90 The Poets Beasts. 



couth men with unkempt manners are, therefore, bears. 

 Misshapen and abortive plans are Bruin's cubs. 



The cruel fair are panthers. Tigers are standards of 

 cruelty by which to measure the greater enormities of man. 

 As in Pomfret — 



" A tiger ! worse, for 'tis be)'ond dispute, 

 No fiends so cruel as a reasoning brute." 



" What tygre or what other salvage wight 

 Is so exceeding furious and fell, 

 As wrong when it hath armed itselfe with might? 

 Nor fit 'mongst men that doe with reason mell." — Spettser. 



And so, too, the wolf. " Rapacious, rough, and bold " is 

 Moore's description, and all the poets use it as the beast- 

 symbol of pitiless ferocity among men, distributing the 

 epithet impartially among all classes — " For man to man is 

 fiercer than the wolf, more cruel than the tiger " — Churches 

 of different creeds, politicians of different parties, cruel 

 wickedness of all kinds. 



The hysena "that feeds on women's flesh" is a pet 

 abhorrence — 



"Eftsoones out of her hidden cave she cald 

 An hideous beast of horrible aspect, 

 That could the stoutest corage have appald : 

 Monstrous, mishapt, and all his backe was spect 

 With thousand spots of colours queint elect ; 

 Thereto so swifte that it all beasts did pas ; 

 Like never yet did living eie detect ; 

 But likest it to an hyaena was 

 That feeds on women's flesh, as others feede on gras." 



Among this animal's epithets are — "dire," " fell," " fellest 

 of the fell " (Thomson), and they are not from a poetical 

 standpoint altogether misapplied, for the hyaena may veri- 

 tably be called the ghoul among the beasts. Its alternating 

 cowardice and fierceness, its shadowy mist-of-evcning colour, 

 its laughter, broken by sobs and groans, are all horribly 



