Bears and Wolves. 71 



By daylight they make it the accomplice of vultures, and 

 by night of owls, so that there is nothing too bad to say of 

 the wolf. The fact is true enough of the animal in Nature, for 

 it really is the Thug among the beasts. In other languages 

 besides our own Saxon, the criminal outlaw, the bandit, was 

 said in legal phrase to be "wolf-headed" — there was a price on 

 his life, and his destruction as a beast of prey was authorised 

 and rewarded. But the synthetical process by which the poets 

 arrive at the full compass of the wolfs iniquity is very pleas- 

 ing. Tyranny and darkness are their special aversions, so 

 the poets construct a wretch that preys by preference on the 

 very weak, the most innocent, and the youngest, and then 

 make it commit its violences by night. By this means the 

 wolf not only alienates all the sympathies of the chivalrous 

 and generous, but is branded as the nocturnal companion 

 of such obscene, night-prowling things as owls and bats, 

 night-ravens and hyenas. A dash of man-eating is then 

 thrown in to exasperate the general sentiment of the sanctity 

 of human life ; and, finally, to enlist against it human reve- 

 rence for the dead and the beautiful maternal instinct, the 

 beast is touched up with such details as the desecration of 

 graves, corpse-eating, and baby-snatching. 



It is the " night-prowling," " savage," " fierce-descend- 

 ing," "insatiate," "surly," "stem," "grim," "gaunt," 

 "guilty," "wild," "shaggy," "black-jawed," "robber" 

 wolf. Its voice is a "long" and "deep" howl, or "shrill" 

 or "a low whine," "lugubrious dreary yell," and "death- 

 boding." 



A dreadful adjunct of all scenes of dismal horror — " Near 

 him the she-wolf stirred in the brake, and the copper-snake 

 breathed in his ear" (Moore). Whenever a tragedy is on 

 hand, the neighbouring thicket holds a wolf, or the rocky 

 pine-glen yonder knows their lurking tread. There are few 

 circumstances of more than ordinary wretchedness that are 

 not accompanied by one of these animals, or a pack of 



