So^ne Beasts of Reproach. 93 



Ag befits such a mean sycophant as they suppose it to 

 be, "the thin jackal's" turn comes last at the feast In 

 Byron — 



" So when the lion qnits his fell repast. 

 Next prowls the wolf, the filthy jackal last : 

 Flesh, limbs, and blood, the former make their own. 

 The last, poor brute, securely gnaws the bone." 



Its voice chiefly attracts the poets. Crime has a " jackal- 

 cry." Leyden calls it a " dismal shriek ; " but Heber 

 (writing in Bengal) says — 



" The jackal's cry 

 Resounds like sylran revelry ;" 



and of the two Heber is certainly more correct. Faber's 

 " like plaining infants wearied the still air " is pure fancy ; 

 while B)Ton again (writing from Greece, a jackal country) 

 describes it as 



" A mixed and mournful socnd. 

 Like crying babe and beaten hound ; " 



A Stubborn, ugly, dirty, gluttonous, discontented, quarrel- 

 some swine is the poet's pig. Says Bums — 



" In seventeen hundred forty-nine, 

 Satan took stuff to make a swine 



And cuist it in a comer ; 

 But wilily he changed his plan, 

 And shaped it something like a man. 



And ca'd it Andrew Turner." 



So we may guess what Andrew Turner was like. And 

 all men that are either stubborn, ugly, dirty, gluttonous, 

 discontented, or quarrelsome, are called swine. It is the 

 " filthy," "guzzling," "whining," "wallowing," "grumbling" 

 hog: it lives in an "impure" and "stinking" "st\';" it 

 eats " greasy draff." Thomson gives an unlovely sketch 

 of the porker on its way to market — 



" Even so through Brentford town, a town of mud, 

 An herd of bristly swine is urick'd along ; 



