io8 The Poets Beasts. 



And was not that some ominous fowl — 

 The bat, the night-crow, or screech-owl ? " 



Rogers' bandit greets as old companions, in his hiding- 

 place, "the bat, the toad, the blind-worm, and the newt," 

 and Darwin's naturalist hears 



" Shrill scream, the famished bats and shivering owls, 

 And loud and long the dog of midnight howls." 



"Through darksome gulfs the bats for ever skim, the 

 haunts of howling wolves and panthers grim " (Wilson) ; 

 "nocturnal bats and birds obscene" (Pope) ; "the bat flies 

 transient o'er the dusky green, and night's foul birds along 

 the sullen twilight sail " (Beattie) ; " the bat takes airy 

 round on leathern wings, and the hoarse owl his woeful 

 dirges sings" (Gay). 



It is easy, therefore, to anticipate the place that bats fill 

 in poetical metaphor. As " vampyres " they symbolise the 

 foulest crimes and the worst enemies of humanity. As the 

 bat ominous, they are all sorts and conditions of men that 

 are abroad at night with evil intentions, and are emblematic 

 of hovering disaster. As the bat natural, they represent 

 drowsy, day-shunning indolence, purblind ignorance, and 

 from the weirdness of their form and feature suggest things 

 from another world — 



" Then did wliisper low 

 Some of the little spirits that bat-like clung, 

 And clustered round the opening."— yifaw Jngcloiv. 



This is permissible. It is quite fair to the bat to say 

 that its gnome-like countenance and self-absorbed, self- 

 enwrapped attitudes should be used as similes for that 

 which is impish and uncanny, just as Swift aptly gives riches 

 the wings of bats, and rarncU calls them the "dire imps of 

 darkness." But it is a crime against poetry to make the 

 bat itself obscene and abominable, a thing of reproach. If 



