24 The Poets Beasts, 



lion-banner," "Judah's lion," and others of more or less 

 celebrity. 



Yet, with all their homage, the poets can hardly exceed 

 the measure of this animal's dignity in prose. Even to 

 dream of lions was a splendid prognostication. It is the 

 ensign of Hercules, Hector, and Achilles; the Egyptian 

 hieroglyph of divine strength ; the " vehicle " of many gods 

 both of the East and West, and of the heroic all the world 

 over, from Scandinavian RoUo to Ethiopian Candace. The 

 Persian Xerxes also is a lion, though it was those beasts 

 that, by attacking his camel-train, put his campaign in peril. 

 The gods of Greece borrowed its form, and the chiefest of 

 Olympus and of the earth accepted its spoils as the insignia 

 of imperial strength. To describe or paint Jove himself, 

 men have had to take the lion as their model, and in the 

 imaginative Orient the figure is repeated in the forces of 

 Nature and the pageantry of the Pantheon. Its effigies sup- 

 ported the throne of Solomon and dignified the decorations 

 of the Temple. It stands, the mere name alone — " Sinha," 

 lion — as the honourable affix of every member of one of the 

 noblest nations of Hindostan, whose king all the world 

 knew as Runjeet Singh, " the lion of the Punjab." But 

 what a roll of heroes that title summons up to the fancy — 

 " the lion of Persia," ^ Ali, " the lion of God," " the lions of 

 Judah," " the lion-kings of Assyria," "the lion of the north," 

 "the lion of the Prophet," "the lion of Bavaria" — and so 

 forth in endless list, till we have enough Coeur-de-Lions 

 and Leos to re-establish a Lemberg or a Leontopolis, and 

 to justify the redemption of " that sweet land of Lyonnesse " 

 now lying forty fathom under Cornish water. To take its 

 name was the crowning affectation of tiie chivalrous, just as 

 to have killed a lion was so often — from Hercules to Don 

 Quixote — considered the climax of their courage. 



* Tliat splendid prince who met his de;flli, unhappily, while chasing 

 an ass. 



