The King of the Beasts. 7 



As a rule "courteous" to their subjects, we read in 

 Butler that 



" Lions are kings of beasts, and yet their power 

 Is not to rule and govern but devour. 

 Such savage kings all tyrants are. " 



Again, though the sovereignty is one that " makes all 

 nature glad," and the beasts unanimous in loyal submis- 

 sion (the fox says " Thee all the animals with fear adore "), 

 yet we find the lion's subjects abused for submitting to his 

 supremacy. " No better than mere beasts that do obey," 

 says Butler, and Pope — 



*' If a king's a lion, at the least 

 The people are a many-headed beast." 



So that, even from this scanty sample of quotations, it is 

 evident that the poets had not arrived at any such unani- 

 mous opinion as to the lion idea as they have about many 

 other animals. As the King of Beasts it is merely the corre- 

 late of the eagle. But as the fabulists' lion, done into verse, 

 it remains the same mock-heroic animal that the folk-lore 

 of the world has bequeathed to us. 



Above all, of course, the lion is royal ; not so super- 

 lative, perhaps, in sovereignty as the eagle, but still very 

 emphatically the King of Beasts. " The sovereign lion " — 

 "the forest king" — "the lion king" — "dread king" — "im- 

 perious lion " (Cowper), and so forth, are to be collected for 

 the gathering by bushels. Morris' " yellow lords of fear " 

 is exceptionally fine. Nor, seeing how unanimously the 

 past has conspired to crown the lion, is it easy to quarrel 

 with the poets for perpetuating the monarchical idea. But 

 it is essentially a poetical form of procedure to accept a 

 fiction on the statement of professed fables and myths, and 

 then to build upon it according to individual imagination. 

 Thus, nothing is so popular with poets as the image of a 



