187 



XIX. 

 THE DONKEYS ANCESTORS. 



HE is a dear shaggy old donkey, with the 

 true pathetic donkey eyes, and that wonderful 

 donkey power of making himself perfectly 

 happy on a bare rocky hillside, upon four 

 sprouting thistles, a bit of prickly carline, and 

 three square yards of wet turf at the outcrop 

 of the little spring, overgrown with rank bog- 

 asphodel and stringy goose-grass. Given 

 this delicious pabulum, with five minutes' 

 total freedom from beating or bullying, and 

 your shaggy donkey is in his seventh heaven. 

 That is what constitutes the true poetry and 

 pathos of his life. I am not ashamed to side 

 with Coleridge on that question, in spite of 

 the sneers in * English Bards,' or in * Rejected 



