The King of the Beasts. 1 7 



Picrochole had to goad himself into courage against Grand- 

 gousier by self-reproaches. " Roused by the lash of his 

 own stubborn tail," says Dryden, happily hitting off the 

 British characteristic of abusing ourselves into action ; while 

 Waller is more precise — 



•^ "A lion so with self-provoking smart 



(His rebel tail scourging his noble part) 

 Calls up his courage ; then b^ns to roar 

 And charge his foes." 



That the lion wags its tail when angry has passed into 

 a proverb, and those who have hunted the splendid animal, 

 either in Asia or Africa, always record the preliminary 

 " lashing of the tail " of a lion that has made up its mind 

 to charge. So Darwin's " indignant lions rear their bristling 

 mail, and lash their sides with undulating taiL" Cowley's 

 "bold lion, that, ere he seeks his prey, lashes his sides 

 and roars and then away," and others are not only within 

 " the literal verity," but the extension of so common a 

 feline gesture into a leonine singularity — above all, for so 

 absurd a purpose as stinging itself into courage — is a 

 prolongation of the idea that is decidedly poetical, but 

 certainly little else. 



Indeed, the poets seem to recognise the dilemma in 

 which undue insistence on the unmitigated ferocity of the 



lion would place them — 



" Fie 

 Upon a lord that wol have no mercie, 

 But be a leon both in word and deed ! "' 



ejaculates Chaucer, after having exhausted the lion-idea 

 to magnify the heroic fury of Palamon. For if the lion is 

 not magnanimous it is evidently unworthy of the royal title. 

 So the poets " hedge," so to speak, on all their ferocity by 

 explaining that under certain particular circumstances t'ne 

 lion is quite lamb-like, and with very special classes of 

 persons, " roars you as gently as any sucking dove." 



B 



