V. 

 ASSES AND APES. 



*' Your asses and your apes. 

 And other brutes in human shapes." — BeeUtie, 



ASSES. 



" The as-s that heavy, stupid, lumpish beast " ( Oldham) ; " slonth- 

 full " {Spenser) ; " whom Nature reason hath denied " (Groome) ; 

 "heavy-headed thing" {Wordsworth); "slow beast" (Smtthey) ; 

 "obstinate, dull," &c. {Surift, Gay, &^:) ; "serious" {King^ ; "solemn, 

 puir lang-legs" (Allan Rantsay). 



Glory has been pernicious to the ass. So saith an ancient 

 of wisdom ; and it may be that the donkey, satisfied with 

 past honours, and conscious of the worth that was once set 

 upon him, has become indifferent to the opinion of a de- 

 generate race of men who knew him not in his prime — his 

 golden prime, in the good old time of Haroun Al-Raschid. 

 So he retires from public favour, like some great actor or 

 author who has pleased the taste of his day, but finds a 

 generation overtaking him that has no congenial sym- 

 pathies; and so, loftily withdrawing with his obsolete 

 laurels, he walks the world wrapped as in a cloak with self- 

 conscious merit and voluntarily undistinguished- 



For myself, when I watch a donkey at his work, be his 

 master a good or a bad one, there grows upon me somehow 

 a suspicion that the animal " whose talent for burdens is 

 wondrous " is deliberately concealing other talents, and that 



