THE ANGLER'S SOUVENIR. 



59 



and held him up to the contempt of the world. If 

 this story were true, Byron and his bulldog should 

 have been served in the same manner that Lieutenant 

 Bowling served Roderick Random's brutal cousin 

 and his quadruped auxiliaries. Tiger should have 

 been silenced with a blow from a shillelagh, and his 

 master floored by a right-handed hit between the 

 eyes, and afterwards kicked as he lay, ad putorem 

 usque, as a reward for his unmanly conduct. I 

 think I know one living poet who would have 

 done it, had he been served so, and have made 

 the jackals grin on the wrong side of the face had 

 he observed them encouraging the fun by their 

 sardonic smiles, ad examplar regis, after the fashion 

 of the lion, upon whom they then fawned, when 

 living, but preyed, like unclean animals as they 

 were, upon his carcase when dead. It is no joke 

 to have a "bulldog within a couple of yards of you, 

 watching an opportunity to rush in and seize you 

 by the throat. I know what the feeling is, and 

 therefore am disposed to think very indifferently of 

 the man who would wantonly place another in such 

 a situation. I was once passing over a lonely moor 

 in the north of England, when I came suddenly 

 upon a gipsy's encampment, and before I perceived 

 any of the party, a long-backed, bow-legged, brindled 

 bulldog made towards me, showing his formidable 

 teeth, and eyes glaring with rage. I stood still the 

 moment I saw him, and he was just crouching pre- 

 paratory to a spring, when his master, who had 



