Some Beasts of Reproach. 107 



probably, therefore, a widely spread one. ^sop gave 

 countenance to it in his bat " half bird, half beast ; " and 

 many poets give themselves the advantage of the doubt. 

 Spenser commences his list of " fatal birds " with ** the 

 leather-winged bat." Southey makes fun of the mistake in 



" The midnighte howre when all the fowles 

 Are housed and hushte save battes and owles, 

 Yatte screche they're bodynges shrille ; " 



and Dryden makes a happy hit in the couplet — 



" Nor birds nor beasts, but just a kind of bat, 

 A twilight animal, true to neither cause." 



But why should Montgomery have included the bat among 

 his '■'^ Birds" or Scott perpetuated the fiction? 



On the other, its fanciful side, the bat is a thing of 

 reproach, pure and simple. Because it flies by night, it is 

 " obscene," and everj'thing, therefore, that goes on by night 

 is bat-like. For it is no innocent thing this poets' bat It 

 is " ghastly " and " blood-loving," the vampyre — 



" In the air a ghastly bat bereft 



Of sense has flitted with a mad surprise." 



In this aspect, however, it does not belong to my present 

 subject, but to the Fauna of Fancy. But there is a modi- 

 fication of it that properly belongs to the Beasts of Reproach 

 — the *' ill-omened bat " — and this is by far the most frequent 

 view which the poets take of the grotesque but harmless 

 creature. For then, the bat adds a desolation to desolate 

 places and a horror to the horrible. Shattered thrones, 

 empty harem-bowers, crumbling beds of state (Crabbe), and 

 rifted minster-spires, are the perches of bats ; ruins are their 

 pleasure-haunts, deadly nightshade their bower, and wolves 

 their boon companions — 



" Come list and hark, the bell doth toll 

 For some but now departing soul, 



