Pity for the humblest Creatures 
prevalent insensibility towards the insect 
world, from our youth upward. 
As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods ; 
They kill us for their sport. 
In maturer life men will do “a thousand 
dreadful things as willingly as one would 
kill a fly.”* But the poet's pity extended 
even to the fly. In a spirited picture of a 
superb charger he tells how the animal 
proudly “stamps and bites the poor flies 
in his fume.” * The most detailed and re- 
markable expression of this commiseration 
in the whole of Shakespeare’s works, how- 
ever, is to be found in the unpleasing 
tragedy of Titus Andronicus, which, though 
printed among his dramas, is doubtless 
mainly the work of another writer. Yet 
it Contains passages of great power and 
beauty which are not unworthy of Shake- 
speare and probably came from his pen. 
Among these passages I would include the 
' King Lear, w. i. 37. > Titus Andronicus, v. i. 141. 
° Venus and Adonis, 316. 
2I 
