32 The Poets Beasts. 



Arcite in the " Knight's Tale " is a " felle tigre." 



" There was no tigre in the Vale of Galaphey 

 When that hire vvhelpe is stole 

 So cruel." 



But, after all, where shall we give the palm of maternal 

 fondness ? As Byron says — 



" The love of offspring's nature's general law, 

 From tigresses and cubs to ducks and ducklings ; 

 There's nothing whets the beak, or arms the claw, 

 Like an invasion of their babes and sucklings. 

 And all who have seen a human nursery, saw 

 How mothers love their children's squalls and chucklings.' 



Connubial affection is not the tigress's forte, for, with all 

 wild animals of her sex, she shares the deplorable tendency 

 to transfer her charms from her spouse to any other male that 

 overcomes him in battle, and is indeed much maligned if it 

 be not true that she actually incites her lord and master to 

 fight, as if not altogether indifferent to a change of hus- 

 bands. The lines " Oh, e'en the tiger slain hath one who 

 ne'er doth flee, who soothes his dying pain," are not there- 

 fore in invariable or even frequent harmony with the facts 

 of the tiger's wedded life. For the tigress Hcks the wounds 

 of the conqueror, irrespective of previous domestic rela- 

 tions. 



Nor, as a matter of fact, is the tiger a specially ferocious 

 criminal. As the greatest authority on Indian natural 

 history says, it is "a harmless, timid animal." It feeds on 

 animals that are prodigiously injurious to crops, and there 

 are on record in India the complaints of villagers about the 

 increase of deer and wild pigs in consequence of the de- 

 struction of the tigers in their neighbourhood. When it 

 gets too feeble to catch wild animals it begins to eat tame 

 ones, or easier victims still, the men or women who are in 



