34 The Poets Beasts. 



Not that I wish to extenuate the immorality of the tiger 

 in eating human beings, even when it finds them lying 

 about, so to speak, as if they were worth nothing. It is a 

 practice that should be discouraged even more forcibly than 

 it is, and be made an imperial matter. But, on the other 

 hand, it is unfair, even to tigers, to speak of them as if they 

 were for ever going about mangling. They are ferocious 

 enough — indeed, they set the lion a very splendid example 

 — when they are attacked and have to fight. But such 

 ferocity is not to be spoken ill of. It is heroism. The 

 historian can give our handful of soldiers in the Indian 

 Mutiny no further praise when he has once said that " they 

 fought like tigers." The poet, therefore, who calls Bertram 

 a tiger, because he has not enough courage to show fight 

 against odds, does the noble beast a gratuitous injustice, 

 Scott, moreover, stretches his metaphor beyond its capacity 

 when he makes Bertram, couching in the brake and fern, 

 hide his face " lest foemen spy the sparkle of his swarthy 

 eye ! " 



Nor, in the poets, does any majesty appertain to the 

 tiger, "that doth live by slaughter." It is "tameless" — 

 which of course tigers are not, seeing that they have very 

 frequently been tamed — and affords frequent similes for 

 irresistible ferocity. But there is no dignity attaching to 

 the beast apart from his pre-eminence in criminal fury. It 

 is, in fact, described as rather a mean animal, toying, as in 

 Hurdis, with the kids when caught, " whetting his appetite 

 by long restraint," and, in Spenser — 



" When he by cliance cloth find 

 A feeble beast, doth felly him oppress." 



It worries sheepfolds, stalks "gentle fawns at play " — 



" As a tiger, who by chance hath spy'd 

 In some purlieu two gentle fawns at play, 

 Straight couches close, tlien rising changes oft 



