SS The Poets Beasts. 



never even saw a chicken or heard of one, while every fox, 

 chick enivorous or not, is a beautiful and useful animal. 



It is ferocious. But of this the poets take no heed. 

 For the ferocity of the fox is not directed against the person 

 of man, just as the weasel, quite as ferocious as the tiger, 

 escapes reproach on this score, because it never turns man- 

 eater. 



The poets, then, judge the great beast-world from a some- 

 what narrow and selfish point of view, and seem to award 

 their praise or blame in proportion to the direct utility to 

 man of the animal under notice. To make a wild-world, 

 therefore, that should be to the poets' taste, every beast in 

 it ought to contribute either wool or butchers' meat to the 

 needs of human beings, and there ought not to be a four- 

 legged thing afoot with more ferocity in it than a bolster. 

 They would like tigers to wear boxing-gloves, and rhino- 

 ceroses, before going abroad, to unscrew their horns. 

 Wolves should be fleecy and say " baa," and everything be 

 toothless. 



Among the special Beasts of Reproach may be enume- 

 rated swine, bats, hyaenas, foxes, the jackal, and rat. Others, 

 of course, are largely used for the same purpose. Thus, the 

 ape is the symbol of brainless mimicry, o? loveless passion, 

 of silly conceited buffoons, of despicable men generally — 



" She to the window runs where she had spied 

 Her much-esteemed dear friend, tlie monkey, ty'd, 

 With forty smiles as many antic bows 

 As if 't had been the lady of the house : 

 The dirty chattering monster she embraced, 

 And made it this fine tender speech at last : 

 Kiss me, thou curious miniature of man, 

 How odd thou art, how pretty, how Japan ! 

 Oh ! I could live and die with thee." ^ 



And the ass, "whose very name all satire does comprise," 

 * Rochester. « 



