202 The Book of Cats. 



who actually inspected the field — at least so they 

 say. 



Time out of mind the Cat has figured largely in 

 our nursery annals — from the days of Heigh Diddle- 

 Diddle and the House that Jack Built to the present 

 moment. There is some waggishness, by the way, 

 in Mr. Blanchard's version of the second mentioned 

 rhyme, printed, as a sort of argument, in the book 

 of the Drury Lane Pantomime : — 



" Anon, with velvet foot and Tarquin strides, 

 Subtle Grimalkin to his quarry glides ; 

 Grimalkin grim, that slew the fierce Rodent, 

 Whose tooth insidious Johann's sackcloth rent. 

 Lo ! how the deep-mouthed canine foe's assault, 

 That vest th' avenger of the stolen malt 

 Stored in the hallowed precincts of that hall 

 That rose complete at Jack's creative call. 

 Here stalks th' impetuous cow with crumpled horn, 

 Thereon th' exacerbating hound was torn, 

 Who bayed the feline slaughter-beast that slew 

 The rat predacious, whose keen fangs ran through 

 The textile fibres that involved the grain 

 That lay in Han's inviolate domain." 



The Cat is one of the principal of the dramatis 

 persona in Mr. D'Arcy Thompson's droll Nursery 

 Nonsense ; and some of the most ingenious pictures 

 Charles Bennett ever drew are to be found in his 

 Nine Lives of a Cat. There is some good fun for 



