Bears and Wolves. 59 



Bear ! you know our tribes are hostile. 

 Long have been at war together. 

 Now you find that we are strongest. 

 You go sneaking in the forest. 

 You go hiding in the mountains ! 

 Had you conquered me in battle 

 Not a groan would I hare uttered : 

 But you, Bear ! sit here and whimper. 

 And disgrace your tribe by crying. 

 Like a wretched Shangodaya, 

 Like a cowardly old woman." 



Bret Harte's address to the " Grizzly " is perfection. 



But it is to the maternal triumph of licking her cubs into 

 shape that the poetical attention is chiefly drawn ; ^ the 

 poet's supercilious satisfaction being very much increased 

 by the discovery that after all her labours the mother pro- 

 duces nothing better than a bear. Thus Shenstone — 



" \NTiat village but has sometimes seen 

 The clumsy shape, the frightful mien. 

 Tremendous claws and shagged hair, 

 Of that grim brute yclep'd a bear. 

 He from his dam, the leam'd agree, 

 ReceiT'd the curious form you see, 

 Who with her plastic tongue alone 

 Produced a visage — like her own." 



And Pitt— 



" Thus when old Bruin teems, her children fail 

 Of limbs, form, figure, features, head or tail ; 

 Nay, though she licks her cubs, her tender cares 

 At best can bring the Bruins but to bears." 



* It is too late in years to refute this fiction seriously. But Sir 

 Thomas Browne's argument against its verity (after having otherwise 

 shown its complete fallacy) is worth quoting. "Besides," says he 

 " (what few take notice of), men hereby do in a high measure vilify the 

 works of God, imputing that unto the tongue of a beast which is the 

 strangest artifice in all the acts of Nature." 



