6o The Poets Beasts. 



And Pope — 



" So watchful Bruin forms with plastic care 

 Each growing lump, and brings it to — a bear ! " 



Not, for myself, that I see anything derogatory to a she- 

 bear in being the mother of bear-cubs, and nothing more. 



Nevertheless, the bear-cub she has not licked affords a 

 delightful point. Thus Churchill, '' a bear whom, from the 

 moment he was born, his dam despised and left unlicked 

 in scorn ; " and Byron, " the she-bear licks her cub into a 

 sort of shape ; my dam beheld my shape was hopeless." 



It is evident, though, that the poets are conscious of their 

 want of farniliarity with the wild animal. For, whether we 

 meet it in a hot country as "the shaggy monster of the 

 wooded wild," or see, with Darwin, 



" Slow o'er the printed snows with silent walk 

 Huge shaggy forms across the twilight stalk ; " 



or with Savage, " the crackling vales, embrown'd with melt- 

 ing snows, where bears stalk, tenants of the barren space," 

 it is an undefined, mysterious, and,- so to speak, still un- 

 licked monster. Not, however, without a weird majesty ; 

 in strict sympathy with the natural facts in Jean Ingelow — 



" The white bears all in a dim blue world, 

 Mumbling their meals by twilight." 



Spenser's " white bears " are creatures of fancy — 



" I saw two Bears, as white as any milk, 

 Lying together in a miglity cave, 

 Of mild aspect, and hair as soft as silk, 

 That savage nature seemed not to liave, 

 Nor after greedy spoil of blood to crave ; 

 Two fairer beasts miglit not elsewhere be found, 

 Although the comj^assed world were sought around. 

 But what can long abide above this ground 

 In slate of bliss, and stcdfast happiness ? 



