Pacific Science – Volume 14 – Page 201
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Some were taken on board our vessels; but it was impossible to domesticate them like our dogs, they were always treacherous, and bit us frequently. … The fourth primary describer of Polynesian dogs during the eighteenth century is Lieutenant King. … Some who consider it a distinctive breed identify it as a descendant of the short-legged pariah dog; others perhaps think only of a line of descendants of …
The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, …
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Treacherous and filthy (Prov. xx vi. 11), his … 8); or “ After whom dost thou Contempt. pursue’? after a dead dog?” (I Sam. xxiv … The dog known to the Hebrews in Biblical times was the so-called pariah dog, the shepherd-dog (Job xxx. 7) being …
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by driblets into their horrified ears might reasonably have been laid at the door of plum pudding, but for the disappearance of the family plate and her own pretty things. The robbery was traced to the malee (gardener), whose bouquets and blandishments the ayah had found irresistible, and to whom she had confided all he wished to know. “I tell the story as ’twas told to me.” by Missee herself, who also adds that such things are of rare occurrence among native servants. And, after all, has not similar domestic treachery been known to happen nearer home than in India?
:k *: * *: *:
A first Christmas Day in the tropics is a fact hard to realize. A bullock dummy—like a small tent on wheels— took us to church at seven o’clock, the dummy driver sitting, in Kanarese fashion, with his whip-hand in midair, continually jerking it threateningly upward, as though the high-humped, cream-colored bullocks had eyes wherewith to see in the backs of their heads. To judge from the utterances which fell from him on this Christmas morning he was not filled with that universal sentiment of peace and good will which the occasion demanded. He cursed strongly in Kanarese, not only the bhyl that were trotting along briskly enough, but their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, even to the third and fourth generations of their female ancestry. I cannot suppose he meant to bring woe upon them any more than he meant to bring down his heavy lash on their glossy hides every time he gave it the threatening jerk. It was merely his method.
And then the church. What an upheaval of all one’s cherished sentiments and memories ! In the place of the
beloved holly and ivy, the little build
ing was a very bower of bougainvillias and bignonia. Instead of furs and plaids, there were pink and white muslin gowns and sun-hats, and in the place of rosy frost-kissed cheeks there were pallid and sun-bleached ones. The crib alone was the outward indication of the great feast. And so we had to look below the surface to find Christmas with all its joys, hopes, and sorrows. The congregation was largely NEw SERIES.—Vol. LXVI., No. 5.
composed of natives, and very pathetic was it to see the Indian women, in tinkling anklets and bangles, and wrapped in their sarees, bring their wondering brown babies to see and kneel before the crib, to learn from it the “sweet story of old,” which it tells year by year in East and West, under sunshine and in snowstorm, to white man and black, to saheb and native.
*k :k *: :: *:
This jungle district of Dharwar is a paradise of sportsmen by reason of its being the home of much game, both big and small. Tigers and panthers are to be found in the thickly wooded hills and valleys which undulate over leagues of the surrounding country. Leopard cats and cheetahs lurk there also, as do hyenas, wolves, and bison. There are savanur, too, and wild dogs —like the pariah dog, but with red, coarse hair and bushy black tails—a “cross” between a pariah and a fox. To go for an early morning drive into the jungle with Madam Saheb is full of thrilling interest. “There,” she will tell you, pointing with her whip to a dense thicket in a sweeping hollow below the ridge along which we are slowly driving, “is the clump of trees in one of which Mrs. A.—the lady whom you heard congratulated in the club on having ‘got a bison’—sat for the greater part of last Tuesday night, with a decoy goat tethered below her, in the hopes of luring within range of her rifle a tiger which had been traced thereabouts.” “And here,” as we cross a railway track, “is where Mr. B., a day or two ago, went to drive what he took to be a large dog off the line, across which it lay sleeping. As he approached, the creature—a panther —got up, stretched itself, and lazily lounged into the jungle grass. Fortunately for him, he was not carrying his un.”
With these and such-like anecdotes she intersperses her conversation, while patient old Buddha in the back seat holds aloft, with an untiring arm, an immense white umbrella between us and sunstroke. And so, under shadowing pepul and baubul trees, among the boughs of which generations of the monkey people sit sorrowfully contemplative, we make our way home by the
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ghaum, or native town. Exquisitely knit, bottle-shaped nests, that weaver birds of last year have left, hang from the pendulous branches of the acacias; and the little pert black and yellow chitmucks, or palm squirrels, are everywhere in evidence. Bulbuls are already beginning to warble their spring lovesong, and a lark-rare and sweet—is finishing his morning lay before the sun becomes too fierce even for him. Herds of buffaloes, showing only the tips of their long, vulgar noses above the water’s surface, are soaking themselves in the blue lake, where, after the manner of their kind, they would remain for hours; and cream-colored, high-humped kine, with tall, backward-sloping horns, are being watered at its brink. As we pass through the gate of the old fort the aspect changes suddenly and completely. A vista opens of long, tortuous, narrow streets of squalid houses and dirty bazaars from whence comes—though it will be well to ban. ish the fact from your mind–your daily food. White-turbaned men and queenly looking sareed women are buying and selling, or returning from the temple where they have been making their morning namuska, or offering of prayers, food and flowers. Over many of the doors are strings of the sacred heart-shaped pepul leaves, or a sprig of tulsi, the symbol of the goddess Parvati. Their household shrines are visible within the open-fronted rooms, and on one or two of the houses is imprinted an open red hand-denoting that some ancestress had brought honor on her race by performing sati; that some widow of a past generation had voluntarily died by the same flames which had consumed her husband’s body, in order to make reparation for his sins and to rejoin him as speedily as possible in Swarga. Such an act of self-immolation, being neither compulsory nor frequent, brought distinction on the family of the sati, and the touch
of her hand as she went to her death was held to be full of virtue and to bring a blessing on whomsoever it was laid. The old order changeth not in India, and Hindus still sorrow over the law prohibiting the heroic act which enabled a wife, according to their belief, to help not only her husband’s soul, but to obtain blessedness for her own—such a hard thing for a woman to do in a land where maternity alone can wipe out the stain and reproach of her sex. The joyless alternative so often remaining to her—the prospect lying before her of a long-enduring, motiveless, irksome austerity and of a slavish drudgery to her husband’s family—would doubtless minimize her dread of death. Even it might appear to come in the guise of a liberating friend. But above all, for the childwidows—that product so uniquely Indian—who are widows before they are wives, what a fate lay before them : Death, drudgery, or a degradation worse than either. The British Raj has banished the foremost of these penalties, and Madam Saheb would tell you that she has known widows who have received nothing but honorable treatment at the hands of their husband’s relations. But that was a concession, not a lawful requirement. And as we turned our backs on the ghaum, and its strange, mysterious, hidden life, a shadow seemed to have fallen over the mellow brightness of the Indian morning. Sorrow entered into and possessed our souls—sorrow for the hapless little beings whose existences have been stultified and sterilized by the terrible decree of their own social law. “Cannot the people of India themselves, so enlightened and kind-hearted as many of their leaders are, combine to wipe off the blot on their national honor, and make the lot of all widows, whether young or old, not only tolerable, but honorable, useful, and, in the end, happy and joyful?”—Gentleman’s Magazine.
THE MODERN MACHIAVELLI.
BY FREI) ERIC HARRISON.
MR. JoHN MORLEY’S brilliant Romanes Lecture on Machiavelli could not fail to revive interest in the irresistible cynicism of the subtle old Florentine—all the more that it turned a startling searchlight on men and movements of to-day, revealing sinister aspects behind the outer face. The bacillus of “Old Nick” has passed through various “cultures” in the course of four centuries ; but it is still malignant and active. Every one who heard or read the Romanes Lecture kept asking, “What is the moral of it all ?” The occasion did not require (perhaps it did not permit) the lecturer to offer his own solution of the problem he stated with such incisive force. Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. But who is—Tu ? One suspects a somewhat large and vociferous company of politicians, orators, writers.
Mr. Morley has started a debate on the ethics of politics which interests all, but in which few care to speak out quite frankly. There is certainly a great deal of “unctuous rectitude” in political life, especially on these international problems. Mr. Frederick Greenwood, who always has the courage of his opinions, in the August number of Cosmopolis tears the mask from this humbug, which is peculiarly odious to him. But frank and lucid as he always is, he has not stated his practical advice to statesmen with all the precision and detail we expect from a veteran publicist, master of so vigorous a style. It seems to come to this : that “the Machiavellian patriot” is blameless, and only “the Machiavellian egotist” is guilty. The Machiavellian patriot may lawfully do all that a wild beast does, if need be, knowing neither God nor Devil, sentiment or morals. He is like the Elect in the Predestinarian scheme who cannot lose their assured Salvation. For him morality simply does not exist. The trouble is, how are we to recognize this magnanimous but immoral Patriot ? By what signs is he revealed ? Were Brutus and Cassius Machiavellian patriots 2
Is Prince Bismarck P Is the Sultan P On the other hand the Spectator, criticising Mr. Greenwood, is for maintaining the loftiest morality. It seems not to disapprove the slaughter of Matabele black men in the cause of Christian civilization. It approves the action of the Government toward the Transvaal, which must be made to feel that it is part of the Empire, little as the Boers like this or will admit this. The Gospel of Peace—alas !—has to be driven into backward societies with a
firm hand. But the Spectator holds that dogmatic Machiavellism “saps the springs of moral progress;” and
in this nineteenth century it is useless as well as mischievous. If the Almighty, in his good purpose, wills us Britons to enlarge our Empire, even, if it must be so, with Maxim guns, we must never lose sight of the Sermon on the Mount. Mr. Greenwood is severe on the hypocrisy of professing moral doctrines while we persist in immoral action, and on the way we have of shutting our eyes to all the fraud, cruelty, and violence in public life. He is for calling things by their right names. Individual citizens ought to be personally moral ; but he denies that statesmen can be, or (as it seems) ought to be moral. Morality in international affairs is either hypocrisy or weakness. Home politics should be run on moral lines, and he is indignant at the Machiavellism he sees rampant in party leaders; but he stoutly declares that Machiavellism—that is, ex hypothesi, fraud, cruelty, and violence—is necessary and right in foreign affairs, where we have to meet the wickedness of our foreign rivals by equal or even superior villainy of our own. This is reassuring for Sir Matthew W. Ridley and Mr. Asquith—but rather hard on Lord Salisbury and Lord Rosebery. This is no paradox of Mr. Greenwood’s own invention. He is one of the acutest and most experienced publicists living, and one of the most hon
est and resolute. He is simply putting into plain words the in most but perhaps rather vague thoughts of influential politicians, financiers, and journalists -nay, of political parties and tendencies which have been rapidly growing for a generation or more. We must agree with him that Europe is seething with Machiavellian ambitions, that we have to face the fact, that some of the most successful and popular leaders of our age are bent on adapting to the nineteenth century some of the dominant ideas of the Prince. These are summed up thus:-Be strong to smite, ready to smite, crafty, unsparing; and, if it come to the worst, know nothing of God, devil, sentiment or morals. All this is criminal and wicked in the private citizen—it is very wrong in arty politics. But in foreign affairs, in dealing with other races, civilized or barbarous, it ceases to be immoral and becomes a duty. It is not-Our country, right or wrong ! It is rather—For our country wrong is right ! Machiavellism, so nakedly formulated, is indeed seldont professed. But it is practised, it is admired, and believed in. Jingoism, Imperialism, Manifest Destiny, are all forms of this Macchiavellism—and no one need be ashamed to avow it. Mr. Greenwood is no faddist, but an acute and serious thinker, undoubtedly expressing a latent but deep conviction of modern opinion. And a latent and widespread conviction of the kind will account for many things which are puzzling in the present day. But by what signs are we to recognize the honest “Machiavellian patriot,” how distinguish him from the “egotist,” from the miscreant, from the Borgias, Napoleons, and Abdul Hamids? All his wickedness, says Mr. Greenwood, is done not for himself, not out of delight in vice, cruelty and fraud, but out of pure patriotism, for the sake of his country. But so say most tyrants and evil-doers. Machiavelli thought Caesar Borgia a type of a true prince. Napoleon, we are told, was an “egotist,” a selfish tyrant, not a patriot. But in his own day he loudly professed to be a patriot, and was fervently believed by millions. So, too, Louis Napoleon swore that if he had to murder, it was
out of love for France. Why is not Abdul Hamid a true “Machiavellian patriot’’ ” He does horrible deeds, but he profoundly believes that all his fraud, cruelty, and violence are necessary for the salvation of Turkey as a State, and millions of sincere Mussulmans in Europe and in Asia believe this to be true. We cannot deny that even Abdul’s enormities are within the traditions of Ottoman policy, when at bay before the infidel. Mr. Greenwood says that to secure the existence of your State in freedom, “you may do anything that a wild animal may doknowing nothing of God or devil, or sentiment, or morals.” Well ! that is ‘ what Abdul the Damned says he is doing. And from: the point of view of a fanatical Turk of the old school, this is a plausible contention. Abdul the Damned is really the beau idéal of the “Machiavellian patriot”— who, says Mr. Greenwood, “is blameless.” And what about Golli and Caserio, and the murderers of the Czar Alexander, of Abraham Lincoln, and Rossi; what about Orsini, and the dynamiters, and anarchists, and all the assassins from Brutus and Cassius down to Balthazar Gérard and Ravaillac * They all murdered public men under an inspiring belief that they were saving the State. Or if the anarchists do not desire to save the State, they desire to save free men from the tyranny of the State. Anarchism may be wrong, but it is a doctrine professed by philosophers like Herbert Spencer and philanthropists like Auberon Herbert. The political assassins were no doubt terribly mistaken as to what was for the true good of the State. But they were most of them sincere enthusiasts, and were supported by eminent rulers and by most holy priests. Whether the kings and statesmen they murdered were tyrants or not is a very intricate problem. They thought so, and sacrificed their own lives in that faith. The “Machiavellian patriot” usually slaughters men wholesale. Why is not some obscure but sincere dynamiter and anarchist, who murders in the name of the people, equally worthy of being a Machiavellian patriot—and blameless :
It is sophism to talk of the State being above morality, so as to sanctify fraud, cruelty, and violence. This is to make a fetish of the State, a God Almighty, a sort of Moloch. The State is only an organized society of men : it only acts through men : it only acts upon men. Mr. Greenwood talks of the State much as Calvinist theologians talk of Life Eternal. Human affairs, happiness, and all good things here below are mere dust and ashes. To get souls to Heaven, the most pious Christians have massacred, pillaged, and tortured millions. “Never mind if they are innocent,” said a Spanish inquisitor, “it will make it easier for them in the Day of Judgment.” And now says Mr. Greenwood, “To save the State, you may do anything a wild beast may do;—never mind God or Devil, sentiment or morals ”’ Opinions do so differ as to what does save the State. Few problems in the world are so complex. What is the test ? Where is the tribunal to decide whether the Machiavellian patriot is a Brutus, a Charlotte Corday, a Ravaillac, or a Golli? To shoot dead a man you never before saw, to blow up a crowded railway train or a house with dynamite, are regarded in all civilized countries, and in the absence of extenuating circumstances, as frankly immoral. On that all decent men are agreed. Who is to decide if these acts become virtuous through the effect they have on the public? The Machiavellian patriot has to decide all this for himself, with or without the assistance of a group of conspirators. If he is a poor ignorant devil of a workman, he is put to death like a mad dog. If he is a great Prince or statesman, he is wildly applauded by large bodies of his own countrymen, detested by those whom he maltreats and robs, and is generally admired by the vulgar. Abdul Hamid is now quite a hero in Central Asia. The sophism which it seems satisfies acute and honest men that fraud, cruelty, and violence cease to be wrong in international affairs, however immoral they may be in national and social things, is simply the analogy of War. In war, we are told, fraud, cruelty, and violence are inevitable.
Within certain strictly defined limits this is quite true. But war in civilized countries has its own “sentiment,” its own “‘morals.” War has its own morality, its proper honor, and its own treacheries and infamies. Civilized nations do not fight like Zulu savages or Sioux Indians. It is immoral in war to make a regular truce and then, in violation of it, to massacre a confiding enemy. It is immoral to use poison, to butcher non combatants in cold blood, to torture prisoners and so forth. Even in war it is not lawful to “behave like a wild animal,” “to know nothing of God, or devil, sentiment or morals.” Quite the reverse ! The morality of war, as understood in modern Europe, is exceedingly well defined ; and, considering all the conditions inseparable from a state of war, it is a very high standard of morality. There is therefore no real analogy between the definite license admitted in modern war and the unlimited devilry claimed by the Machiavellian Prince. It is all very well for a Caesar Borgia or a Baglione to “do whatever a wild animal may do ;” but if Lord Wolseley or General Billot were to do so, the world would ring with execrations. It is true enough that manslaughter, stratagems, and bombardment are not immoral in war. Why not ? Because due notice is given to definite persons that, unless definite demands are conceded, soldiers and fortified places will be attacked, and your own plans will be concealed. And the strict conditions are that the attacking nation fully admits that it lies open to the same things in retaliation, and further that it will neither kill, destroy, nor deceive, except within the recognized code of International Law ; i.e., of morality as understood among civilized states inter se. And there is a second sophism involved in the analogy between a state of war and permanent international relations. The ordinary relations between European States are not a state of war, are not those between wild tribes around the Congo or the Euphrates. The relations of civilized nations to each other are governed by the rules and customs of International Law relating to Peace. When civilized
Reminiscences of the Burmese War in 1824-5-6 (Farmed from Archive.org)
The dogs were of that genus
familiar to Anglo-Indians as the pariah ; that is,
of the lowest caste. They are timid, treacherous,
190 REMINISCENCES OF
ugly brutes, being unlike any breed in this sport-
ing country. Their colour is generally a reddish
brown, but they are also white and black. They
carry a long curly tail, and while in form they
bear some resemblance to the greyhound, but
are without any of its symmetry, their habits and
general appearance remind us strongly of the
fox and jackal, to which they doubtless bear
some relationship. When the town and its ex-
tensive suburbs were vacated by the inhabitants,
these animals remained behind, and stuck to
their old quarters, though at the risk of starva-
tion ; and they soon became such an evil, as well
from their foraging propensities as from their
noise by night, that we looked upon them as a
legitimate object of persecution, and to spear a
pariah was really to do the’ camp some service,
by ridding it of a thief.
When dogs were scarce, we sometimes would
throw at a mark for hours together. By dint of
practice I had become very expert in catching a
spear in my hand when hurled directly at me, in
which somewhat hazardous amusement, on one
occasion, I met with rather a serious accident, in
the following manner : I had instilled into one of
my sable domestics a similar taste for the use of
THE BURMESE WAR. 101
the spear, and in leisure moments we amused our-
selves in throwing it from one to the other, I
catching it in my hand as it reached me in the
manner before described, though this point my
comrade could not achieve. I had thrown the
spear in my usual manner, which he immediately
picked up, and after advancing a few steps to
shorten the distance, hurled it back for me to
catch en passant. Had the weapon been well
aimed, anomalous as it may sound, no harm
could have ensued ; but there happened to be a
tree overhanging me, and the spear being awk-
wardly thrown, struck a branch, and then glanc-
ing off, entered my mouth on the right side, and
there it stuck, the shaft quivering, whilst the head
of the spear, which happily was a very light one,
after lacerating the cheek and jaw, was partly
visible externally. Thus was I ignobly transfixed
by the clumsy hand of my black servant, and the
canine race were well nigh avenged on me by the
very weapon that had so often drank their blood.
The instant I was wounded I seized the spear
with both hands and drew it out, and from the
quantity of blood that followed I began to think
that the jugular vein was cut. A surgeon was
fortunately near at hand, who soon ascertained
192 REMINISCENCES OF
that no serious injury was done, though I had re-
ceived a severe wound in a most unsatisfactory
manner, the effects of which were felt for a long
time.
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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 thereader with an indignant pity for the man who in all this world of men and women could find, or keep, no better friend than a dog? Sympathy is of so subtle a texture that it shivers to pieces at the first drop of cynicism, and so instead of admiring Byron’s dog the more, we admire the dog’s master the less.
By his own showing, too, he 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 here or false sentiment there. And each is alike disagreeable and unjust.
Meanwhile the beauty of the dog’s fidelity remains unimpaired, and when the same poet pays the tribute of his verse to the hound faithful even to death, he has all sympathy with him.
With a piteous and perpetual moan
Anil a quick desolate cry, licking the hand
“Which answered not with a caress—he died.
Nothing, of course, can prevent a Cowper making even a dog’s friendship sometimes ridiculous, nor even Eliza Cook arousing one’s furious scorn with such a couplet as this:
Nor derm 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.
It forms a feature, therefore, of all the happiest aspects of life, is an emblem of the security and tranquil domestic simplicity which characterise 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 summers 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 tew 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 hay-making 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 tho sound but raises half an eye-lid,
Then gives a feeble growl and sleeps again,
While puss composed and gTave on threshold stone
Sits winking in the light. •
And Jean Ingelow’s delightful sketch of the fisherman’s puppies:—
The village dogs and ours, elate and brave,
Lay looking over, barking at the fish;
Fast, fast, the silver creatures took the bait,
And when they heaved and floundered on the rock
In beauteous misery, a sudden pat
Some shaggy pup would deal, then back away,
At distance eye them with sagacious doubt,
And shrink half-frightened from the slippery things.
At play or at war, snarling over a bone, quarrelling over a piece of meat, crouching under the lash, barking at passing beggars, barking at nothing, asleep, awaking, awake, rolling in the grass or dust, eating, drinking, chasing cats, dreaming of chasing cats, annoyed by flies, wistful, honest, suspicious, confiding, fawning. Big dogs beset by little ones,’ generous ‘ hounds by curs of low
VOl.. LI. NO. CCIV, K K
degree; the poor man’s dog, the blind man’s dog, the poacher’s dog, the mad dog.
In each and all these phases we find the dog in poetry. Indeed there is no mood of temper, no circumstance of life whatever, that the dog in one poet or another does not figure in, from the puppy blind to the dog cooked:
A kettle slung
Between two poles upon a stick transverse
lleceives the morsel, flesh obscene of dog
Or vermin, or at best of cock purloined
From bis accustomed perch.
Yet of all terms of reproach, all the world over, and from all time, none is comparable in frequency of use or in its provocative potentialities on the individual abused, to the word ‘dog.’ ‘Treacherous, false, ungrateful dog!’ ‘Vile coward dog,’ and so forth, could be multiplied indefinitely from the poets if there were any need to go beyond the streets for evidence to the ignominy of the name. Even more curious, perhaps, is it that the hound, held in such special honour, should if possible suggest an aggravation of the dog reproach. All over the world, in every language of the East and of Europe, among savages of every country, 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, there is a point in contempt below even the dog.
In the same spirit the dog 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 ravin.
‘Cur ‘ has long been in use as a term of reproach; and in this sense the poets always use it. Thus Wyatt’s ‘curs do fall by kind on him that hath the overthrow,’ and Herbert’s ‘babbling curs never want sore ears.’
Cur of shabby race,
The first by wand’ring beggars fed;
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 caiue,
Buth vile and base, and void of shame.l
In the same way ‘puppy’ and, with less reason perhaps, ‘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 the same to the animal.
1 King.
Poetical proverbsl and metaphors, all harping on the worst points of the dog, are very numerous. ‘He that lies with the dogs riseth with the fleas ‘ (Herbert); ‘Dog in office, set to bark all beggars from the door ‘ (Hood); ‘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); ‘ 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 cur’ (Pope). The Furies, 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).
But not only, of course, does every mood of the dog-character find abundant recognition in our poets, but every variety also of the animal: above all, each variety of hound used in sport.
Stout terriers that in high-hilled Sutherland
Beat up the wild cat’s lodge or badgers rouse;
And russet blood-hounds, wont near Annand’s stream
To trace the sly thief with avenging foot,
Close as an evil conscience, still at hand:
Fleet grey-hounds that outrun the fearful hare
And many a dog beside of faithful scent
To snuff his prey, or eager heel to scour
The purple heath and snap the flying game.2
Supreme of course as a creature of the chase is the fox, and its correlative, the foxhound, is therefore proportionately conspicuous.
Of horn and morn and hark and bark,
And echo’s answering sounds,
All poets’ wit hath ever writ
lu doggrel 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
1 Many, of course, are not original. :Leydpn.
and partridges, the robust tone in which they approve of the doings of foxhounds, beagles, staghounds, otterhounds, badgerhounds, 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 quadrupeds influences them in their opinion of the animals which man has taught to kill those quadrupeds; but it really does seem as if the poets’ aversion to foxes, wolves, otters, badgers, boars, and their indifference to rabbits and hares, made them rather unfairly partial to their destroyers. In the single case of the deer (for which they have a very sincere admiration), there arose an obvious difficulty, which the poets have audaciously met by exulting with the hounds and weeping with the deer. They ‘hang on the haunches’ of the stag, while tears chase each other ‘down their innocent noses.’
Some poets of the chase, however, have very decided 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 victims, hold with the hares. Those, affecting a prodigious indignation against the robbers of hen-roosts and consumers of sprouting wheat, hunt with the hounds. These employ their satire and denunciation against the hunters. Those against the hunted. And neither are just.
Yet the just middle of sport is an easy one to hit, and the significances of our national passion are admirable themes for the moralist and poet. It is not necessary for poetical fidelity to be either cruel with the one or gush with the other. It is not more remarkable that foxes should eat geese than that geese should eat grass, nor more culpable; and for the men whom England has been most proud of, they are those who have ridden straight to hounds with Somerville, not those who went nutting with Thomson. We can never have too many fox-hunting youths, but a few Cowpers are enough. But for myself sport has a dark side in the death of the victim. I eat the lamb with equanimity, and * the pullet of tender years ‘ without mingling my tears with its sauce. But I regret the death of the fox and the otter. For my sympathy is with nature, and not with the stockyard. 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 poet afterwards, and his rhymed instructions for the breeding, rearing, and hunting of hounds is an admirable instance of poetical ingenuity applied to a technical subject. A notice of his poem in
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“blindness, and sometimes untimely death by drowning; the playing of the puppies with the children of the house, they Deing 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 hay-making dog for instance, or Joanna Bailie’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
Then gives a feeble growl and sleeps again,
White _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 dogs and ours, elate and brave,
Lay looking over, barking at the fish;
Fast, fast, the silver creatures took the bait.
And when they heaved and floundered on the rock
In beauteous misery, a sudden pat
Some shaggy pup would deal, then back away,
At distance eye them with sagacious doubt,
And shrink half-frightened from the slippery things.
At play or at war, snarling over a bone, quarrelling over a piece of meat, crouching under the lash, barking at passing beggars, barking at nothing, asleep, awaking, awake, rolling in the grass or dust, eating, drinking, chasing cats, dreaming of chasing cats, annoyed by flies, wistful, honest, suspicious, confiding, fawning. Big dogs beset by little ones, ” generous” hounds by curs of low de
free; the poor man’s dog, the blind man’s
ag, the poacher’s dog, the mad dog.
In each and all these phases we find the dog
in poetry. Indeed there is no mood of tem-
per, no circumstance of life whatever, that
the dog in one poet or another does not figure
in, from the puppy blind to the dog cooked:
A kettle slung
Between two poles upon a stick transverse
Receives the morsel, flesh obscene of dog
Or vermin, or at best of cock purloined
From his accustomed perch.
Yet of all terms of reproach, all the world over, and from all time, none is comparable in frequency of use or in its provocative potentialities on the individual abused, to the word “dog.” “Treacherous, false, ungrateful dogl” “Vile coward dog,” and so forth, could be multiplied indefinitely from the poets if there were any need to go beyond the streets for evidence to the ignominy of the name. Even more curious, perhaps, is it that the hound, held in such special honor, should if possible suggest an aggravation of the dog reproach. All over the world, in every language of the East and of Europe, among savages of every country, 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, there is a point in contempt below even the dog.
In the same spirit the dog element in a composite monster horribly enhances its defor
mity. How abominable the Scylla form always is:
Thereto the body of a dog she had,
Full of ravin.
“Cur” has long been in use as a term of reproach; and in this sense the poets always use it. Thus Wyatt’s “cursdo fall by kind on him that hath the overthrow,” and Herbert’s “babbling curs never want sore ears.”
Cur of shabby race,
The first by wand’ring beggars fed;
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 arid base, and void of shame.*
In the same way “puppy” and, with less reason perhaps, “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 the same to the animal.
Poetical proverbs t and metaphors, all harping on the worst points of the dog, are very numerous. ” He that lies with the dogs riseth with the fleas” (Herbert); “Dog in office, set to bark all beggars from the door’ (Hood)-; “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); “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 cur” (Pope). The Furies, in Shelley, “track all things that weep and bleed and five, 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).
But not only, of course, does every mood of the dog-character find abundant recognition in our poets, but every variety also of the animal: above all, each variety of hound used in sport.
Stout terriers that in high-hilled Sutherland
Beat up the wild cat’s lodge or badgers rouse;
And russet hlood-hounds, wont near Annand’s
To trace the sly thief with avenging foot,
Close as an evil conscience, still at hand:
Fleet grey-hounds that outmn the fearful hare
And many a dog beside of faithful scent
To pnufl* his prey, or eager heel to scour
The purple heath and snap the Hying game.i
Supreme of course as a creature of the chase is the fox, and its correlative, the foxhound, is therefore proportionately conspicuous.
Of horn and morn and hark and bark.
And echo’s answering sounds.
All poet’s wit hath ever writ
In doggrel 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 lamenta
* King, t Many, of course, are not original. X Leydeu.
tions over pheasants and partridges, the robust tone in which they approve of the doings of foxhounds, beagles, staghounds, otterhounds, badgerhounds, spaniels, pointers, and the rest, conies 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 quadrupeds influences them in their opinion of the animals which man has taught to kill those quadrupeds; but it really does seem as if the poets’ aversion to foxes, wolves, otters, badgers boars, and their indifference to rabbits and hares, made them rather unfairly partial to their destroyers. In the single case of the deer (for which they have a very sin- 1 cere admiration), there arose an obvious difficulty, which the poets have audaciously met by exulting with the hounds and weeping with the deer. They “‘hang on the haunches” of the stag, while tears chase each other “down their innocent noses.”
Some poets of the chase, however, have very decided opinions as to its morality generally. On the one side are, as examples, bomerville and Gay, on the other Thompson and Cowper. Thase, being altogether on the side of the victims, hold with the hares. Those, affecting a prodigious indignation against the robbers of hen-roosts and consumers of sprouting wheat, hunt with the hounds. These employ their satire and denunciation against the hunters. Those against the hunted. And neither are just.
Yet the just middle of sport is an easy one to hit, and the significances of our national passion are admirable themes for the moralist and poet. It is not necessary for poetical fidelity to be either cruel with the one or gush with the other. It is not more remarkable that foxes should eat geese than that geese should eat grass, nor more culpable; and for the men whom England has been most proud of, they are those who have ridden straight to hounds with Somerville, not those who went nutting with Thompson. We can never have too many fox-hunting youths, but a few • Cowpers are enough. But for myself sport has a dark side in the death of the victim. I eat the lamb with equanimity, and “the pullet of tender years” without mingling my tears with its sauce. But I regret the death of the fox and the otter. For my sympathy is with nature, and 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
Soets’ sympathy is with the villatic and the omesticated, not with the independent and the wild.
One poet at any rate—Somerville — was sportsman first and poet afterwards, and his rhymed instructions for the breeding, rearing, and hunting of hounds is an admirable instance of poetical ingenuity applied to a 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 spokesman 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,
When Nimrod 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;
going on to show that at first the chase was
only a means towards sacrifice, but after-
wards a necessity for food, the Creator hav-
ing added flesh to man’s vegetable diet:
So just is Heaven
To give us in proportion to our wants.
I Then comes a gap from Cain to William the
Conqueror, bridged over by the poet only
with a passing allusion to “our painted an-
cestors being slow to learn.” But the Con-
quest arrives, and
Victorious William to more decent rules
Subdu’d 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,
From him successive huntsmen learn’d to join
In bloody social leagues, the multitudes
Dispers’d. to size, to sort, train various tribes
To rear. feed, hunt, and discipline the pack.
Hail, happy Britain! highly favor’d 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 rear’d rampant they seize
Each others’ throats; with teeth and claws in gore
Besnv.’ar’d 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 ditl’rent ways
His mangled carcase 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, point-
ing out the necessity for selecting animals of
medium size, and containing the following de-
scription 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’nlng 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.
Fleek’d here and there, in gay enamell’d pride
Rival the speckled pant: his rush-grown tail
O’er his hroad 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.
Four 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 “stately stag” he advises
The deep-flewed hound.
Strong, heavy, slow, but sure;
Whose ears down-hanging from his thick round head
sh.ill 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 “limehound,”
The bold Talbot kind
Of these the prime, as white as Alpine snows.
And great their use of old’
t)n the Borders to track human culprits, cattlelifters, 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 wildbeast hunt in the days of the Great Moghul. 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.
Oh! how glorious ’tis
To right th’ oppressed, and bring the felon vile
To just disgrace 1
And then follows a eulogy of fox-hunting:
Heav’nsl what melodious strains, how beat our hearts,
Big with tumultuous joy! The loaded gales
Breathe harmony; and as the tempest drives
From wood to wood, thro’ every dark recess
The forest thunders, and the mountains shake.
The chorus swells.
See how they range
Dispers’d, how busily this way and that
They cross, examining with curious nose
Each likely haunt. Hark! on the drag I hear
Their doubtful notes, preluding to a cry
More nobly full, and swell’d with ev’ry mouth.
The gay pack
In the rough bristly stubbles range unblam’d.
No widow^ tears o’erflow, no secret curse
Swells in the farmer’s breast, which his pale lips
Trembling conceal, by his fierce landlord aw’d;
But courteous now he levels every fence,
Joins in the common cry, and halloos loud,
Charm’d 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 Hons and elephants, with some hints how to hunt leopards with lookingglasses, returning again to England with an account of the royal stag-hounds 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 loosely waving in the wind,
And all the flush of beauty in their cheeks!
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
Betray’d t<> 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—
O mercy, heavenly born! sweet attribute!
Book IV. reverts to details of the kennel, the care necessary 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 legs the shifting cur avoid, thai breaks
Illusive from the pack: to the next hedge
Devious he strays, 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 nis speed
And strength unrivaU’d. Lo! cast far behind.
His vex’d associates pant and lab’riug strain
To climb the steep ascent. Soon as they reach
Th’ insulting boaster, his false courage fails.
Behind he lags, doom’d to the fatal noose,
His master’s hate, and scorn of all the field.
What can from such be hop’d but a base-brood
Of coward curs, a frantic, vagrant race?
Counsel is tnen given for curing sheep-worrying by strapping the offender to a ram to be butted into repentance, and a long dissertation on hydrophobia, elaborately horrible, leads the poem to its conclusion. But
One labour yet remains, celestial maid 1
Another element demands my song.
And a spirited description of an otter-hunt closes “The Chase.”
The table floating round
And pavement faithless to the fuddled foot;
Thus as ui-y swim in mutual swill, the talk.
Vociferous at once from twenty tongues.
Keels fast from theme to theme; from horses, hounds.
To church or mistress, politics or ghost,
In endless mazes, intricate, perplexed.
Their feeble tongues
Unable to take up the cumbrous word
Lie quite dissolved. Before the maudlin eyes
Seen dim and blue, the double tapers dance,
Then sliding soft—they drop.
For fairness sake, and to strike the balance equally between the enthusiasts in praise and denunciation, Thomson’s “Autumn,” where cfplagiarizing as he goes) he condemns the
falsely -cheerful, barbarous game of death,” should be read, especially the delightful account of the drunken 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 ghost.
In endless mazes, intricate, perplexed.
Their feeble tongues
Unable to take up the cumbrous word
Lie quite dissolved. Before the maudlin eyes
Seen dim and blue, the double tapers dance.
Then sliding soft—they drop.
This is a counterblast of course to Somerville’s “short repast and temperate,” to which the grateful farmer invites the avengers of his hen-roosts. Nor less pointed is Thompson’s reproof to ladies in the hunting ground!, that commences—
Let not such horrid joy
E’er stain the bosom of the British fair:
Far be the spirit of the chase from them!
Taken together, the poems are excellent illustrations of 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. “Keen as a fine-nosed hound, by some 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 pointer and setter should be so warmly eulogized. 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 doge. And so extending 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 denunciation of sport of all kinds, epitaphises Sir John Throckmorton’s pointer without a word of disparagement, mdeed (after the manner of epitaphs generally) with many compliments on his successful complicity in bloodshed. 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. Hew Scott delighted in it I His verse is full of staghounds, “unmatched for courage, breath, and speed,” and we hear them baying “from Teviotstone to Eskdale
moor.” And what an unmitigated bore they are in Ossian, those “grey bounding dogs,” 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 brute.
Greyhounds are “gentle” and “graceful”— “a greyhound’s gentle grace” is becoming both in a ship and an elegant woman— so that they are popular with the poets. 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 not considered cruel. Gay, for instance, forgets all his kindness for the hare as soon as the greyhound is after it.
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 jaws,
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.
Nor 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 ttm’rous hare
O’ermatched destroy, but leave that vile offence
To the mean, murdering, coursing cri’w. intent
On blood and spoil. O blast their hopes, just Heaven!
The spaniel as a pet—”household spaniel,” “parlor 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 utilized as the disturb
ing element of water-fowl existence, the acid in the mixture that effervesces the general tranquillity of life among water-lilies.
As the ordinary spaniel of bird-shooting, and “skillful to betray” (when it is usually “the-snuffing spaniel”), its habit of making a point often makes another for the poets. Thus Thompson:
In his mid career the spaniel struck
Stilt by the tainted gale, with open nose
Outstretch’d 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,
Scent-struck,
With lifted paw, stiffened stands,
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 r
Not closest coverts can protect the game.
Hark! the dog opens, take thy certain aim;
The woodcock flutters; now he wav’ring flies!
The wood rasounds: he wheels, he drops, he dies.
In character the spaniel appears to be more feminine than other dogs, and proverb has extended the resemblance into a humility that women of spirit will hardly concede * 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. Its extreme docility again affords many a contemptuous simile:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight
In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.—Pope.
The sea, “spaniel-like with parasitic kiss,”” laps on the shore.
The “baying beagle” is a general favorite, 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
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, interpolates (in brackets),
Beasts, urged by us. their fellow-beasts pursue,
And learn of man each other to undo.
The wolf-dogs of Leyden and Byron, and Wordsworth; the boarhound—not a favorite with the poets—being the “dastard curres”
* A woman, a spaniel, a walnut-tree. The more you beat them the better they be.
of Spenser, the defeated assailants in Venus
and Adonis-
Here kennel’d in a brake she finds a hound,
And asks the weary caitiff for his master,
And there another licking of his wound
‘Gainst venom’d 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 scratch’d ears, bleeding as they go.
Bloodhounds are, not unnaturally perhaps, even less popular with the poets They never forget the abuse of this animal’s terrific instinct of which man has at different periods of history been guilty, and the crime is poetically transferred from the human criminal to his innocent instrument. 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” (Pomf ret). 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 they might have to track, and they are used as similes for the relentless whirlwind in Faber, and famine and pestilence in Shelley. Says Byron, “Kings! ’tis a great name for bloodhounds.”
As the “lime-hound,” this animal was at one time in demand on the Cheviot marches.
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
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 detain’d,
Unerring he pursues, till at the cot
Arriv’d/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 lime-hound that proclaims no scent, nor harb’ring will their mouths in boasting spend,” and Spenser and others of the older poets refer to the sleuthhound with respect.
The mastiff, strangely enough, arrives with little honor in the poets’ company. It is ” illconditioned,” “gaunt,” and gruff,” has to be taught manners by being kicked in the mouth by donkeys (Wordsworth), and is possessed with a horrible longing to eat beggars (Pope). The sea when rough is (in Hurdis) a furious mastiff.
Lot as we speak.
The wolfish monster kindles into rage.
EnormouB mastiff, how he gnaws his chain
And struggles to be free, fast bound by fate
And nev«r to be let loose on man.
Aloud he bellows, with uplifted paw
Dances uprear’d. menaces the foot
Of earth with trembling diffidence protruded.
Lo! the saliva of his deafening tongue
Her pebbled instep stains: his rugged coat
Is whiten’d 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. “This is much too nice for such horrid things,” said a lady on entering the new reptile-house in the Zoological Gardens. “What a wretch!” was her comment upon the Cape buffalo, and ” the silly things!” sufficed for the kangaroos close by. She “hates monkeys” because they are ” odious,” and thinks bears “and those things” are “dreadful,” except when they catch a piece of bun cleverly. Now, the average poet is almost the same. He carries about a big shudder in his pocket in case he should approach a reptile, talks foolishly of doves, and is tenderly effusive over fawns; all the time he is in the monkey-house he is thinking about himself, and that elephants should carry children about without doing them any harm gives Behemoth its chief claim upon his good opinion.
In this analogy perhaps is to be found the prevalent fastidiousness with regard to mastiffs. Ladies as a rule do pot like them, nor do poets. When they baited bulls they always received a measure of admiration, and in the more robust verse of our older poets “the fell mastiffe” was a frequent simile for furious ferocity.
As when an eager mastiffe once doth prove
The taste of blood of some engored beast.
No words may rate, nor rigor him remove
From greedy hold of that his bloudy feast.
With that all mad aud furious he grew
Like a fell mastiffe.
An especial favbrite is of course the sheepdog. 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 degenerated by town fashion into a cowardly syco
Ehant, is not the typical shepherd-dog. It is ecoming a variety by itself, the colley,” and seen in the street recalls no rural sounds 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 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.” 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 ” TwaDogfj:”
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 knowns 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;
fynm 