The King of the Beasts. 5 



" Withouten wepen save his handes twey 

 He slew and all to-rente the leon 

 Toward his wedding walking by the way." 



And David (in Cowley) — 



" Saw a lion and leapt down to it ; 

 As eas'ly there the royal beast he tore. 

 As that itself did kids or lambs before." 



And Hercules (in Darwin) — 



" Drives the lion to his dusky cave. 



Seized by the throat the growling fiend disarms, 

 And tears his gaping jaws with sinewy arms." 



So in Glover's "Leonidas," "This unconquered hand 

 bath from the lion rent his shaggy mane." So Drayton 

 in the " Polyolbion " has a hero smashing two lions' heads 

 together "against the hardened earth" till "their jaws and 

 shoulders burst," reminding us of St. George's feats with a 

 diversity of dragonish things ; and Montgomery peoples the 

 world before the Flood with beings who pulled lions about 

 as if they had been rabbits, and who were themselves ruled 

 over by giant kings whose robes were " spoils of lions." 



" Throned on a rock the Giant-King appears 

 In the full manhood of five hundred years ; 

 His robe the spoil of lions, by his might 

 Dragged from their dens and slain in fight" 



Cervantes speaks of Don Quixote's adventure with the 

 lions as " the last and highest point at which the unheard- 

 of courage of the Knight ever did, or could, arrive," and 

 Don Quixote was himself so much of the same opinion, 

 that he gave the world to know that thenceforward he 

 called himself the Knight of the Lions. 



"Are the lions large?" asked Don Quixote. "Very 

 large," replied the man in the fore-part of the waggon \ 

 "bigger never came from Africa." But the Knight insists 

 upon them being led forth. They will not come. One of 



