76 The Poets' Beasts. 



" When lo ! an ambusli'd wolf, with hunger bold, 

 Springs at the prey and fierce invades the fold, 

 But by the pastor not in vain defy'd, 

 Like our arch-foe by some celestial guide." 



Or in Cowley — 



" Such rage inflames the wolf's wild heart and eyes 

 (Robbed, as he thinks, unjustly of his prize). 

 Whom unawares the shepherd spies, and draws 

 The bleating lamb from out his ravenous jaws." 



In metaphor this salvation of the lamb (and its attendant 

 parents) is a very frequent figure, showing very pleasantly 

 the general tendency of the poets to rejoice with the vir- 

 tuous and innocent over their escape from consumption, 

 and with the loyal custodian of another's property over his 

 triumph against the wicked-minded vagabond. 



Yet it is wonderful to note how often the legendary wolf 

 appears in a benign aspect. For instance, we are told by 

 Baronius that a number of wolves attacked a monastery 

 and slew all the monks therein who held heretical opinions. 

 Another pack tore to pieces the sacrilegious soldiers of the 

 Duke of Urbino who had plundered the Loretto shrine. 

 It was a wolf that guarded the head of St. Edmund the 

 Martyr from the other beasts, and a wolf that stepped in 

 to defend St. Oddo, when on pilgrimage, from the attacks 

 of wild boars. Just as it showed the Abbot of Cluny his 

 way home, so the legend says it guided Adam, and the 

 priests of Ceres, and Deucalion. It dragged the cart of St. 

 Eustorgius, and tended the sheep of Norbert. In Italy and 

 Sicily its hide and head arc supposed to endow the wearer 

 with courage : they are charms against many perils, and a 

 more than Stygian panacea for pain of all kinds. As a foster- 

 nurse the she-wolf is perpetually recurrent in an amiable 

 light, and legends in which the animals are benign are very 

 numerous indeed. In Red Indian stories the amiable 

 and pathetic sides of the wolf-idea are well brought out. 



