36 The Collie or Sheep Dog. 



Poor misanthropic Byron would possibly not have written 

 in the vein he did had his dog been a collie. 



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 how little shepherds' dogs were used, at any rate in 

 the southern parts of our island, approaching a hundred 

 years ago, may be inferred from the fact that no allusion 

 is made to them in Robert Bloomfield's " The Farmer's 

 Boy," possibly one of the pleasantest and most descriptive 

 pastoral poems in our language. 



With the artists of the present and of some previous 

 generations, the shepherd's dog has been a great favourite. 

 As already stated, Bewick was possibly the first to draw 

 him correctly and picturesquely in the form as he is seen 

 to-day, though Howitt, not very much later, followed the 

 great wood engraver and his school in this respect. Land- 

 seer, who it may be said popularised the black and white 

 Newfoundland, which now bears the name of the great 

 painter, preferred the collie to all other varieties of dog, 

 not excepting the Highland deerhound. The sympa- 

 thetic expression of the shepherd's companion gave the 

 artist an opportunity of transferring to canvas an effect 

 which he could convey with his brush better than any 

 other man. Herein lay Landseer's great skill, and if he at 

 times (and Briton Riviere has followed him in this respect) > 

 gave to his dogs an expression too human, such has 

 been a pleasing exaggeration, and one most satisfactory to 

 the public. The collie was his favourite dog, and in one of 

 his less known pictures, " The Connoisseurs," a portrait of 



