3 1 
 
 shepherd's dog is a mongrel — "shaggy and lean and 
 shrewd, with pointed ears and tail cropped short, half 
 lurcher and half cur;" but in Scotland, "there still of 
 genuine breed, the colley, barking shrill-toned" — 
 
 " Indeed, thy Ball is a bold bigge cur 
 And could make a jolly hole in their fur" — 
 
 we meet with the beautiful beast, now so popular as a pet 
 in England, that Burns had before him in his glorious sketch 
 of the " Twa Dogs" — 
 
 " The tither was a ploughman's collie, 
 A rhyming, ranting, roving billie, 
 Wha for his friend and comrade had him, 
 And in his freaks had Luath ca'd him, 
 After some dog in Highland sang, 
 Was made lang syne — Lord knows how lang, 
 He was a gash an' faithfu' tyke, 
 As ever lap a sheugh or dyke. 
 His honest, sonsie, baws'nt face, 
 Aye gat him friends in ilka place ; 
 His breast was white, his towzie back 
 Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black ; 
 His gawcie tail, wi' upward curl, 
 Hung o'er his hurdies wi' a swirl." 
 
 They are part of " the household " of the shepherd — 
 " two brave dogs tried in many a storm made all their 
 household " — and the reapers children lie on the summer's 
 afternoon " curled up with the sheep-dogs asleep." For to 
 him they are veritably his eyes and his ears, and his legs 
 besides. 
 
 •■ Waving his hat, the shepherd from the vale 
 Directs his winding dog the cliffs to scale 
 That, barking busy, 'mid the glittering rocks 
 Hunts, where he points, the intercepted flocks." 
 
 In the house their honesty and discipline raise them 
 
2,j 2 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 almost to the level of human companions. The gilly's wife 
 says, in Wordsworth — 
 
 " This honest sheep-dog's countenance I read, 
 With him can talk, nor blush to waste a word 
 On creatures less intelligent and shrewd." 
 
 Now and again, in order to point the extraordinary 
 depravity of the wolf, the moral tone of the colley is so 
 lowered that it connives with Sir Isegrim to destroy its 
 master's flocks ; and in Mother Hubbard's Tale will be 
 found the deplorable narrative of the demoralised dog that 
 demoralised its master, the " disguised dog that loved 
 blood to spill, and drew the wicked shepherd to his will, 
 so 'twixt them both they not a lambkin left." Nor does 
 Southey hesitate to picture the dog reverting to lupine 
 habits : " The shepherd's dog preyed on the scattered flock, 
 for there was now no hand to feed him." 
 
 The bulldog, "with black mouth," the turnspit, that 
 affords the poets the same moral and similes as the caged 
 squirrel — 
 
 " That climbs the wheel, but all in vain, 
 His own weight brings him down a^ain, 
 And still he's in the self-same place 
 Where at the setting out he was." 
 
 The St. Bernard's dog, "the dog of the Alps," "of grave 
 demeanour, all meekness, gentleness, though large of limb " 
 finds honourable mention, in spite of Eliza Cook's assur- 
 ance that 
 
 " It is not ambition that lca<Is him to danger, 
 
 He toils not for trophy, he seeks not for fame, 
 lie faces all peril and succours the stranger, 
 
 But asks not the wide world to blazon his name," — 
 
 in the verse of Thomson, Rogers, and others. The New- 
 foundland, " the brave diver," in several, notably Burns — 
 
Some Poets Dogs. $33 
 
 " The first I'll name, they ca'cl him Caesar, 
 Was keepit for his honour's pleasure : 
 His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs, 
 Showed he was nane o' Scotland's dogs, 
 But whalpit some place far abroad, 
 Where sailors gang to fish for cod. 
 His lockit, lettered, braw brass collar, 
 Showed him the gentleman and scholar. 
 But though he was o' high degree, 
 The fient a pride, nae pride had he ; 
 But wad hae spent an hour caressin' 
 E'en \\V a tinkler-gipsy's messin : 
 At kirk or market, mill or smiddie, 
 Nae tauted tyke, though e'er sae duddie, 
 But he wad stan't as glad to see him, 
 And stroaned on stanes an' hillocks wi' him." 
 
 The "wiry terrier rough and grim," used "to hunt the 
 tod;" the "fierce otter-hounds," are all duly immortalised. 
 
 "•Would you preserve a num'rous finny race? 
 I,et your fierce dogs the rav'nous otter chase ; 
 Th' amphibious monster ranges all the shores, 
 Darts thro' the waves, and ev'ry haunt explores, 
 Or let the gin his roving steps betray, 
 And save from hostile jaws the scaly prey." 
 
 Poets, by the way, are unanimous in their dislike of 
 otters, which I attribute to the same reason as so many 
 other antipathies — a false sentiment. The " hairy," " fierce " 
 otter devours the "silver," "innocent " fishes ; therefore the 
 otter should be detested and, if possible, murdered. 
 
 No village is complete without its " honest watch-dog," 
 whose "deep-mouthed welcome" sweetens return. Joanna 
 Baillie and Clare compliment it excellently. Thomson, 
 too, has a delightful scrap — 
 
 " In a corner of the buzzing shade, 
 The house-dog with the vacant greyhound lies, 
 Out-stretched and sleepy. In his slumbers one 
 Attacks the nightly thief, and one exults 
 
334 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 O'er hill and dale ; till, wakened by the wasp, 
 They starting snap." 
 
 The poor man's dog, that shares the proverbial crust 
 with its master; the blind man's dog, which alone of all 
 their kind other dogs respect ; the dancing dog — all these, 
 and others, find their poets. How too can I omit Gold- 
 smith's mad dog. 
 
 " And in that town a dog was found, 
 
 As many dogs there be, 
 Bo:h mongrel, puppy, whelp and hound 
 
 And curs of low degree. 
 This dog and man at first were friends ; 
 
 But when a pique began, 
 The dog, to gain his private ends, 
 
 Went mad, and bit the man." 
 
 Of the individual animals known to fame the list that our 
 poets immortalise is very long. 
 
 Lufra, Cavall, " King Arthur's hound of deepest-mouth," 
 Luath, Beth-gelert, Berezillo (who drew the full allowance 
 of a soldier in the Spanish army), Bran, Herod, Tray, Fop, 
 Beau, Blanch, Sweetheart, " St. Hubert's breed ; " His High- 
 ness' dog at Kew — the hounds of Actaeon " that knew him 
 naught," 
 
 " Those mistaken hounns of yore, 
 
 That for the stag their master tore — 
 
 and of Adonis and Diana, " this goddess on an hart full 
 high sate, withsmall hounds all about her feet" (Chaucer) ; 
 Geryon and Cerberus ; Malaias dog ; the dogs of Lazarus, 
 of Tobit, as in Quarles — 
 
 " What luck ha- T what grace ! what glory ! 
 
 Thus to be kennelled in eternal story ! 
 Until th' Apocrypha and Scripture sever 
 The mem"ry of Tobii's dog shall live for ever " — 
 
 and of Jezred, an interminable series. 
 
Some Poets' Dogs. 335 
 
 In addition to all these more familiar species and 
 individuals, the poets have many others not so well known 
 to sport or science. Gower has a "wood-hound" that is 
 of a benign character. Rogers, Shelley, and others have 
 a "dog of carnage," and others a "carrion-hound."" A 
 "hell-hound" also is to be found occasionally in their 
 kennels — 
 
 ;< Behold where Melecan, a dog in fierceness, 
 The savage dog of heil, 
 Darts growling to his prey ; 
 He flies and he returns 
 All covered and all drenched with human gore." 
 
 Superstitions about dogs are very numerous — "females 
 with tormenting spells, consult their dogs as oracles " 
 (Montgomery) — and none more widely spread than that 
 which supposes dogs to be able to see visitors from another 
 world — 
 
 " His noble hound sprang from his lair, 
 
 The midnight rouse to greet, 
 Then, like a timid trembling hare, 
 
 Crouched at his master's feet. 
 Between his legs his drooping tail, 
 
 Like dog of vulgar race, 
 He hid, and with strange piteous wail 
 
 Looked in his master's face"' {Joanna Baillie) — 
 
 and that their howling, which is therefore ominous, "making 
 men deem some mischief is at hand," is caused by these 
 supernatural visions. " Ossian's grey dogs are always howl- 
 ing at home ; they see his passing ghost." So in Kirke 
 White, "filled with fear, the howling dogs bespoke unho'.y 
 spirits near;" and "disturbed by dreams, with wild affright, 
 the deep-mouthed mastiff bays the troubled night ; " in 
 Joanna Baillie's "Ghost of Faden," and in "The Elder 
 Tree," where 
 
336 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 " Cowering hounds the board beneath 
 Are howling with piteous moan ; 
 While lords and dames sit still as death, 
 And words are uttered none ; " 
 
 frequently in Scott, as — 
 
 " Sudden the hounds erect their ears, 
 
 And sudden cease their moaning howl ; 
 
 Close pressed to Moy, they mark their fears 
 
 By shivering limbs and stifled growl ; " 
 
 and regularly in every poet who, wanting a rhyme to owl — 
 and wolves failing — or a sound of dread to complete a 
 scene of general eeriness, 
 
 " Hears upon the mountain forest's brow 
 The death-dog howling loud and long." 
 
XIV. 
 
 SOME POETS' CATS. 
 
 •' A familiar bea=t to man, and signifies love." 
 
 — M. IV. of IF. 
 
 Just as the dog is the poetical reg^ter of the out-of-door 
 life of man, the index of the pleasures and occupations of 
 the open air, the " power," so to speak, of the human 
 quantity, so the cat, in its differing moods and aspects, ex- 
 presses the various [liases of domestic life, and stands for 
 the symbol of the alternations of existence within doors. 
 
 The Chinese, so I have read, take their time from cats' 
 eyes. So the history of the family inside the house might 
 be hieroglyphically written in a series of cats. 
 
 On the garden-wall, soliloquising at the top of its voice, 
 it means the household abed ; on the doorstep, with a too- 
 much-whisky-overnight expression of face, it denotes the 
 hour when the milkman and the sweep, like larks, " lead on 
 the merry hours and rouse the day;" before the kitchen 
 fire, blinking at the kettle, it signifies breakfast ; rubbing 
 itself, all on the slant, against the cook's petticoats, we know 
 that it is the hour of noon — of scraps from the early 
 dinner ; asleep on the hearth all the afternoon, it wakes up 
 with a start when the jack cracks under the twirling joint 
 for the later meal ; the children's tea-hour finds it in the 
 nursery ; as evening closes in it sits before the fire musing — 
 " Shall I go to the club ? or what shall I do with myself 
 
 v 
 
33$ The Poets' Beasts. 
 
 to-night ?"' — and then comes darkness, and the cat is in the 
 garden or on the pantiles, sitting in moonstruck reverie or 
 sharing a most melancholy dialogue — 
 
 " Or making gallantry in gutter- 1 
 And sporting in delightful faggot-pi". 
 Or bolting out of bushes in the dark 
 (As ladies use at midnight in the park), 
 Or seeking in tall garrets and alcove 
 For assignations with affairs of love.'"—." 
 
 Dejected or elated, morose or amiable, distant or familiar, 
 acrimonious or conciliatory, alarmed or tranquil, dreadfully 
 awake or fast asleep — in a score of other tempers and 
 states of mind — puss reflects a corresponding variation" in 
 the domestic barometer. It is the indicator of the fluctua- 
 tions of family emotions, and apparently without sponta: 
 in its moods, without independence in its actions. Its 
 existence would seem to be wholly relative and m. _ 
 It lives within the influence of perpetual attractions. The 
 joint roasting at the fire draws it to the hearth with just 
 the same mechanical regularity as the voice of the t 
 meat-man does to the garden-gate. These are natural forces 
 which it seems powerless to resist 
 
 ■ how is it that this little creature — the incarnation 
 of evasive vagrancy, one of the most hopeless of Bohemians, 
 as restless as the tides, and as fickle as the breeze, the 
 ancient symbol of the goddess of Liberty, whose amiabilities 
 are nearly all self-indulgence, and gratitudes self-inter^ — 
 has come to be regarded as the type of domesticity and 
 symbol of the hearth, where " the little Lares keep their 
 round?" 
 
 out like a 
 ide senge the cattes skin, 
 Than wol the cat wei dwe'.ien in hire inn : 
 And if the cattes skin be sk-ke and g 
 ■ wol nat dwellen in hous half a db 
 ol," 
 
Some Poets' Cats. 539 
 
 to "show her fur and be caterwauled," as Pope has it in his 
 translation of the '• Wif of Bathe's Prologue. 
 
 The kitten's position in the household is easier to under- 
 stand. It is one of the most beautiful and amusing of pets. 
 The man who could watch kittens' "gambolling excessive," 
 as Hurdis calls it, and not laugh, must have had a death- 
 rattle as his only plaything when a baby. Richelieu and 
 Colbert delighted in cats' company. Wriothesley's pet 
 found him out in prison, and was his solace. Mahomet, 
 rather than disturb his cat, which was asleep on it, cut off 
 the skirt of his robe. Pope Gregory made his cat a cardinal. 
 How Gautier liked them. Do you remember Zizi (which 
 means "too beautiful for anything") that had a nose like a 
 truffle and adored books ? or that otjier which had a resem- 
 blance to a tiger, which he found, he says, " very pleasing ; " 
 the cat that saw the parrot and said, "This is decidedly 
 — yes it is — a green chicken ! " 
 
 Xot only is their unconscious absurdity immense, but 
 they have a deliberate appreciation of humour. They 
 know exactly when they are being played with and when 
 teased — Montaigne "playing with his cat, complains she 
 thought him but an ass." 
 
 " Ye who can smile — to wisdom no disgrace 
 At the arch meaning of a kitten's face," 
 
 must remember many a time and oft when the small thing, 
 with its elegant overtures to a frolic, has tempted you into 
 joining it in a fit of nonsense. And how it acted all the 
 time, the fluffy little impostor ! What an enthusiasm it 
 obviously feigned for the trailing worsted, what desperate 
 struggles it made believe to have with a tassel, how it 
 pranced and cavorted, standing ridiculously on two legs 
 and skipping sideways ! With what matchless art did it 
 not pretend to get itself into inextricable difficulties with a 
 chair leg, in order to show off a hundred pretty devices of 
 
340 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Uing with its paws, and then in an instant how it was 
 up and off, with its tail all crooked, its ears anyhow, and an 
 absurd affectation of being scared ! Or, when two are 
 together and one is lazy, with what adroitness will the other 
 beguile its companion into a romp, gradually coaxing it on 
 :~ in an equal frenzy of light-heartedness with itself. 
 
 " What intenseness of desire 
 In her upward eye of fire ! 
 With a tiger-leap half-way 
 
 ;he meets the c ming prey, 
 Lets it go as fast, and then 
 Has it in her power again : 
 Now she works with three or four 
 Like an Indian conjurer ; 
 Quick as he in feats of art, 
 Far beyond in joy of heart. 
 Were her antics played in the c 
 Of a thousand stande: 
 Clapping hands with shout and - 
 What would little tabby care 
 For the plaudits of the crowd ? 
 Over happy to be proud." 
 
 No wonder children love them so. Their faces are as 
 sweetly innocent as their own. Is it possible that these 
 winning little fluffinesses could ever descend to the surrepti- 
 tious consumption of the family canary ? or that such guile- 
 less faces could ever be stained with the purloined bloater? 
 Their delightful little cosy bodies seem made for a baby's 
 cuddling. Their natures are curiously alike. A kitten will 
 seldom take offence at what a little child does to it — and the 
 outrageous liberties taken with pussy are sometimes dreadful 
 to contemplate. I have seen a small boy go through a 
 meal with a kitten held in bagpipe fashion under his arm ; 
 and the poor animal stayed there with a half-squeezed look on 
 its face that was infinitely pathetic, but made no complaint, 
 lis confidence in the child carried it through the ordeal. 
 
Some Poets' Cats. 341 
 
 It knew lie would not do it if it was not all right. And so 
 it was ; for by-and-by the boy got the kitten and a saucer 
 of milk together, and, though there was a good deal 
 of unnecessary bobbing of its nose into the milk, the 
 kitten took it all as meant in kindness, and, when it had 
 had its face dried on a pinafore, was ready for another 
 romp. 
 
 But they can scratch when they are put out, as Joanna 
 Baillie's fat Tommy found — 
 
 " He did her hinder parts assail, 
 And pinched and pulled the kitten's tail. 
 On this her sudden anger rose, 
 She turned and straightway scratched his nose." 
 
 But it is of course the good-humoured and playful kitten 
 that chiefly attracts the poets. Many such are to be found 
 gamboling in verse : Wordsworth's yellow one, playing with 
 the falling leaves — 
 
 "Over-wealthy in the treasure 
 Of her own exceeding pleasure ; " 
 
 Gray's tortoiseshell tabby, " the pensive Selina," that got 
 drowned trying to catch gold-fish — 
 
 " Malignant Fate sate by and smiled, 
 The slipp'ry verge her feet beguiled — 
 She tumbled headlong in. 
 Eight times emerging from the flood, 
 She mewed to every wat'ry god 
 Some speedy aid to send. 
 No dolphin came, no Nereid stirred, 
 Nor cruel Tom nor Susan heard — 
 A fav'rite has no friend ! 
 From hence, ye beauties undeeeived, 
 Know one false step is ne'er retrieved, 
 And he with caution bold. 
 Not all that tempts your wand'ring eyes 
 And heedless hearts is lawful prize — 
 Nor all that glitters gold ; " 
 
342 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 :ittens of Cowper that found the snake in the garden, 
 and Hurdis, "cuffing the suspended cork," of Blomfield and 
 Gay, and a score of others who delight in "the instinct joy 
 of kittens," and " the kitling ever happy." By-and-by, and 
 all too soon, they grow into cats. 
 
 "And so, poor kit ! must thou endure, 
 "\V;.en thou becomest a cat demure, 
 Full many a cuff and angry word, 
 Chased roughly from the tempting board. 
 But yet, for that thou hast, I ween, 
 So oft our favoured playmate been, 
 
 e the change which thou shalt prove ! 
 en lime hath spoiled thee of our love, 
 e thou deemed by housewife fat, 
 A comely, careful, mousing cat ; 
 Whose dish is, for the public good, 
 lenished oft with savoury food. 
 :, when thy span of life is past, 
 Be thou to pond or dung-hill cast ; 
 But, gently borne on gardener's spade, 
 Beneath the decent sod be laid ; 
 And children show, with glistening eyes, 
 The place where p<jor old pussy lies. " 
 
 In connection with the adage that the cat has nine lives 
 — found very useful, by the way. in verse — a very delightful 
 instance of what Bain would call eccentric ratiocination 
 occurs in Barry Cornwall. The line is this — 
 
 " One bite of a mad cat — no more than would kill a tailor.'' 
 
 The relation here of a nine-lived cat (each cat being really, 
 therefore, only a ninth of one) to a tailor who, they say, is 
 only the ninth of a man, is, it seems to me, most humor- 
 ously involved. 
 
 For myself, I discredit the theory of sartorial fractions, 
 and hold with the poet (Taylor) who says — 
 
 "Some foolish knave, I think, it first began 
 The slander that three tailors make one man." 
 
Some Poets' Cats. 343 
 
 I always feel inclined to retort upon it with the other adage 
 that " 'tis the tailor makes the man; " so in " King Lear" — 
 
 "A tailor makes a man ? Ay, a tailor, sir ; " 
 
 and hesitate to contribute my acquiescence in the circuitous 
 arithmetic of the playwright who makes a character, on 
 meeting eighteen tailors, cry out to them all, " Come on, 
 I'll fight you both." The inadequate championship of 
 Teufelsdrock does not satisfy me. He goes not far enough. 
 I remember well enough what Petruchio says to his 
 tailor — 
 
 " O monstrous arrogance ! Thou liest, 
 
 Thou thread, thou thimble, 
 
 Thou yard, three-quarters, half 
 
 Yard, quarter, nail, 
 
 Thou flea, thou nit, thou winter-cricket, thou, 
 
 Away, thou rag, thou quantity, thou remnant ! " 
 
 and do not forget Montaigne's evidence. " I have," he 
 says, " an honest lad to my taylor, who I never knew guilty 
 of one truth — no, not when it had been to his advantage 
 not to lye." 
 
 But I remember also how Master Feeble, "the forcible 
 Feeble," proved himself the best man of all Falstaffs 
 recruits j with what discretion Robin Starveling played the 
 part of Thisbe's mother before the Duke ; and carry it to 
 their credit the public spirit of those stitchers of Tooley 
 Street. 
 
 " Give the gods a thankful sacrifice. When it pleaseth 
 their deities to take the wife of a man from him, it shows 
 to man the tailors of the earth." 
 
 I have no wish to rehabilitate Urquiza of Paita, nor 
 apologise for the tailor who pricked the elephant's trunk 
 with his needle and got squirted with a puddle by Behemoth 
 for doing so — except to say that I think the elephant was 
 an ill-mannered beast to go thrusting several feet of trunk 
 
344 
 
 into a tailor's shop. Nor do I ask to have that nur 
 rhyme abolished which makes the tailors go forth to atl 
 a snail, but retire defeated on seeing her horns. 
 
 Yet, when I think of all the valiant tailors of St 
 hesitate to believe that four-ar.d twenty of the trade sh 
 have been panic-stricken at the spectacle of an enra 
 snail. What shall we say of that Snip of Basie who kissed 
 the dragon-princess? It is true that, the worst accom- 
 plished, he turned and fled, leaving his victory incom: 
 Not so much, perhaps, as a Hercules or a Sir Gawain would 
 have done ; yet how many heroes had failed before 
 tailor succeeded ! Then, again, there was that other who 
 passed the night with a bear, and won the prince 
 other who slew seven at a blow, and lived himself to be a 
 king ; that brave journeyman whom De Quincey has n 
 immortal for his courage. In many other ways they have 
 been distinguished, these knights of the needle, from the 
 father of Thumbling to that tailor of Yarrow who beat Mr. 
 Tickler hollow at backgammon. Who was it charitably 
 mended the bean, and who that sewed up the ship that 
 smashed on the rocks? Oriental story is full of tailors of 
 consequence. Remember that one who befriended Prince 
 Amgiad when he fell among the fire-worshippers, and him 
 that took in the poor hunchback who choked with a fish- 
 bone. Was not Aladdin himself the sen of Mustapha the 
 tailor ? — and a right good father he was, dying at last out 
 of sheer grief at Aladdin's scapegrace ways. In I 
 Mosque at Mecca there is a Tailors' ( 
 
 But there is no need to accumulate such testimonies to 
 the worth of the cross-legged craft — and not more use. For 
 it has got into our system — into the British Constitution, 
 in fact — that it takes nine tailors to make one man, and 
 the equation will never probably be abandor. _ 
 this digression let me return to Barry Cornwall and his mad 
 cat and its nine liv 
 
Some Pods Ca/s. 5^5 
 
 " Cats there lay, divers had been flayed and roasted, 
 And after mouldy grown were toasted ; 
 Then, selling not, a dish was ta'en to mince them, 
 But still it seemed, the rankness did convince 'em, 
 For here they w;.re thrown in with the melted pe\v:er, 
 Yet drowned they not ; they had five lives in future." 
 
 la every town a constant proportion of vagabond 
 
 cats that have no homes : and what house is there that has 
 not at one time or another mysteriously lost its cat? Now, 
 is there no connection between these two phenomena ? For 
 myself, I cannot help thinking that the "lost" cats are 
 merely animals that, " to serve some private ends," have 
 deliberately gone elsewhere. The gipsy instinct has over- 
 taken them, and they have decamped in quest of adventure, 
 and on the chance of "bettering" themselves. Some of 
 them, perhaps, go away to die — for is it not a curious fact 
 that so few of these pets ever die at home? But the 
 majority simply disappear. The children are told pussy 
 has "run away." By-and-by another cat comes; that is 
 to say, it installs itself. No one probably invited it, but, as 
 it was mewing very much, the hall door or the kitchen door 
 was opened, and it was allowed to come in, on approbation. 
 But the small stranger made itself at home at once, 
 rubbed against the cook's petticoats — cats have an extra- 
 ordinary instinct for cooks — and sat down in the very 
 lie of the hearth opposite the fire, and there it re- 
 
 vxl. 
 
 here was no other cat in the house, it was taken on. 
 
 . it must have come from somewhere, as certainly as 
 
 its predecessor went somewhere ; so that perhaps there is a 
 
 perpetual exchanging of cats going on. Everybody gets 
 
 everybody else's in turn. 
 
 This mysterious but periodical disappearance of the 
 household pets finds, however, an explanation in the popular 
 tradition that every cat has to spend one life out of its nine 
 
3 4 ^ The Poets Beasts. 
 
 as a witch. The time comes when Death beckons to 
 Grimalkin, and, whatever she is doing, she has to obey. 
 it be for the ninth, and fatal time, there are no 
 cor] r the decease, no dead cat lying 
 
 in the garden, or on the outhouse roof, or wherever it may 
 have been that the dread summons reached her. On each of 
 the eight occasions the cat that had been simply vanished 
 from the earth, and in the same instant reappeared in a 
 new avatar. Tai (day* she is black to-day. But 
 
 the supreme moment arrives at last. The ninth messen- 
 
 is at the door. The cat, conscious of coming change, 
 sits before the fire, looking into the heart of the blaze, and 
 lost u ght A voice she dare not refuse to hear calls 
 
 her away from the comfortable hearth, and she goes, pen- 
 sively, out into the dark night. The wind blows shrill, the 
 clouds are driving fast. She would like to go back to the 
 fire and the cook. But something she may not resist draws 
 her onward, farther into the garden, deeper into the gloom, 
 bushes round her hide the lights of the house. In the 
 
 ..nee she hears the caterwauling of familiar voices. 
 And while she sits, shivering, wondering, waiting, lo ! it 
 all happens, and Grimalkin suddenly finds herself whisked 
 off up into the sky. A long cloak streams backwards from 
 her shoulders. A broomstick is between her legs. She is 
 a witch. 
 
 ral poets refer to her as a thing of " venomed spite 
 and cruel scratch," "from a witch transformed." So in 
 Southey's u Witch " — 
 
 ' ; 'What makes her sit there moping by herself, 
 h no soul near her but that great black 
 And do but look at her ! " 
 
 and in Herrick's " Hag ' — 
 
 • I a Jirty hair trace 
 n a brace 
 
Some Poets' Cats. $\J 
 
 Of black boar-cats to attend her, 
 Who scratch at the moon 
 And threaten at noon 
 Of night from heaven to rend her." 
 
 " Old Grimalkin's glaring eyes," so often a terror to " wee 
 sleekit cowerin"' mice, are thus at times uncanny for human 
 beings. Envy, " spitting spite," is symbolised as a cat. 
 
 Not that the familiar of the " wise woman " seems to 
 take any very active part in her unkind performances. Her 
 function appears to be that of a tacit accomplice — one who 
 looks on at the wickednesses of the Black Art without 
 actually putting her hand to any particular villainy. She 
 is the sleeping partner of the confederacy. Sometimes, 
 indeed — as in the story where the witch's cat is grateful 
 to the good girl who has given it some ham to eat— the 
 dabbler in occult science is even beneficent. 
 
 In Sicily — where the animal is sacred to St. Martha 
 — the cats that walk on the pantiles in the month of 
 February are supposed to be witches, and as such con- 
 sidered worthy of death. Somewhat analogous is our own 
 " March cat," which combines with the eccentricity of the 
 " March hare " a suspicion of necromantic leanings and 
 diabolic conspiracy. 
 
 Relativity, thy name is Cat. It is not easy to imagine 
 Grimalkin in a vacuum, isolated, alone in space. As easy 
 to think of matter without giving it form as to conceive 
 puss without either a hearth, a mouse, or a dog. 
 
 " Not such thy spirit when insulted, puss, » 
 
 Scampers the garden path, and climbs alert 
 The high espalier, there to dwell and swear, 
 Or, in close corner pent, upheaves her coat, 
 And blust'ring cuffs thee with vindictive claw." 
 
 "Dire foe of mouse," "Grimalkin to domestic vermin 
 sworn an everlasting foe." Such are the usual "connota- 
 tions," if I may use the word, of the cat in verse. She 
 
34S The Pods' Beasts. 
 
 is the "mouse-eater," and because the poets, who dislike 
 mice, applaud her taste, becomes the "harmless necessary 
 cat'' 
 
 It is a curious fact, however, that classic legend makes 
 this animal the protector of the innocent : that in Hindoo 
 mythology she is sometimes the ally of little birds, and that 
 in monkish tradition St Gertrude, a funereal saint, who is 
 the patroness of mice, is also the protector of cats. More- 
 . puss, in occasional myths, is the crony of the dog, and 
 figures as the protector of poultry from the fox, of lambs 
 from wol. - 
 
 On the other hand, " the vermin-hunter n is a much 
 more frequent character. " By the austerity which it prac- 
 : on the banks of the Ganges it inspires confidence 
 in the birds, who gather round it to pay reverence to its 
 sanctity. The mice imitate their example, and place them- 
 es under the cat's tutorship. The cat of course eats 
 them, and by inducing them to go with it only two or three 
 at a time, grows mysteriously fat for a fakir/' This assump- 
 tion of sanctimoniousness is not an uncommon characteristic 
 of the cat of fable. "II fait le saint, il fait la chattel" 
 The oldest of all myths shows us the cat moon eating 
 the grey mice of twilight That Diana, a lunar divinity, 
 should have taken the feline form is therefore strictly in 
 accordance with the original Aryan fancy ; and so, too, we 
 find Freyya. the Scandinavian Selene, drawn sometimes by 
 a team of cats. 
 
 But it pleases me immensely to remark how this little 
 animal of contradictions and perplexities puzzle mytho- 
 They'mix it up with the lynx and the ichneumon 
 and the mole. These are thieving, hunting, secret animals, 
 and so are distorted into the myth-phrases of night, and the 
 nocturnal forest, and so forth. In the Sanskrit, so we are 
 assured, the same epithet is indiscriminately applied to cat 
 ar.d thief. It is in fact the beast "of three letters." So 
 
Sonic Pods Cats. 349 
 
 also, in Vcdic metaphor, the cat is "the cleanser," the one 
 that washes its face, and also " the hunter ; " as the white 
 cat, the moon, it protects innocent animals; as a black cat, 
 the dark night, it persecutes them. " It is easy," says 
 Gubernatis, " to pass from the Latin mustela to the Sanskrit 
 mushikautakrit." But then Gubernatis can stretch farther 
 with a foot-rule than any other man, and to go from a stoat 
 to a cat because the names happen in Sanskrit and Latin to 
 begin with the same letter of the alphabet (which is all they 
 really do) is to him the most natural transition in the world. 
 Yet if there is one Grimalkin more puzzling than another it 
 is surely " the cat in the bag of proverbs." 
 
 Our mousers, however, seem to have declined deplorably 
 from their old standards of diligence and dexterity. In 
 other respects the type has been immeasurably improved. 
 The size of some of these animals gives promise that before 
 long we shall have cats to rival that Brobdingnagian creature 
 that purred like a dozen stocking-weavers at work and 
 thought Gulliver too small an insect to run after, and carry- 
 ing such a fleece as shall make the shearing of cats an 
 operation of commercial value. In beauty we have Grimal- 
 kins that would have driven Egypt mad with envy ; while 
 for downright wild-beastishness what can we have fiercer- 
 looking than the Russian lynx-like breed ? 
 
 As a rule, people look upon cats as being without variety. 
 They know that these animals catch mice, have evil designs 
 upon cream-jugs and canaries, scratch Baby, and hold melan- 
 choly concerts in the back garden. But beyond these points, 
 common to all the species, the great majority of people have 
 no standards of distinction. It is true that the creatures 
 vary in colour, but somehow, as a rule, we lump them all 
 together into the common or garden cat, and regard them as 
 being of a monotonous sort. Yet there is just as much 
 variety in a Cat-show as among the pippins in a Chiswick 
 " Apple Congress," or the chrysanthemums at the Temple. 
 
OJ 
 
 o T/ic Poets Beasts. 
 
 Some, for instance, are pure wild animals in miniature. 
 One is an undeniable lynx, only half-size, and another a 
 mimic ocelot ; a third imitates the puma, and a fourth is 
 an excellent imitation of a raccoon. In colour of course the 
 . e is very large, from pure whites and blacks to smudged 
 tortoiseshells. Some wear the pelts of rabbit and hare, 
 others the soft blue greys of the lemurs or the silvery fur 
 of the Arctic foxes. They are biotched, and barred, and 
 brindled, "ring-straked, speckled, and spotted," their pat- 
 terned ;kins producing in combination or by accident of posi- 
 tion the most singular results of expression. Indeed, nothing 
 is more surprising than the immense diversity of character 
 which the faces illustrate. Placid dignity and street-boy 
 impudence are caged side by side, and a very little trouble 
 would give an artist the whole series of human types. The 
 cat with a black blotch in the middle of a white counten- 
 ance is obviously a burglar among his kind, and what deeds 
 of midnight violence would be too dreadful for some of 
 those smudged-faced Toms to commit. They seem to 
 have deliberately disguised themselves, as if they were 
 Thugs out on a murderous errand, and peer at you. as from 
 behind a mask, from a confusion of red and tan and black 
 fur like the demon cat of the Japanese. One would almost 
 heshate to leave such a cat alone in a room with one's 
 purse. 
 
 Yet, all the same, in spite of their Merovingian length 
 of disorderly fur, or their furious aspect, in spite too of 
 their surpassing elegance of colour and form, a suspicion 
 widely prevails that the town-cat is abandoning its taste fur 
 mice. 
 
 Daily familiarities with milkmen, the certainty of regular 
 and ample meals, have dulled its appetite for the chase. 
 Though it may not have forgotten that the mouse is tooth- 
 some, it remembers more than it used to do that the mouse 
 is nimble, and very troublesome to catch. An ordinary < at 
 
Some Poets'. Cats. 
 
 03 
 
 will studiously devote a whole day to the circumvention of 
 the lodger's canary rather than spend an hour upon the 
 landlady's rats. A single bullfinch in the drawing-room is 
 worth a wilderness of mice in the pantry. 
 
 *' Let take a cat, foster her wilh milk, 
 And tender flesh, and make her couch of silk, 
 And let her see a mouse go by the wall, 
 Anon she scorneth milk and flesh and all, 
 And every dainty that is in that house, 
 Such appetite hath she to eat the mouse. 
 Lo here hath kind her domination, 
 And appetite o'ercomes discretion.'' 
 
 This may be an allusion to that fable in ^Esop where the 
 youth " falls in love " with a cat, and in a moment of caprice 
 calls upon Venus to change the pretty animal into a pretty 
 woman. The goddess does so. But the happy couple 
 have hardly met before a mouse happens to run by and the 
 bride rushes away in feline pursuit — "and appetite o'er- 
 comes discretion." 
 
 However diligent and habitual mousing may have been 
 a characteristic of cats in Chaucer's time, it may even be 
 true still. But yet there is abundant proof for the accusation 
 that mouse-catching has become for the town-cat a mere 
 pastime, or at best an avocation, a parergon. Just as the 
 town-sparrow now only eats insects by way of dessert, as it 
 were, and never goes among trees except for an occasional 
 picnic, so the cat amuses itself, of a wet afternoon, over the 
 mouse-hole in the cupboard — and as often as not goes to 
 sleep at her post. 
 
 If there be any other just cause of complaint against 
 this pretty little favourite, it is surely its habit of vociferous 
 dialogue during our hours of sleep. "Foul night-waking 
 cats," "clamorous o'er their joys," "who amant miscic ' 
 (Shelley). How heartily the poets hated it. 
 
The Poets Beasts. 
 
 ■• I would rather hear cat-courtship 
 er my bedroom wind a 
 
 is the worst that Sou they can say of odious sounds. Nor 
 is it easy to imagine any disturbance of slumber more exas- 
 perating than the melancholy love-makings of cats when 
 they foregather immoderately on the garden wall and pro- 
 long their woeful canticles into the hours of dawn — the 
 dismal soliloquy uttered 
 
 •• From the depths of a divine despair " 
 
 that by-and-by becomes a gruesome dialogue, in which the 
 two voices rise in unison, from the expression of a profound 
 longing, cavernous and sepulchral, up and up and up 
 through the scale of sharpening grief to the utmost peaks of 
 
 ::sh, and then in a frenzied climax the two hearts break 
 as one in a piercing discord of mutual appeal. 
 
 Is all over? Are the two cats lying dead? Did their 
 
 : hearts burst their little bodies in that last unspeakable 
 moment of tender desr . t a bit of it. Listen. J 
 
 are beginning again, e: -.ere they began before, at 
 
 the "JDe prvfundis" and they will climb up the keys ii 
 
 isely the same abominable crescendo of misery, and when 
 can no longer restrain the pent-up torrent of their tor- 
 tured affections they will mingle their voices in one wild 
 shattering yell of pity for themselves. 
 
 Vet though the householder empties the phials of his 
 wrath — and, if of a choleric soul, also all the movable 
 trifles about the bedroom that may seem to an exasperated 
 imagination suitable for throwing — upon the wretches for 
 their nocturnal ululations, there comes with daylight a 
 milder frame of mind. The tranquil spectacle of pussy 
 snugly curled up in front of the fire routs all suspicions as 
 to its having had any share in the outrageous frolics that 
 broke the s'.umbers of the household, and causes the dis- 
 turbances of over-night to be placed to the discredit of the 
 
Some Poets' Cats. 353 
 
 cat " next door." The truth is, we are all too fond of our 
 cats to continue long in wrath with them. 
 
 Yet in fable and fairy tale they are not treated with the 
 tenderness and consideration one would expect for such a 
 universal favourite, and the poets accept this tendency of 
 folk-lore to laugh at and depreciate Grimalkin. All the 
 cat-poems banter the animal, or place it in a ridiculous 
 light. Besides those already noted, there is Allan Ramsay's 
 fable of the cats and the cheese, of which the monkey ate 
 two-thirds in trying to make an exactly equal division, and 
 kept the other third for his trouble. In the fable of the 
 cat and the fox that reproach the wolf for killing a lamb, 
 and immediately go off and kill a chicken themselves, as 
 also in the stories where the cat is fooled by the mice, made 
 to take the hot nuts off the bars by the ape, and beguiled 
 into the oven by the sparrows, the motive seems always to 
 turn the laugh against puss. 
 
 In Cowper's poem of the "Retired Cat," an excellent 
 illustration is given of the creature's complacent self-assur- 
 ance that everything in a household is specially arranged 
 with relation to its own comforts. She finds the garden 
 draughty, and, searching the house for a convenient couch, 
 "some place of more serene repose," discovers an open 
 drawer half-filled with linen of "the softest kind, such as 
 merchants introduce, from India for the ladies' use," and 
 curls herself up for sleep "lulled by her own humdrum 
 song." By-and-by Susan, "housewifely inclined," comes in 
 and shuts the drawer, " all unconscious whom it held," — 
 pussy taking it for granted that this is done for her greater 
 tranquillity. 
 
 " Was ever cat attended thus? 
 The open drawer was left, I see, 
 Merely to prove a nest for me ; 
 For soon as I was well composed, 
 Then came the maid, and it was closed. 
 
 7. 
 
354 Poets Basts. 
 
 How smooth these kerchiefs, and how swe . 
 Oh what a delicate re: 
 I will resign myself to rest 
 "ec'.ining in 
 . call to supper, when, no doubt, 
 Susan will come and let me out." 
 
 But Susan does nc I :- cat nea: 
 
 . beware of too sublime a sense 
 di own worth and consequence : 
 The man who dreams himself so g 
 And his importance of such we . 
 That all around and . ne 
 
 Must move and act for him alone, 
 Will learn in 9( bulation 
 
 The folly of his expe [ 
 
 Even the fact of their having been worshipped ir. I 
 brings them little credit : it only makes Egyptian worship 
 discreditable — 
 
 '• Cats and dogs, and each obscener beast, 
 To which Egyptian dotards once did bow." 
 
 Or again — 
 
 '• Lang syne in Egypt beasts were gods, 
 Sae : I the men turned t t 
 
 Vermin and brutes, boot house or hold, 
 Had offerings, I 1 their pri. 
 
 And then the poet goes on to say how one day the people 
 of the Nile sacrificed a rat to the great glory c I and 
 
 next day a cat to the great glory of the rat. 
 
 Not thai their worship is means extinct. You 
 
 have only to go to a Cat-show to be assured of the 
 survival of the whimsical homage of Memphis. Bubastis, and 
 Thebes. The old-world dignities of priestly service, temple 
 ceremonial, and posthumous embalming have of course 
 been lost in the lapse of time, but their place has been 
 
Some Poets Cats. 355 
 
 filled by a homage which is certainly more intelligent and 
 scarcely less sincere. The days are long gone by when, to 
 bury a cat, processions of white-robed Egyptians, crowned 
 with convolvulus, acacia, and chrysanthemum, trailed their 
 effigies of water-beast and reptile, and images of dog-headed 
 or hawk-headed gods, with the clashing of cymbals and the 
 singing of the choirs of Isis, down through long aisles 
 of reverent folk, from the Memphian temple-gates to the 
 catacombs under the rocks. 
 
 It is to this day a fetish animal. Indeed, in Siam, a 
 curious variation of the cult obtains. For there, in the 
 land of the White Elephant, there is a royal breed of cats, 
 and, so it is said, it is death for any one to take one beyond 
 the precincts of the palace. The colour of these illustrious 
 Grimalkins is very striking, being something between buff 
 and tan, with ears, nose, and other " points " jet-black. 
 Indeed, with a little trimming here and there, they might 
 easily pass for tolerable pug-dogs. But we need hardly go 
 so far as Bangkok for vestiges of the old worship, for it is 
 obvious to the most casual observer at a Cat-show, from the 
 epithets applied by visitors to the animals under exhibition 
 and the exclamations of pious rapture, that there are plenty 
 of persons of both sexes, who, if they do not actually set puss 
 up on an altar and sacrifice to it with music and incense and 
 temple rites, as was done in the palmy days of the Pharaohs, 
 are sufficiently in love with the species to be enthusiastic in 
 admiration. To hear a fierce old Russian cat described as 
 "adorable," and a snowy Persian apostrophised as " divine," 
 bridges over the interval between the Crystal Palace and 
 the cat temples of Bubastis, and narrows the chasm some- 
 what between Pharaoh-Necho and the cats'-meat man. 
 
 And the modern taxidermist, as well as he can, has taken 
 up the duties of the priests, and where the creatures of the 
 Egyptians' adoration used to be spiced, they are now 
 stuffed. 
 
356 The Poets Beasts. 
 
 Instead of lying swathed in cloths and steeped in 
 aromatic gums within a syenite sarcophagus, Puss stands in 
 the back parlour, and fixes with her glassy eye the new 
 tenant of the hearth-rug, and, from the cold neutrality of 
 wires and wadding, gazes upon the domestic circle of which 
 once /<7/-jt magna fuit. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 The Mystery of Mario Roget. 
 
32 
 
 BOOKS PUBLISHED BY CHATTO & WINDUS. 
 
 Chkai ?:?v:i?. Novel 5 — 
 
 BY E. C. PRICE. 
 VaJentina. 
 
 BY CHARLES READS. 
 It Is Never Too Late to Mend. 
 Hard Cash. 
 Peg WofF.ngton. 
 Christie Johnstone. 
 Griffith Gaunt. 
 Pjt Yourself in His Place, 
 The Double Marriage. 
 Love Me Little, Love Me Long. 
 Foul Play. 
 
 The Cloister and the Hearth. 
 The Course of True Love. 
 Autobiography of a Thief. 
 A Terrible Temptation. 
 The Wandering Heir. 
 A Simpleton. 
 
 : -nan-Hater. 
 Readiana. 
 
 BY MRS. J. H. RIDDELL. 
 Her Mother's Darling. 
 Prince of Wales's Garden Party. 
 
 BY F. W. RGBISSO::. 
 Women are Strange. 
 
 BY BASLE ST. JOB 
 
 A Levantine Family. 
 
 BY GEORGE AUGUSTUS SALA. 
 
 Gaslight and Daylight. 
 
 BYJOHB SAUNDERS. 
 
 Bound to the Wheel. 
 One Against the World. 
 Gj/ Waterman. 
 The Lion in the Path. 
 Two Dreamers. 
 
 BY ARTHUR SKETCHLEY. 
 A Yatch in the Dark. 
 
 BY" T. W. SPEIGHT. 
 The Mysteries of Heron Dyke, 
 
 BY R. A. STERSDALE. 
 The Afghan Knife. 
 
 BY R. LOUIS STEVESSOS. 
 Hew Arabian Nights. 
 
 BY BERTHA THOMAS. 
 C-issida. | Proud Maisie. 
 
 The Violin-Player. 
 
 BY W. UOY THOMAS 
 IF 
 
 Cheap Po?cla2 Novels, anlinueJ-m 
 BY WALTER THORSBURY. 
 
 Tales for the Marines. 
 
 BY T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE. 
 
 Diamond Cut Diamond. 
 
 BY ASTHOSY TROLLOPS. 
 
 The Way V/e Live Now. 
 
 The American Senator. 
 
 Frau Frohmann. 
 
 Marion Fay. 
 
 Kept in the Dark. 
 ByFRAXCES ELEASOR TROLLOPS 
 
 Like Ships upon the Sea. 
 
 BY MARK TWAIN. 
 Tom Sawyer. 
 An Idle Excursion. _c 
 A Pleasure Trip on the Continent 
 
 of Europe. 
 A Tramp Abroad. 
 Ti-.e Stolen White Elephant. 
 
 BY SAR^iH TYTL 
 What She Came Through. 
 The Bride's Pass. 
 
 BY J. S. WIST. 
 Cavalry Life. | Regimental Legend! 
 
 BY LADY WOOD. 
 Sab in a. 
 
 BY BJDMUND YATES. 
 Castaway. | The Forlorn Hope. 
 Land at Last. 
 
 as:: 
 
 Paul Fcrroll. 
 
 Why Paul Ferroll Killed his Wife. 
 
 F:ir :■ :. picbare DOvers, Is. each. 
 Jeff Briggs's Love Story. By Bret 
 
 Haste. 
 The Twins of Table Mountain. By 
 
 Bzet Haste. 
 Mrs. Gainsborough's Diamonds. By 
 
 niAM B 
 Kathleen Mavourneen. By Author 
 
 Ilss o' Lowri: 
 Lindsay's Luck. By the An 
 
 I Liis o' Lc - 
 Pretty Polly Pemberton. 
 
 Author of " That Lass o' Lc 
 Trooping with Crows. By Mrs. 
 
 Pirkis. 
 The Prcfassor's Wife. Ey Li 
 
 GbAEUlM. 
 
 A Double Bond. By LaoA V 
 Esther's Glove. By R. E. FEAxenxoB. 
 The Garden that Paid the Rent. 
 
 "OLD. 
 
 ;. Dcon a>o CO, fjl'stees, 17: SX ;::--..• it:::: : : 
 
NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY 
 
 S02954412 R