I30 The Poets Beasts. 



Individual classes of persons are specifically asses. Thus, 

 in Falconer, kings — 



" While fools adore and vassal lords obey, 

 Let the great monarch ass thro' Gotham bray ; " 



and, in Barry Cornwall (I cross myself saying it), aldermen — 



" Oh ! the tradesman he is rich, sirs, 

 The farmer well to pass. 

 The soldier he's a lion, 

 The alderman's an ass ! " 



Lovers — "the grave lover ever was an ass" (Johnson); 

 sailors — " though he plays the ass on shore, he is lion of 

 the sea" (Cook); and courtiers (Moore) — 



" Lord Harrowby, hoping that no one imputes 

 To the Court any fancy to persecute brutes, 

 Protests, on the word of himself and his cronies. 

 That had these said creatures been asses and ponies. 

 The Court would have started no sort of objection, 

 As Asses were there always sure of protection." 



And, need I say it, critics ; as in King — 



" The twilight owl and serious ass 

 Would needs for modern critics pass." 



Individual personages addressed by this title are " too 

 numerous to mention," and, from Swift's Duke of Marl- 

 borough to Byron's Wordsworth, they are most of them 

 not only ass, but partly also ape. 



Summing up, then, the poets' donkeys, I find them a 

 dull pack, for the poets as a rule seem to use the animal 

 merely as the schoolboy does — as affording a ready epithet of 

 abuse that comes within the comprehension of the meanest 

 capacity — and to agree with Burns that the donkey's thick 

 hide ^ was given it by a compassionate Providence as a pro- 



1 " Thou gavest the ass liis hide, the snail his shell." — To R, Graham, 



