9% 



of corn, nor would they have known the strange exotic had it been 

 presented to their view ! Herds of goats and cows seeking shelter, are 

 placed by Blair among the images which " betray a later period of 

 of society," as if ever there was an age in which goats and kine were 

 not gregarious, or inclined to seek shelter ! The same critic ranks 

 " windows clapping" first in the list of those modern images, forget- 

 ful, no doubt, that he has quoted with high approbation, and as a 

 specimen of the real antique, a passage in which "the fox looked out 

 from the windows." Now, if windows afforded a looking-place to the 

 fox, why might they not also clap, without losing their claims to 

 antiouitv ? '^^ ***' b^liU b-.uiod da^-j baJ\ 



Pennant, in his Tour to Scotland, note, vol. i. pp. 216, 21*7, says: 



"It is to me a matter of surprise, that no mention is made in the poems of Ossian, of 

 our great beasts of prey which must have abounded in his days, for the wolf was a pest to the 

 country so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and the bear existed there till the year 1067, 

 when a Gordon, for killing a fierce bear, was directed by King Malcolm III, to carry three 

 bears' heads in his banner. — Hist. Gordons, i. p. 2. Other native animals are often mentioned 

 in several parts of the work; and in the five little poems on night, the compositions of as 

 many bards, every modem British beast of chase is enumerated ; the howling dog and howl- 

 ing fox described, yet the howling wolf opaitted, which would have made the bards' night 

 much more hideous." i tIfihiO fI?iIo/!^r !if'f (rfO/? 



But what we want in wolves and bears is amply supplied by dark 

 brown deer, and dogs, " the long-bounding sons of the chace. — 'A 

 thousand dogs fly off at once, gray-bounding through the heath. A 

 deer fell by every dog; three by the white-breasted Bran!" Fingal vi. 

 This was a glorious chace, to which the hunting of " Percy of Nor- 

 thumberland in the Scottish woods," was a mere bagatelle. A thou- 

 sand and three deer in one hunt ! What Asiatic prince ever equalled 

 this ? . Even Nimrod must own himself surpassed, and the country 

 must have been covered with deer, as thick as leaves in Vallombrosa. 



M 2 



