58 The Poets Beasts. 



into company as if they were constant associates in real 

 life and habitual accomplices in crime. 



In poetry there are two kinds of bears — the " wild-wood 

 bear " and the bear at the end of a chain. The former is 

 divided into the polar animal and the bear general — which 

 also, it should be noted, is something polarish also ; Southey 

 speaking of the common bear as seeking its food " o'er track- 

 less snows," Thomson of it as icicled and so forth. The 

 latter, that is to say, the captive bear, is also subdivided into 

 the purely saltatory and the baited bear. 



Neither of them is popular with the bards. For the 

 former, " the wild-wood bears," an unjust suspicion that it 

 eats human beings, — a suspicion as old as our ballads — 



" With bears he lives, with bears he feeds, 

 And drinks the blood of men " — 



appears to prejudice the minds of some of our poets. Many 

 others look upon them as animals that resemble tigers in 

 their habits and tastes. As Butler, 



" Bears naturally are beasts of prey 

 That live by rapine." 



. They are " cruelly fanged," as in Keats ; and gloat over 

 victims before devouring them, as in Spenser. "The 

 bloody bear, an independent beast," says Dryden, In this 

 aspect they are "rugged," "shapeless," and "shagged," 

 "felon bears," and (in Heber) "heathen bears." They 

 " howl " and " snort " in concert with wolves. 



Much more true to Nature is Hiawatha's apostrophe — 

 remembering only that "coward" is the regular phrase of 

 Red Indian challenge — 



" Hark you, Bear, you are a coward, 

 And no brave as you pretended ; 

 Else you would nut cry and whimper 

 Like a miserable w omau ! 



