Asses and Apes. 123 



A god, it is true, gave Midas donkey's ears, but it was 

 just like the intolerance of a divinity to do so. The 

 perpetrator of the insult was Apollo (who ought to have 

 known better), whose music the Phrygian king had pro- 

 nounced inferior to that of Pan, and so — in order to gag 

 honest criticism — the god, forsooth, gave Midas donkey's 

 ears ! For myself, admiring fearlessness in critics, and 

 admiring also the music of Nature above that of art, I shall 

 always believe that Midas was right and that Apollo was 

 fairly beaten, just as I shall continue to believe that George 

 the Fourth was really fat even though Leigh Hunt had to 

 go to prison for saying so. And mark the mean ingenuity 

 of Apollo's retaliation. Pan, whom Midas preferred, some- 

 times wore asses' ears himself. They were his emblem of 

 acute hearing, of a perception open to the subtlest harmonies 

 of the woods and fields, and therefore in .lengthening the 

 Phr\'gian's ears the sulky divinity thought to put an affront 

 upon Midas' patron too. It is for posterity to avenge the 

 critic on his petty-minded tormentor. 

 Again —  



" Silenus on his ass. 



Pelted with flowers as he on did pass 



Tipsily quaffing," 



is not, either in Keats or the classics, made ridiculous by 

 his vehicle; for it should not be forgotten that the jolly 

 old man being placed on an ass points to the importance 

 of the animal in Bacchic worship, and is not intended to 

 derogate from the dignity of the boon companion of the 

 gods. Says a learned commentator upon the pageant, 

 " The ass was in fact the symbol of Silenus' wisdom and 

 his prophetical powers." 



But I regret that the esteem in which it was held should 

 so often have marked out the donkey as a proper object 

 for sacrifice. But so it was. The Scythians slew it in 

 honour of the god of battles, and the Egyptians in honour 



