Some Beasts of Reproach. 89 



is the emblem of all that is solemnly stupid, perverse, 

 ignobly meek — 



" Half witty and half mad, and scarce lialf brave. 

 Half honest (which is very much a knave) ; 

 Made up of all these halves, thou canst not pass 

 For anjrthing whatever but an ass. " 



The heavy mule — " a thing of jadish tricks " — " who, if 

 they've not their will to keep their own pace, stand stock- 

 still " — provides the poets with as easy a nickname as its 

 relative the ass — 



" Some neither can for wits nor critics pass. 

 As heavy mules are neither horse nor ass " {Pof^ ; 



and the worst kind of all is " that reasoning mule " — a man. 

 But I have myself only a very qualified sympathy with the 

 mule, which is, after all, not a natural animal, but an 

 artificial. Man made mules, and may abuse his own pro- 

 ductions if he chooses. I have the utmost admiration for 

 the mule's intelligence — 



" Shunning the loose stone on the precipice, 

 Snorting suspicious — while with sight, smell, touch. 

 Trying, detecting, where the surface smiled ; 

 And with deliberate courage, sliding down. 

 Where, in his sledge, the Laplander had turned 

 "With looks aghast ' — 



and for the intrepid self-reliance (to which I have myself 

 been indebted for personal safety) which Rogers celebrates 

 in verse; and consider its capacity for finding water one 

 of the most conspicuous marvels of all marvellous Nature. 

 But I do not, all the same, count the mule as a regular 

 animal. 



Bears are types of either monstrous imbecility or rugged 

 brutality. In freedom, they are the terror of the wood ; in 

 captivity, the jest of every clown ; in death, pomatum. Un- 



