292 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



one of the most horrible forms of cruelty practised on animals, 

 had a book in the press entitled " The Friend of Man and his 

 Friends, the Poets." Reading my unsigned paper in the 

 Magazine, she picked up her pen in a noble rage to add some 

 words to her Introduction, in which she hurled at me certain 

 sayings of Schopenhauer describing man as a very contempti- 

 ble creature when compared with the dog, and also saying that 

 the writer of the article was " worse than a vivisectionist." 



This struck me as a bit thick, seeing that a vivisectionist 

 had always been to her the most damnable being in the uni- 

 verse. One or two of my friends, who knew I had written the 

 article, then remonstrated with the lady for using such ex- 

 pressions of one who, though tactless and somewhat brutal, 

 was also a lover of all the creatures, and didn't like to hear 

 so much praise of the dog at the expense of the other animals. 

 The result was that she smoothed her ruffled plumes and sent 

 her regrets and a promise to excise the obnoxious passage in 

 her preface in the next edition. 



Of course it doesn't matter two straws whether she ever 

 had the opportunity of doing so or not : the best part of the 

 story is still to come the funny part, and a wise word which, 

 though laughingly spoken, may yet do good. 



The lady's book in the meantime had fallen by chance into 

 the hands of Andrew Lang, and as it was just the sort of 

 thing to delight him, he made it the subject of one of his most 

 charming amusing leaders in the Daily News of that time. In 

 this article, after the usual pleasant word for the book and its 

 author, he deals with the subject of the dog and man's feeling 

 for it in ancient and modern times, and of the great length to 

 which it has been carried recently, and concludes with a pas- 

 sage which I must quote in full, as I don't think this article 

 ever reappeared among his Lost Leaders, and it is worth pre- 

 serving for the sake of its Andrew Langishness, as well as of 

 its moral. After quoting some of the most notable sayings in 

 praise of the dog, he concludes: 



" There is perhaps some slight danger of reaction against all 

 this, and Miss Cobbe seems to have anticipated it in a sharp 

 attack on a writer hostile to dogs. This writer, as though 

 in his turn anticipating the coming worship of the dog, has 

 expressed himself with considerable force against the ' great 

 dog superstition,' and has gone so far as to characterise 



