g6 The Poets Beasts. 



From the rest, a blest release, 

 Gabbling home, the quarrelling geese 

 Seek their warm straw-littered shed, 

 And waddling, prate themselves to bed." 



This frequent connection of pigs and geese is characteristic 

 of the best observers of country Hfe. I have noticed it 

 already in Drayton, Leyden, and Blomfield, and Clare 

 again has — 



" In autumn time he often stood to mark 

 What tumults 'tween the hogs and geese arose, 

 Down the corn-littered street." 



So that Miss Frances Power Cobbe's exquisite story of the 

 geese that used to make the pigs run the gauntlet of the 

 flock every evening, and grab their fat skins and tweak 

 them as they passed, is a real incident of this funny feud. 



But I have read Charles Lamb too well to be unamiable 

 to the pig, for whom a far better defence can be made 

 than Southey's humorous odes. For in its natural state it 

 is cleanly both in food and person, of remarkable intelli- 

 gence, activity, and courage. They are perpetually bathing, 

 they eat only fresh vegetable food, are as difficult of 

 approach as wild geese, and as nimble in escape as goats ; 

 while for downright pluck, there is not a single animal in 

 all the round world — the wolverine, perhaps, excepted — that 

 can compare with it. At any rate, it is the only living 

 beast that will wilfully challenge the tiger to combat. Nor 

 is the tiger always the victor. 



In a domesticated state, except on the best managed 

 farms, appearances are very much against hogs. But the 

 young pig, the porkerling, is a very queer and engaging 

 little person. Its inquisitiveness, resulting, as a rule, in 

 tumultuous panic, its utterances, so full of interrogations 

 and astonishments, its manner of sidelong frisking and 

 unexpected cavorts, are all immensely diverting. Nor are 

 adult swine without their humour and sentiments. Farm 



