Asses and Apes, 131 



vision against pre-ordained cudgelling. But if any other 

 view of the Ass be worth taking, I venture to think the 

 poets should have been the first to find it out and to 

 utilise it. 



APES. 



"Freakish monkey" {Oldham) ; "abhorred baboons" {Montgomery) ; 

 " apes with hateful stare " {Hood). 



The poets' apes — under which name I include (with due 

 apologies to naturalists) the baboons and monkeys — are a 

 deplorable creation. They are not " hateful " in the natural 

 sense that the octopus or man-eating tigers or rattlesnakes 

 might be, but they are unnaturally deformed into a despi- 

 cable travesty of man at his worst and meanest "A 

 chattering, idle, airy kind," as Paniell calls them, is just 

 criticism, and so is Shelley's "restless apes;" and so, too, 

 Morris' " quick-chattering apes that yet in mockery of 

 anxious men wrinkle their brows," for these are epithets 

 from Nature ; but it is scarcely generous, I think, first of all 

 to fancy a questionable resemblance between ourselves and 

 monkeys, and then to abuse the monkey for all the vices and 

 meannesses of the worst among us. The ape, they say, is 

 the worst kind of a libel on a man — and an ape besides. 

 Having reduced the human to its lowest, they call the 

 monkey human and add " brute " besides ! The truth is, 

 as the wise of all times have pointed out, man has a grudge 

 against the Simian folk for being so like himself in body. 

 Other animals, less amiable in themselves, are accepted 

 with resignation, condoned with apologies, or treated with 

 deference. But, as Congreve says — 



" Baboons and apes ridiculous we find. 

 For what ? for ill-resembling human kind ; " 



